Touching Textures Through the Screen: A Cinematic Investigation of the Contemporary Fashion Film Name: Simone Houg Supervisor: Dr. M.A.M.B Baronian Student Number: Second Reader: Dr. F.J.J.W. Paalman Address: University of Amsterdam Master Thesis Film Studies Phone Number: 26 June 2015 Email:
[email protected] Word Count: 23709 2 Abstract The contemporary fashion film emerged at the beginning of this century and has enabled fashion and film to enter into an equivalent relationship. This symbiotic relationship goes back to the emergence of both disciplines at the beginning of the twentieth century. The fashion film is a relatively new phenomenon that is presented on the Internet as a short film, made by fashion designers and fashion houses that optionally collaborate with well-known filmmakers. The fashion film expresses itself in many forms and through many different styles and characteristics, which makes it hard to grasp. In the case studies on the fashion films commissioned by Dior, Prada, Hussein Chalayan and Maison Margiela, concepts such as colour, movement and haptic visuality are investigated, in order to demonstrate that by focusing on the fashion films' similar use of these cinematic techniques, a definition of the fashion film can be constituted. The fashion film moves in our contemporary society; a society that is focused on ideas of progress, increased mobility and other concepts that characterise a culture of modernity. These concepts evoke feelings of nostalgia and the fashion film responds to this by immersing the spectator into a magical, fictionalised world full of desired garments, objects and settings. The ‘aura’ that surrounds the fashion brand is expressed by letting the viewer fully participate in this fashioned world.