This paper uses the New Zealand designer fashion industry as an analytical lens through which to examine the co‐constitution of political projects in what we label ‘after‐neoliberalism’. The paper begins by tracing the making of New Zealand designer fashion as an industry, and relates this process to four political projects in which designer fashion is understood to have different possibilities – globalisation, the knowledge economy, creative cities and social development. We examine two key sites of the constitution of the industry – the scoping reports that created it, and New Zealand Fashion Week, when designer fashion can be seen to mobilise the different political projects and to be harnessed to them. We show how ‘the designer fashion industry’ is expected to articulate diverse state aspirations. Our emphasis on the co‐constitution of political projects highlights a new style of post‐structural political economic analysis, as does our concern with industry as a space in which political projects become mobilised.