Abstract
The production, consumption, and distribution of fashion is deeply connected to digital media and therefore highly dependent on the role of the image throughout all aspects of this industry. This occurs to the extent that the photographic dimensions of fashion are more important than the physical garments (Rocamora 2017). The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, which places major restrictions on creative industries, forced fashion media into survival mode (Fernandez 2020; Paton and Testa 2020; Schneier 2020). These limited means (such as for photographic shoots) forces major fashion media to improvise. Unable to produce images as per their usual program, major publications (in the European, North American and Australian fashion industries) must adopt makeshift, bricolage practices to produce image content. From titles such as GQ magazine orchestrating home selfies (such as their shoot with Robert Pattinson) in lieu of editorial shoots (Baron 2020) to the use of social distancing as playful conceptual premise for a shoot, these new conditions of fashion in isolation create new aesthetics of fashion images. In this paper, we contrast the improvisatory gestures (via digital images) of well-resourced fashion companies in the marketing of luxury fashion, to reveal the potential effects of such representations in the context of existing hierarchies in the contemporary fashion media industry (Titton 2016). In order to do so, we apply a visual methodologies framework (Rose 2001) to outline new modalities in contemporary fashion images and critique the emerging aesthetics of improvisation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Presenters
Laura GardnerAssociate Lecturer, School of Fashion & Textiles, RMIT University Blake Barns
LECTURER, SCHOOL OF FASHION AND TEXTILES, RMIT, Victoria, Australia Ricarda Bigolin
Associate Dean, Fashion and Textiles Design, Fashion & Textiles, RMIT University, Australia
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Contemporary fashion media, Digital fashion image, Aesthetics of isolation
Digital Media
This presenter hasn’t added media.
Request media and follow this presentation.
