Skip to content
1981
Volume 16, Issue 2
  • ISSN: 2040-4417
  • E-ISSN: 2040-4425

Abstract

Jorg Colberg’s analysis of ‘neo-liberal realism’ includes images of celebrities, landscapes and portraiture but does not extend to examining the role of fashion photography in neo-liberal contexts. I propose a definition for the neo-liberal fashion image, drawing on Botz-Bornstein’s theory of deculturation, which identifies a flattening and decontextualization of political motifs in the service of the neo-liberal paradigm. This is particularly evident in contemporary fashion images describing themselves as political through their titles, associated keywords, settings and styling, that nonetheless visualize a reductive and aestheticized representation of global politics. A 2014 fashion editorial set in the United Nations headquarters serves as my case study. I propose three characteristics of the neo-liberal fashion image: decultured excellence, banality and the displacement of the visceral and violent. These photographs prioritize stylistic qualities in the representation of complex political ideas and cultural realities, eliminating nuances and conflict, and constructing a bureaucratic and simplified interpretation. The proliferation of these images in post-millennial fashion media contributes to existing narratives of security, seamless supranational integration and the glorification of the neo-liberal world order.

© 2025 Intellect Ltd
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/csfb_00100_1
2025-12-16
2026-04-22

Metrics

Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Aichinger, Roderick (2014), ‘Safe and sound?’, Monocle Magazine, 8:77, pp. 43–50.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Andersen, Rune Saugmann and Möller, Frank (2013), ‘Engaging the limits of visibility: Photography, security and surveillance’, Security Dialogue, 44:3, pp. 203–21, https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010613484955.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Bloomberg UK (n.d.), ‘Pursuits in Businessweek’, Bloomberg, https://www.bloomberg.com/pursuits-magazine. Accessed 15 May 2024.
  4. Botti, Giaime (2023), Designing Emerging Markets, Cham: Springer Nature.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Botz-Bornstein, Thorsten (2019), The New Aesthetics of Deculturation: Neoliberalism, Fundamentalism and Kitsch, London: Bloomsbury Academic.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Brans, Laura and Kuipers, Giselinde (2023), ‘Fashion as “force for change?” How ideologization reshapes the work of intermediaries in the legitimation of culture’, Cultural Sociology, 19:1, pp. 43–66, https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755231160692.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Capital Staff (2015), ‘The 60-second interview: Emma Rosenblum, editor, Bloomberg Pursuits’, Politico, 6 August, https://www.politico.com/media/story/2015/06/the-60-second-interview-emma-rosenblum-editor-bloomberg-pursuits-003846/. Accessed 16 July 2024.
  8. Colberg, Jörg (2020), Photography’s Neoliberal Realism, London: MACK.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Cooperstein, Paige (2014), ‘How Bloomberg Pursuits wound up shooting a fashion spread inside the United Nations’, Business Insider, 17 March, https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-pursuits-fashion-shoot-at-united-nations-2014-3. Accessed 15 May 2024.
  10. Damaso, Mafaldo (2017), ‘Unstable mediation: Regarding the United Nation as a visual entity’, Ph.D. thesis, London: Goldsmiths, University of London.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Debord, Guy (1998), Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, London: Verso.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Debrix, François (2001), ‘Cyberterror and media-induced fears: The production of emergency culture’, Strategies: Journal of Theory, Culture & Politics, 14:1, pp. 149–68, https://doi.org/10.1080/10402130120042415.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Doordan, Dennis P. (2014), ‘Writing history: Reflections on the story of midcentury modern’, in V. Kulić, T. Parker and M. Penick (eds), Sanctioning Modernism: Architecture and the Making of Postwar Identities, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, pp. 1–8.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Filippello, Roberto (2024), ‘“Starved for pleasure”: The fashion magazine as a desirous queer archive’, Cultural Studies, 39:4, pp. 600–25, https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2024.2318560.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Fluri, Jennifer L. (2014), ‘States of (in)security: Corporeal geographies and the elsewhere war’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32:5, pp. 795–814, https://doi.org/10.1068/d13004p.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Giroux, Henry A. (1994), ‘Consuming social change: The “United Colours” of Benetton’, Cultural Critique, 26, Winter 93–94, pp. 5–32, https://doi.org/10.2307/1354454.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Giroux, Henry A. (2016), Beyond the Spectacle of Terrorism, London: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Goold, B., Loader, I. and Thumala, A. (2013), ‘The banality of security: The curious case of surveillance cameras’, British Journal of Criminology, 53:6, pp. 977–96, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azt044.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Gurrieri, Lauren, Brace-Govan, Janice and Cherrier, Hélène (2016), ‘Controversial advertising: Transgressing the taboo of gender-based violence’, European Journal of Marketing, 50:7–8, pp. 1448–69, https://doi.org/10.1108/ejm-09-2014-0597.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Herges, Katja (2023), ‘Becoming-Amazon: Femininity, embodiment, and sexuality in a photographic and digital breast cancer project’, Literature and Medicine, 41:1, pp. 93–122, https://doi.org/10.1353/lm.2023.a911446.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Holliday, Ruth and Potts, Tracey (2012), Kitsch! Cultural Politics and Taste, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Ioukhnovets, Anton (2025), ‘Bloomberg Pursuits: UN – ourwork’, Cargocollective.com, https://cargocollective.com/ioukhnovets/Bloomberg-Pursuits-UN. Accessed 1 July 2025.
  23. Jia, Jemince R. (2022), ‘Marketing controversies: Dolce & Gabbana’s China campaign Eating with Chopsticks’, Asiatische Studien – Études Asiatiques, 76:1, pp. 63–85, https://doi.org/10.1515/asia-2021-0017.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Kress, Gunther R. and van Leeuwen, Theo (2020), Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design, London: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Lotito, Jennifer (2020), ‘(RED) has its name because red is the color of emergency’, RED, 14 April, https://www.red.org/reditorial/news/color-of-emergency-covid-19-response/. Accessed 9 September 2024.
  26. Machin, David and Mayr, Andrea (2012), How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis: A Multimodal Introduction, London: Sage Publications.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Moumni, Omar (2024), ‘Rethinking fashion photography: Reconstructing identities, decolonising bodies and resistance in postcolonial Morocco’, Visual Studies, online first, pp. 1–13, https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586x.2024.2355499.
     [Google Scholar]
  28. Paletta, Anthony (2025), ‘“Assembly by design” challenges the accepted story behind the design of UN headquarters in New York’, Architectural Record, 13 January, https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/17302-assembly-by-design-challenges-the-accepted-story-behind-the-design-of-un-headquarters-in-new-york. Accessed 26 February 2025.
     [Google Scholar]
  29. Parkins, Ilya (2015), ‘Hurricane Sandy in Vogue’, Australian Feminist Studies, 30:85, pp. 221–37, https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2015.1107941.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. Parkins, Ilya and Dever, Maryanne (eds) (2020), Fashion: New Feminist Essays, London: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  31. Pierce, Barry (2025), ‘Louis Vuitton’s SS25 campaign takes over the UNESCO headquarters’, HERO, 8 January, https://hero-magazine.com/article/269193/louis-vuittons-ss25-campaign-takes-over-the-unesco-headquarters. Accessed 27 February 2025.
  32. Pieterse, Jan N. (1996), ‘Globalisation and culture: Three paradigms’, Economic and Political Weekly, 31:23, pp. 1389–93, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4404234. Accessed 16 October 2025.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Rogers, Louisa (2024), ‘Make love not war: Imperial democracy and the gendered soldiered body in fashion’, Res Rhetorica, 11:2, pp. 27–45.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Sabur, Rozina and Younger, Kathryn (2024), ‘US election: Monica Lewinsky makes modelling debut with a campaign to encourage voting’, The Telegraph, 27 February, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2024/02/27/us-election-monica-lewinsky-modelling-voting-clinton/. Accessed 27 February 2025.
     [Google Scholar]
  35. Scott, Zoe (2007), Literature Review on State Building, Birmingham: University of Birmingham, International Relations Department.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Shollenbarger, Maria (2024), ‘Under her Skims: Inside Kim Kardashian’s $4bn apparel empire’, Financial Times, 4 October, https://www.ft.com/content/5ca1c4e1-2083-4525-b85f-0ae7c28cb690. Accessed 4 October 2024.
     [Google Scholar]
  37. Stachowitsch, Saskia (2018), ‘Beyond “market” and “state” feminism: Gender knowledge at the intersections of marketization and securitization’, Politics & Gender, 15:1, pp. 151–73, https://doi.org/10.1017/s1743923x18000351.
     [Google Scholar]
  38. Stein, Lisa (2021), ‘Photography’s neoliberal realism’, Burlington Contemporary, 1 April, https://contemporary.burlington.org.uk/reviews/reviews/photographys-neoliberal-realism. Accessed 30 February 2025.
  39. Steyerl, Hito (2012), The Wretched of the Screen, Berlin: Sternberg Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  40. United Nations (2013), ‘Secretary-General, at inauguration of renovated Security Council chamber, says room speaks “language of dignity and seriousness”’, UN.org, 17 April, https://press.un.org/en/2013/sgsm14951.doc.htm. Accessed 5 September 2024.
  41. Zuromskis, Catherine (2017), ‘“All one life”: Celebrity and intimacy in the photographs of Annie Leibovitz’, Photography and Culture, 10:3, pp. 267–85, https://doi.org/10.1080/17514517.2017.1361142.
     [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1386/csfb_00100_1
Loading
  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): aesthetics; deculturation; fashion photography; global politics; neo-liberalism; United Nations

Most Cited Most Cited RSS feed

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test