FFC 1 (1) pp.

3–6 Intellect Limited 2012

Film, Fashion & Consumption

Volume 1 Number 1
© 2012 Intellect Ltd Editorial. English language. doi: 10.1386/ffc.1.1.3_2

EDITORIAL

PAMELA CHURCH GIBSON

Principal Editor

There seem to be unwritten but carefully observed rules around the content
and style of the particular Editorial that must accompany the appearance of
a new journal. Editors should begin by persuading their readers that what
they are looking at constitutes an essential addition to the academy, one that
merits its place amongst the considerable number of journals currently in
circulation. There is also a particular tone that is usually adopted – no hint of
levity is permitted. However, I would like students as well as scholars to open
this journal with interest rather than through a feeling of duty, and wish to
open up dialogues with its readers; consequently, towards the very end of this
Foreword, the tone will be deliberately provocative.
I shall nevertheless begin, as is expected, by stressing that there is a real
need for a journal like this. However, I would suggest that I might have
rather more justification than most editors; there is widespread interest in the
subject matter, these three interlinked concepts are central to changes within
contemporary visual culture, and the subject of cinematic costume continues
to be sidelined, as Helen Warner explains in her article here. Editors often
proceed to set out a kind of stall, giving clear guidelines for potential contribu-
tors, creating a specific vision for the future of the journal. Here, I must make
it very clear that I hope that the subject matter of submissions will be wide-
ranging. There is no narrow remit; I am determined to keep the boundaries
fluid, and hopefully to attract both scholars and practitioners from a range of
different disciplines.
‘Fashion’ is here to be used in the very widest sense of the term, while the
terms ‘film’ and ‘consumption’ will not be confined to the screens of cinema
and television. There are, increasingly, significant developments and activi-
ties in cyberspace; the last paragraph of Sarah Gilligan’s article describes the
extraordinary scope of contemporary consumption around cinema. She goes
on to indicate ways in which scholarship might reflect this complexity and

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 Pamela Church Gibson

so move forward, outlining modes of academic practice and interdisciplinary

scholarship that I hope to see reflected in future issues. I might also add here
that I would like to see a special edition on ‘new media’ – so this may be
considered as a call for papers.
In 1990, as Warner explains, the publication of the landmark text
Fabrications: Costume and the Female Body, edited by film scholars Jane Gaines
and Charlotte Herzog, opened up a completely new area of academic enquiry.
I would suggest that it was as significant a volume as Adorned in Dreams,
Elizabeth Wilson’s equally seminal book of 1985, which finally made ‘fashion’
a completely legitimate area of scholarship by dispelling feminist concerns
and settling issues around the compatibility of fashion and socialism.
Gaines and Herzog also reprinted Charles Eckert’s essay of 1978, The
Carole Lombard in Macy’s Window, which is still central to the very concerns
reflected within the pages of this journal. Eckert argued persuasively that
the patterns and the pace of modern consumer culture were, in fact, actually
shaped by Hollywood cinema, which created their ‘distinctive bent’ (Eckert
[1978] in Gaines and Herzog 1990: 121). The cinema set up a new relentless
cycle of demand and supply, thus explaining the acceleration of consump-
tion and the pace of fashion change across the last century. Eckert was not,
however, writing only of the desires created through new cinematic images
for glamorous clothes. He also describes a train snaking across America carry-
ing toys for the boys – cars, cigarettes, and more (ibid.: 122).
The demands for new styles right across the spectrum of applied design
continue to be created on-screen; I hope that this journal will look at ‘fash-
ions’ here, too, both past and present. The cinema arguably played a decisive
role in changing fashions of interior design and creating new ideas of what a
‘home’ should be like – something not , as yet , analysed nor investigated.
In 1997, Stella Bruzzi’s book, Undressing Cinema, extended the debate
around costume on-screen to include contemporary cinema and European
film, changing portrayals of masculinity and questions around ethnicity.
Helen Warner’s article follows the later trajectory of literature within the field,
so I will not elaborate further. However, I would like to stress the exclusion
of practitioners from these debates; something that I hope will be remedied
here. I am delighted to have in this first issue an essay by Sue Osmond, a
designer and practitioner who worked on The Matrix trilogy. Her article
considers the relationship between cinema and theatrical performance; this,
again, is something that is both vitally important to scholarship and invariably
neglected. I was equally pleased to receive Noel McLaughlin’s essay, which
considers recent portrayals of musicians on screen. Music, fashion and cinema
have significant links that are unexplored and unexplained. His article moves
into two other fields of scholarship which I hope will be seen in forthcom-
ing issues. He considers both sub-cultural style and the differing patterns of
consumption within particular cities at precise historical moments; I hope that
sociologists and cultural geographers will make submissions to this journal.
My own interest in fashion on-screen has always been accompanied by
concern that this, the source of so much pleasure for the audience and so
much – often hidden – profit for the film-maker should go uninterrogated.
‘Audience studies’, central to film scholarship, seem often to ignore what
audiences, past and present, did or do outside the cinema; there are detailed
demographics, but no real scrutiny of their activities when not seated within
an auditorium. Gilligan describes her own incredulity that ‘heritage’ schol-
ars have so resolutely ignored dress, such a fundamental part of this genre’s

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 Editorial

continuing appeal. Antonia Primorac raises new, important feminist concerns

around both ‘heritage’ and costume film; her essay examines mystique and
supposition around ‘the corset’, that object of continued fascination and
presumed mode of subjugation.
The reason for the relevance of the journal today is surely the fact that, as
I have argued consistently, the topography of visual culture has completely
changed during the last 10 years. We cannot look at the different strands in
isolation; we need to consider the entire spectrum of media discourses and
the way in which images move – or are moved – across them. This includes,
of course, the calculated ransacking of ‘image banks’ which characterises
contemporary advertising. Here, Nick Rees- Roberts’ essay examines Dior’s
recent deployment of the charismatic body and the complex cinematic persona
of French film star Alain Delon. Sadly, the House of Dior did not respond to
our requests to use their images. This essay describes them most carefully, but
they can also be found online.
This brings me to the emergence of what seems to be a new genre, and
the suggestion of another special issue to examine this. So far, no-one in the
academy seems to have considered the true complexity of the phenomenon.
The phrase ‘fashion film’ is gaining ground; but it has different, contradic-
tory meanings. There is a festival in Paris each year – a kind of Sundance for
‘fashion films’ – which screens, celebrates and offers awards to the short films
made and screened online; teen blogger Tavi has taken her place on the jury
there. These internet offerings seem to be what those who work within the
fashion industry see as the true ‘fashion films’. Fashion photographer Nick
Knight founded Showstudio.com to create such films, intended to ‘showcase’
each season’s new collections. But there is another form of ‘fashion film’ in
the commercials now commissioned by the luxury brands, the leading fash-
ion houses, from well-known, even respected, film directors. David Lynch,
Wong Kar-Wei, Jean- Pierre Jeunet and Baz Lurhman have all made ‘fashion
films’ of this kind, to be screened on television and online, the culmination of
each being the use of stills from the films as part of a magazine advertising
campaign .
There are also feature films where fashion ‘product placement’ constitutes
a central part of their appeal to their target audience; the cinematic incarna-
tions of Sex and the City (King, 2008; 2010) are central and typical. Such films
show how far we have moved from earlier decorous collaborations between
star and couturier; now the goods themselves are displayed independently,
Blahnik shoes placed reverently on a shelf, a Louis Vuitton handbag presented
as a gift and held in shot.
I promised a provocative ending. I would like future issues to contain film
reviews, and will begin that process here. As I write, The King’s Speech (Tom
Hooper, 2010) is relaxing after its triumphs at the BAFTA awards, now hoping
to sweep all before it at the Oscars. I find the success of this film disturbing,
and am perturbed that my only co-critic seems to be the right-wing journalist
Christopher Hitchens. His concerns are for its lack of historical veracity; mine
are for its reactionary politics and its cinematic limitations. I’d suggest that it is
a competent, well-presented heritage film – but without any of the progressive
elements that some film scholars have found within earlier examples of that
genre. Instead, we are presented with a puzzling deference to the monarchy;
in fact, the last sequence of the film shows the entire nation waiting urgently
for the broadcast which will inspire them. We see ‘ordinary people’ in spit-
and-sawdust pubs, their gnarled faces serious; we watch soldiers gather to

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 Pamela Church Gibson

hear what the film sets up as this King’s Eve-of-Agincourt moment. The post-
ers advertising the film reinforce this; the King and his therapist are presented
as if they alone can mitigate the impending horrors.
This, I trust, will serve to galvanise some readers; please submit your own
reviews of this film for the next issue. Please also send suggestions for Special
Editions to discuss cinemas from elsewhere in the world – Hindi cinema
should be addressed, as should films made in South-East Asia . All ideas
would be welcome.

REFERENCES
Bruzzi, Stella (1997), Undressing Cinema : Costume and Identity in the Movies
London: Routledge.
Gaines, Jane and Herzog, Charlotte (1990), Fabrications: Costume and the
Female Body, New York and London: Routledge.
Wilson, Elizabeth (1985/2007), Adorned in Dreams : Fashion and Modernity,
London : I.B. Tauris.

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