GLITTER SCREEN | THE HARLOW

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FROM CELEBRITIES TO FASHION BLOGGERS: THE CHANGES OF FASHION MARKETING

Posted on March 25, 2015 by Margherita Nannuzzi

Star system is principally an image of the way in which stars live. Starting from Hollywood’s roaring twenties, film production company has begun capitalizing on the people’s dream to dress like the stars. In 1937 the entrepreneur Bernard Waldman instituted the Modern Merchandising Bureau, a society that purchased the reproduction fees of dresses worn by stars in the movies and put up them for sale in Cinema Fashion’s shops in 400 town of the United States. This society designed the clothes ensuring that, when the movie come out, were directly set in the stores. Bought for a few dollars, the imitations of Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford and Clara Bow’s costumes make millions of woman dream. Would Repetto ballet flat have had success, if Brigitte Bardot hadn’t worn in Roger Vadim’s movie? The “must have”of clothes, the little black dress (Lbd), was made famous by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany (Edwards, 1961) and designed by Givenchy; Nicole Kidman’s white singlet in Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick,1999) became a symbol in female underwear. In the Internet’s age, fashion is more enjoyable and available. Big stars and famous actors lose their supremacy of unique models of elegance.

In the new way of communication web 2.5 (a new experience in which interactive media content are realized directly by internet users, which share informations, videos, pictures about own personality), new figures stands out in the business of fashion: fashion bloggers, which profit by social media as Facebook and Instagram for imposing as icons of style and exploiting fandom as a marketing instrument.

We follow and we love fashion bloggers because they are “people like us”. We leave remarks on the web, because we are anxious of knowing informations about their dress or hair’s colour. In Italy Chiara Ferragni, Chiara Biasi, Giulia Gaudino and the youngest Chiara Nasti are already very famous and guests in some of the most important fashion catwalks. Emerging brand competed for publicizing their clothes, accessories and cosmetics, exploiting popularity of these young girls. Fashion bloggers are by now a source of inspiration for a comfortable style and a sophisticated look, frequently rather cheap.

Isn’t it true fashion bloggers are redefining the rules of fashion marketing?

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CELEBRATING MONOGRAM

Posted on January 13, 2015 by Margherita Nannuzzi

Since the 1970s the photographer Cindy Sherman portrays herself in imitation of cinematographic aesthetic of the 1950s and 1960s in Untitled film still. It is not a self-portrait in the traditional sense but a representation of stereotypes handed down by american and italian cinema: the young woman who arrives in metropolis, the housewife, the unprejudiced (or rather the femme fatale), Alfred Hitchcock’s blonde and woman victim based on the famous image of Anna Magnani. Although it’s a cliché, the pictures are made by an artist and resemble an original but are also fake stereotypes, because the cinema itself produces stereotypes to whom reality tends to look like. The combination of elements like light, make-up, costumes and, especially, types of angles and shots allows us to associate those photographs to films which we have already seen, besides, we are deceived by the female glance, that is always turned elsewhere. Sherman’s photographs seem apparently kitsch, because fashion photography expresses the concept of “inauthentic” par excellence, but instead Sherman is making us an analysis and a reflection that are typical of modernist avant-garde. The Louis Vuitton maison for its 160 years, has chosen, among various artists, Cindy Sherman for celebrating the iconic Monogram pattern, created in 1896 by Georges Vuitton to pay homage to his father Louis. Cindy chose the trunk (that she calls “my travel office”) but this time she doesn’t make a self-representation but she uses a model as alter ego. The model takes from the trunk the cosmetics to disguise herself as a clown, a character become very interested for Sherman in the last ten years. The trunk, a casket enclosing a traveller’s dreams, has been the inspiration for the LV 2014 Winter collection.

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FROM FASHION TO THE BIG SCREEN: CHANEL’S JACKET

Posted on December 3, 2014 by Margherita Nannuzzi

“Among the things that will never go out of fashion there are jeans, white shirt and Chanel’s jacket». These are Karl Lagerfeld’s words, who will present December the 1^st a short film entitled Reincarnation, that reveals the anecdote behind the history of the famous Chanel’s jacket: in 1954 the French stylist was particularly impressed by the jacket worn by an usher in a Salzburg’s Hotel. According to the shape of that jacket, Chanel designed a timeless piece of women’s fashion.

Exactly in the early 1950s, when fashion and women returned to dream after the great straits of World War II and while Hollywood was offering sexy beauties from tight-fitting clothes like Marilyn, Coco Chanel, instead, preferred to create simple models and make women’s clothing more functional, without ever sacrificing femininity and elegance.

The male cut tweed jacket characterized by straight line, that Chanel combines almost always with a knee-length skirt, is still very imitated and loved whether on the catwalks or in department stores. Many fashion houses reproduce the model almost every year: just look at Pinko, Elisabetta Franchi, Denny Rose and even Zara’s catalogues, just to list some of the most affordable brand!

The trend of fashion tends to be cyclical, which means that its deepest essence is change, speed, transformation; but those items of fashion like Chanel’s jacket seem to be crystallized by time, because the same pattern of jacket is revived every year with just a few small variations.

One of the last tributes to the Chanel’s jacket is Woody Allen’s one in the movie Blue Jasmine (2013). The white wool Chanel’s jacket and the Hermes bag, worn in many scenes of the movie, symbolize for the female character, heavily exhausted and indebted due to the dirty business of her husband, the only connection with the marvelous life she led in the high society.

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DRESSED LIKE MEN, ANTI CONVENTIONAL WOMEN

Posted on November 19, 2014 by Margherita Nannuzzi

In the film universe, the masculinization of female fashion invokes a kind of imaginary connected to bisexuality, and to the emancipation of women. Both fashion and films show how style and femininity change in the early 20th century. In the thirties Marlene Dietrich and Katherine Hepburn were the first women to wear trousers in Hollywood.

Travis Banton, Paramount’s Chief costume designer, designed for Marlene Dietrich some masculine suits that have become a source of inspiration for Giorgio Armani. During the filming of Morocco (Von Stenberg, 1930) Dietrich wears for a performance a black smoking and a top hat. At that time, the actress’s outfit impressed so much Gary Cooper, that he defined her “the only woman in pants and jacket looks also sexier.” Even off the set, Dietrich wore with superb elegance, suit jacket, men coat, baggy pants; articles of clothing that have helped to define Armani’s style and that influence most women’s choices about fashion. Marlene Dietrich became symbol of the show girl, a daring woman who can lead, thanks to her charm and her body, a glamorous lifestyle; while Katherine Hepburn was the star of screwball and brilliant comedy. Her style was as much anti conventional: she didn’t wear skirts, but “Katherine’s pants” with long waist and white socks, she preferred men’s shirts and she loved the blazer. Her velvet smoking worn in Women of the year (Stevens, 1942) will inspire, twenty years on, Yves Saint Laurent’s female tuxedo.

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