Film, Fashion & Consumption - Volume 4, Issue 1, 2015

My article takes The Bling Ring, directed by Sofia Coppola (2013) – and the post-Fordist, promotional, consumerist constellation it is consciously set in – as a case study of the metamorphosis of the agency, value and meaning of celebrity in contemporary California. I discuss how, in the era of social networking, the construction of celebrity has undergone a process of transformation that entails two conflicting, although strictly interlaced, tendencies. On the one hand is the Hollywood star, supported by a persisting industrial policy and holding a monopoly of attention. On the other is the multiplication of platforms for distributing visibility, including the spectacle of fashion-bloggers, trend-setters and ‘celetoids’ and forms of self-publicity, self-broadcast and life-casting of ‘ordinary individuals’ through the web. Especially, thanks to the diffusion of luxury fashion brands (and a precise marketing policy), a new liaison is taking place between the accredited star and a type of fans increasingly transforming themselves into would-be celebrities. I suggest here that the ‘Bling Ring’ story can be better understood when set against the background of LA’s culture of branding and self-branding, a culture of self-commodification marked by the idea of empowerment through ever-renewing skills of self-presentation and artificially framed styles of life. At the same time, I hint at the social disparity embedded in LA, with its elites’ ambivalent behaviour, including the nostalgic glance of a Hollywood insider (Coppola), to contest a notion of ‘democratization’ of fame. I wish to demonstrate how new-media-conveyed developments in American youth’s behaviour – based on the skills of networking, on the auto-didactic, entrepreneurial activity of web participation, on open access and unrestricted appropriation – are challenging the privilege of fame aristocracy (the Hollywood stars), but not its vertical concentration of wealth and its individualized mode of power.

The article explores the representational politics of femininity in 1980s and 1990s Greece. Using the body as its main analytical tool, it argues that in the 1980s the Greek mediascape paid limited attention to international trends that highlighted fitness and tautness in the production of new sex symbols. Thus, traditionally, most female sex symbols were curvy stars of cinema. Nevertheless, as Greek media came into further contact with international trends in the 1990s, new sex symbols originating from fields such as modelling and sports emerged. As lifestyle media developed as a crucial component of the Greek mediascape, beauty standards became stricter. Thus, although the aesthetics of cinema and television converged, cinema lost its role as the main producer of sex symbols.

Anno 1790 (2011) is Sweden’s first attempt at a post-heritage, hybridized TV drama production. It is set during the increasingly troubled and gloomy last years of Gustav III’s reign, in the aftermath of the glorious heyday of the 1770s. The series has an obvious noir character that is displayed on all levels of image and narrative, bringing to mind the mood reflected in recent, internationally successful contemporary Swedish and Danish crime series such as Forbrydelsen/The Killing (2009) and Bron/The Bridge (2011), commonly known as ‘Nordic noir’ productions. The ready availability of an impressive eighteenth-century material culture, in combination with its historically exciting but altogether under-exploited final decade, provide a perfect setting for a Swedish noir, post-heritage quality production. The article revolves around the significance of the costumes worn by the main characters in Anno 1790, which seem to suggest that the costume design for such a series needs additional inspiration from other sources than dress history to properly remediate the narrative and its characters, compared to a traditional heritage production. The author shows that both contemporary fashion and haute couture are natural sources of inspiration for this type of ‘post-heritage costume’.

In the years following the Second World War, Britain experienced a prolonged period of austerity and an increase in rationing – a measure that had a direct effect on fashion. This was not always reflected on screen: during the war years, Margaret Lockwood, Patricia Roc et al. showed off sumptuous gowns in a succession of popular Gainsborough Studio period films. In 1946, Lockwood and her co-star James Mason were two of the biggest box-office stars in Britain. By 1947, however, Mason had left for America, and while Lockwood was still popular, her more subversive on-screen female sexuality was being displaced by a return to more traditional modes of femininity, as embodied by Anna Neagle. 1947 also saw the birth of the New Look and the golden age of couture, both in Paris and London. These aspects of British fashion and British femininity come together in Herbert Wilcox’s romantic comedy Maytime in Mayfair (1949). Set around the fashion boutiques of Mayfair, the film showcases designs by the leading houses of the day: Hardy Amies, Norman Hartnell, Worth and others. The luxury displayed on-screen would have been beyond the reach of most of the audience: however, the film works to promote the image of British fashion design for both a domestic and international market, while simultaneously presenting an image of resilient but glamorous British womanhood through Neagle’s star persona and on-screen presentation. This article examines the construction of ideas of British femininity on the post-war years through the mediation of stardom and fashion-on-film.

Through the analysis of the characters and costumes of Jasmine French in Woody Allen’s 2013 film Blue Jasmine, this article explores the dangers of maintaining a sense of identity so closely tied to dress. This article examines the practice of identity construction through the consumption of luxury fashion, and the corresponding tensions that can arise in the dynamic of such a dress practice.

Narratives of the apocalypse remain a powerful fixture in storytelling across media by confronting notions of mortality and the significance of life. Lorene Scafaria’s Seeking a Friend for the End of the World represents one of several recent, mixed-genre films to unpack a pre-apocalyptic scenario with a more realistic setting than common sci-fi and fantasy approaches. Setting the stage in a world that is ordinary rather than fantastic allows the audience a relatable perspective into an extraordinary event and provides a more pragmatic experience of the familiar myth of total destruction. By exploring identity and symbolism through the everyday ritual of dress, this article examines clothing as a material representation of social and psychological processes at the world’s end. Dress is dissected in discussion with physiological needs and cultural norms as well as critically analysed from phenomenological and feminist standpoints.

This article looks at the failure of the white ‘fairy-tale’ wedding in both a protofeminist and a post-feminist text (Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Sex and the City: The Movie, respectively). It suggests that the pressure put on brides by the wedding and fashion industries – to have a lavish ceremony and an expensive designer dress – threatens the independence and identity of both Jane Eyre and Carrie Bradshaw. This threat is exacerbated since both women are marrying men who have been married before. The failure of their lavish wedding ceremonies is due to problems that arise from consumerist bridal ideals; the threat to female identity can only be eliminated by a second, ‘quiet’ ceremony that allows Jane and Carrie to enter into marriage outside of the consumerist ideology behind traditional weddings. The article concludes that the representation of ‘fairy-tale’ weddings and bridal fashion in the popular print media constitutes an ongoing feminist problem since the eighteenth century until today: there appears to be a continued consumerist push towards ‘spectacular’ ceremonies, which forces brides to choose between ‘labels or love’, and threatens the authenticity of marriage.