TV drama and fashion: 1992, An Italian case

The aim of this article is to explore an Italian TV drama, 1992. As other recent examples, it represents a ‘quality’ drama, a new kind of Italian TV production. In these products the attention to costumes and fashion is really important. If it is true that fashion has long enjoyed a close relationship with mass media, its role in audiovisuals and particularly in fiction products seems to have recently changed. In this new context, dressing issues are no longer related only to clothing: fashion is increasingly included inside stories. Yuniya Kawamura (2005) argues that, regarding fashion, production influences consumption and at the same time consumption affects production. This circularity makes us ask where we can place fashion TV serials, because they assume a clear role of mediation between high fashion brands, or underground styles, and their possible reference worlds. The TV drama 1992 focuses on the Italian political crises of that period. The story is set in Milan, the Italian city of fashion. In the same years we saw the growing success of Italian fashion in the world. In the analysis we will try to focus on the role of clothes inside narration, to show how fashion is important to determine some specific cultural contexts. Our hypothesis is that – under the main narrative line – it is possible to see other levels, such as the clothes and fashion level, that indicate a specific connection with characters’ personality, spaces and places, and historical periods. Is it also possible to trace a creative vision of all of this? How do the costumes connect to the historical period? How are they connected in some ways to more recent fashion shows? Is it possible to see in 1992 a specificity of Italian fashion style?