Fashion, Television Series and the Wearability Equation1
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
to the letter. Women’s magazines celebrated Fashion, the return of breasts, hips and buttocks as if it Television Series and were a cultural revolution. Mattel launched a 1 set of Don and Betty Draper Barbies. Banana the Wearability Equation Republic launched a Mad Men collection in Benjamin Simmenauer tandem with AMC that made it possible for everyone to “Add some vintage elegance to your professional dress with classic designs” at a reasonable price. And finally Estée Lauder brought out a collection of limited edition Mad Men products (blusher, lipstick, nail polish) in 2012 and 2013, sold in retro packa- ging with Constance Jablonski channelling Betty Draper as the cosmetic line’s muse. The shows’ costume designers have been ele- vated to the position of style guru and act as Series make fashion consultants for brands and their own clien- tele. Thanks to the success of Gossip Girl, the Over the past few years, television series have stylist Eric Daman collaborated with DKNY had a growing influence on fashion consumers: on a line of tights, designed jewellery for “In the last decade, the once-unchallenged role Swarovski, and was hired by the American of movies in shaping public tastes has been franchise Charlotte Russe as Artistic Director. largely usurped by television”, wrote Ruth La In 2010, he also published a fashion self-help Ferla in the New York Times2 back in 2010. bible entitled You know you want it: style, ins- Fashion items become best sellers just because piration, confidence filled with tips for how to they are seen in a popular TV series: Manolo dress (unfortunately as yet untranslated in Blahnik stiletto heels in Sex and the City in the French), the doctrine of which is that style nineties, Gabrielle Solis’ (Eva Longoria) Juicy depends above all on self-confidence: “The Couture tracksuit and Bree Van de Camp’s key to style is confidence. And the secret to (Marcia Cross) red lingerie from La Perla being confident is being prepared”. Patricia in Desperate Housewives are often quoted as Field (Sex and the City), Eric Daman (Gossip examples. Girl), Janie Bryant (Mad Men, Deadwood) and TV series do not just influence consumers others are now today’s recognised style arbi- however, they also influence brands and ters: their expertise in terms of styling goes way the trend industry (designers, unions, press, beyond the sets of their television shows. trend bureaus, advertising…). Take the “Mad Men effect” which designates the extent of Film and TV the influence of the series’ aesthetic on every level of fashion. In the 2008 Autumn/Winter How can we explain the level of influence TV runway Michael Kors show and the 2010 Prada series have on fashion? We could say it’s like and Vuitton A/W shows, we were treated to the cinema, after all, films can also be at the flower prints, high-waisted silhouettes, straight origin of fashion trends. At the moment for skirts, blouses, twin-sets, tweed and Peter example, Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, Pan collars. The Vuitton campaign for that with costumes designed by Prada and Brooks season mirrored the visual codes of Mad Men Brothers is creating the same level of media frenzy as Mad Men. Films and series work for film. Evoke the opposite experience: on as image catalogues that fashion, the art of TV where you can also watch movies there borrowing and recycling par excellence, appro- is zero fascination: the darkness is gone, the priates and recycles. The reason for fashion’s anonymity covered up; the space is familiar, dependence on fiction, both filmic and tele- articulated (by furniture, objects we know), vised, comes from the importance of narrative organised”5. The televised image is part of the in the way desire is constructed. In order to ins- viewer’s usual universe, it does not replace it pire desire, a non-functional object like a piece with anything like the cinema image. Far from of clothing must “tell a story”, thus consti- interrupting one’s everyday life, the series pro- tuting a base for fantasy projection. Fiction longs and enriches it. Through its form first has precisely the power to shift objects into of all: the long-term but cut-up temporality of our imaginary world “in harmony with our the TV series turns viewing into a ritual. Also, desires”3. The item of clothing worn by the fic- because all series without exception are them- tional character can thus become a “trait” that selves the representation of someone’s daily the viewer, who has made this character an life. What is the underlying narrative of a series “ideal self” (someone they aspire to be), adopts made of? Like the cinema (in a Hollywood through a partial identification process. This frame of reference), it is a fable: a collection of is why some fans, particularly teenagers, dress facts presented from the angle of “seemingly like their favourite TV characters. true or necessary”6, that is to say, tied toge- This schema (from Freudian psychoanalysis) ther according to causal laws that organise enables us to understand in general terms, their continuation. But not only this, as on the the nature of the influence the filmed image edge of the narrative arcs that constitute the has on consumer behaviour, and notably on action of the series, the serial narrative takes fashion consumption. But the difference time over the most ordinary facts and gestures between TV images and cinema are too great that the film made for the cinema can only for us to think they influence their viewers suggest due to its tight window. This is how in the same way. Cinema is, as David Foster a series manages to create the “real effect”7, Wallace posits, an “authoritarian medium”4: which also captures the fact that the charac- through the way it is set up, cinema substitutes ters are simply there, they exist, delivered from the viewer’s immediate environment with a the artificial dramaturgy of the fable. In order fantastic world that it imposes on the viewer to convince ourselves, let’s compare the film until the end of the screening. The Searchers The Hobbit directed by Peter Jackson and the begins with a black screen. Dorothy Jordan series Game of Thrones (two recent examples opens a door and the landscape of Monument of the success of the fantasy genre): in Game Valley takes over the screen. Ford thus puts of Thrones, there is a lot of walking around, the hallucinatory essence of the filmic process eating, trying on new outfits, talking, trai- en abyme with the tryptich of the darkened ning, waiting, lighting fires, confiding feelings, cinema, the unique light source (the projector) memories, regrets, dreams, having sex, taking and the immensity of the image onscreen. baths. But there are very few battles, summit The reality effect, meaning the impression meetings, coronations or weddings. The Hobbit the viewers have of actually “being there” is is a succession of scenes of bravura, Game Of dependent on these artefacts. But, when the Thrones has very few: while the film retraces cinema image is not broadcast in these condi- the big events of a certain period in the history tions, it loses some of its power to charm: “In of Middle Earth after Smaug has hunted the the dark of the cinema lies the very fascination Dwarves off Erebor, the series, dedicated to the rivalry for the control of Westeros shows makes up dreams” (those of the designer and the underside of history, and shows us what we of the public). With no camera or projector, will never know of Gandalf, Bilbo or Thorin, exposed to the harsh light of day, stage cos- meaning the intimacy and daily lives of the tumes squash the wearer and turn out to be heroes8. Game of Thrones, compared to The unwearable. If TV series have acquired the Hobbit, is reality TV! power of influence we mentioned earlier, it TV series thus create a feeling of proximity is precisely because they who fashion items with the viewer through scenes that are see- worn by their characters that are wearable. mingly useless in dramatic terms but decisive This wearability factor is less often mentioned in terms of the assimilation of “everyday- when describing the psychology of the fashion ness” by the viewer and the transformation consumer, than the distinctive, original and of the viewing experience into an addiction. newness factors. However, it would be unwise Following a series means we soon start to to underestimate it: while the latter can trigger miss the presence we had gotten used to, and the purchase of a fashion item, the lack of the that we want to make it come back, over and former can prevent it. Wearability is the regu- over. This characteristic of the serial format lator of the desire for distinction: the consumer becoming a routine predisposes it naturally to is quite prepared to stand out, but not to the “softly” pushing beliefs and representations, extent that it makes them a laughing stock. In in short, influencing the viewing public9. addition, that which is chic is never eccentric: on the contrary, it is the singular interpreta- The wearability of clothes tion of conformism. People who are said to be elegant usually dress in quite a traditional Now let us observe how these generic dif- manner, obeying the norms of their group, ferences between cinema and television are only taking liberties in terms of localised shape expressed in terms of costumes. In the cinema, or colour, and thus simultaneously affirming the most spectacular accoutrements can seem their membership and their difference10.