Performing style: Fashion in Italian factual entertainment

In recent years factual entertainment has gained space in Italian television programmes, especially in ‘native digital’ channels (RealTime, DMAX, La7d). Common people are the main characters of stories dealing with everyday life, often in the makeover form, from the house to cooking, from DIY to personal fitness. And in this context fashion constitutes a privileged theme. The article aims at analysing current examples of Italian fashion factual entertainment, discussing the discursive forms and the thematization processes of the fashion object. The roles of televisual apparatus and audiences will also be considered: experts and learners are represented in these programmes, leading to the consideration of fashion as a space of negotiation of experience. The article aims at answering questions such as: what kind of style is proposed and through which discursive procedures (testimony, suggestion, lesson)? What is the function of television in transmitting fashion contents (divulgation, imposition of a style code)? What is the function of the audience (learner, competent)? Finally, what connotation of fashion emerges (apparatus of rules, individual competence)?