Film, Fashion & Consumption - Volume 1, Issue 1, 2011

As contemporary cinema intersects with both celebrity (Church Gibson 2011) and convergence culture (Jenkins 2006a), it is vital that the academic analysis of screen costuming moves beyond the film text to consider the wider institutional processes and consumption practices connected to fashion and spectators. In examining the role of costume and fashion as a source of meaning and pleasure this article forms part of my wider research project, which includes a forthcoming monograph and adopts both textually centred and interdisciplinary cross-media methodological approaches. This methodological shift is reflected in this article - the examination of Shakespeare in Love (Madden, 1998) adopts a predominantly textually centred approach focusing on the cinematic representation of Viola/Thomas (Gwyneth Paltrow), in which I argue that costume functions as both a spectacular intervention and a visual narrative of gender transformation and sexual fluidity. In then shifting to a cross-media approach, I will discuss both Gwyneth Paltrow and Keira Knightley in relation to issues of fashion, femininity and celebrity culture. As contemporary popular cinema shifts from character centred narratives to the formation of transmedia worlds existing over multiple media platforms, the text-spectator relationship is one grounded in a participatory convergence culture (Jenkins 2006a). In the final section of this article I argue that the meanings and pleasures of cinematic costume are increasingly characterised by what I term 'tactile transmediality'. Through moving my analysis beyond the film text to explore gaming, cosplay and fashion in relation to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (Verbinski, 2003; 2006; 2007; Marshall, 2011), I will argue that clothing creates a tactile platform in which the spatial distance between the text and the spectator can be bridged via adornment and touch and thus the processes of identity transformation and performativity can be played out in our everyday lives.

The article addresses the problem of representing Victorian female subjectivity in contemporary films set in the nineteenth century - including both film adaptations of Victorian classics (such as Campion's Portrait of a Lady [1996]) and examples of contemporary Victoriana (such as Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge! [2001], Burton's Sweeney Todd [2007] and the animated The Corpse Bride [2005], and Campion's The Piano [1993]). It focuses on the use of the corset and the practice of tight-lacing as visual and ideological shorthand in filmic representations of repressed Victorian female subjectivity. The stress of the analysis is on the recurring glorified image of the corseted woman, usually juxtaposed to a caged bird, placed inside cage-like interiors. Tracing the history of these images to the nineteenth-century representation of women in fine art, the article investigates the significance of these images for interpretations of female agency in contemporary Victoriana.

The ‘Cleopatra look’ has recurred regularly in fashion marketing, advertising, masquerade balls, fashion trends and in the salons and catwalk shows of haute couture since the beginning of the twentieth century. The ‘look’ embraces the kitsch spectacle of excessive opulence associated with the stereotypical Orientalist image of Ancient Egypt: that of palm trees, pyramids and odalisques. It also reflects the various cultural attitudes to female power and the seductive exotic ‘Other’ that have consistently pervaded western societies in the last two centuries. This article extends on the contribution which feminist scholarship has made to the way in which the female body generates meaning in film, literature and fashion. It focuses on theatrical performance, as well as on representations of Cleopatra in film and fashion. It presents an analysis of some of the most influential representations of Cleopatra, which viewed together begin to form a ‘collective mythology’ in which the shifting relationships between fashion, costume and feminine ideals are apparent.

This article takes as its starting point Dior’s recent advertising campaign for its timeless classic men’s fragrance Eau sauvage, which used still and moving imagery of film star Alain Delon, particularly shots from his stylish crime drama La Piscine (Deray, 1969). Dior’s choice of Delon as brand ambassador is interesting in the current economic conjuncture in which conglomerates like LVMH (Louis Vuitton MoHennessey) are increasingly looking backwards to write the unique histories of their specific brands in order to differentiate them from the competition in a saturated luxury fashion sector. This article traces Delon’s distinctive role as men’s fashion icon and his impact on global consumer culture.

This article integrates Popular Music Studies, Film Studies and Fashion Studies to offer a comparative analysis of Joy Division and U2 in the cinema. It focuses primarily on the films Control (Corbijn, 2007) and Rattle and Hum (Joanou, 1988), and looks at how popular musical performance and sub-cultural style are intertwined with the representation of city space and the construction of metropolitan identities. It does this via consideration of filmic style but in a manner sensitive to the broader sociopolitical and popular musical discourses that frame these representations. The article argues that popular music’s relationship to the cinema, and to representations of place, has been much neglected in Film Studies. As such, it considers the rock/performance/fashion/place nexus in some detail.

In 1990, Jane Gaines and Charlotte Herzog’s hugely influential edited collection, Fabrications, opened up the discussion of the complex relationship between the female consumer and the female viewer; and while an important body of work has developed within this area, the study of on-screen fashion continues to be somewhat marginalised in the academy. This article examines some of the recent contributions to the study of on-screen fashion, situating them in relation to broader debates about fashion, costume, feminism and identity. In so doing, it seeks to examine the fortitude field, 21 years on from Fabrications, in order to examine how the study of on-screen fashion has developed and how it may evolve in the future.