Touching Textures Through the Screen: a Cinematic Investigation of the Contemporary Fashion Film
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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. Keywords: Fashion Film, Colour, Movement, Haptic Visuality, Modernity. 3 4 Table of Contents Introduction..............................................................................................................07 1. From ‘Film and Fashion’ to ‘the Fashion Film’................................................11 Fashion Newsreels............................................................................................................. 12 Film as Transmitter............................................................................................................ 14 Themes, Seating Plans and Cabines.................................................................................. 15 Rise of the Mass Consumption.......................................................................................... 16 The Contemporary Fashion Film....................................................................................... 18 Modernity and the Fashion Film........................................................................................22 Conclusion..........................................................................................................................23 2. The Fashioned Worlds of Dior and Prada......................................................... 24 Lady Blue Shanghai........................................................................................................... 24 Nightly Mysteries..................................................................................................... 25 Bodily Movement..................................................................................................... 28 Erotic Touch............................................................................................................. 29 Lady Grey London............................................................................................................. 31 Eroticism, Textures and Fabrics............................................................................... 32 Clothes as a Second Skin.......................................................................................... 33 Colour as the Évocateur of Desire............................................................................ 34 Prada: Leather, Luxury and Art Patronage........................................................................ 34 A Therapy: A Furry Haptic Sensation................................................................................ 35 Italian Nostalgia and Authenticity in Castello Cavalcanti................................................ 37 A Desire for the Past................................................................................................. 40 Conclusion......................................................................................................................... 41 3. Conceptual Fashion Films: Hussein Chalayan and Maison Margiela ........... 43 HUSSEIN CHALAYAN................................................................................................... 44 Ideas and Narrativisation.......................................................................................... 45 Veiling and the Gaze................................................................................................. 48 Transforming the Moving Image and the Human Body........................................... 49 MAISON MARGIELA...................................................................................................... 52 Substituting the Fashion Show................................................................................. 53 Communicating the Message.................................................................................... 55 Depth and Motion..................................................................................................... 57 Conclusion......................................................................................................................... 58 Conclusion: Dressing the Fashion Film................................................................. 60 Bibliography............................................................................................................. 64 5 6 Introduction Fashion and film seem to be inextricably connected in the current era. The use of the medium of film to display, promote and sell fashion is widely incorporated in the marketing strategies of major and smaller fashion brands, large fashion chains and couture houses. Equally, fashion is also present in film: for example, in collaboration with Italian designer Miuccia Prada, the costumes of The Great Gatsby (Luhrmann, 2013) included designs from the Prada and Miu Miu archives. But the relationship between fashion and film goes beyond simply utilising film for fashion and fashion for film. The contemporary fashion film is a genre that has experienced an explosive growth in the current digital era. These short films, lasting from one to approximately fifteen minutes, are continuously available on the Internet and they can be viewed at any time from any place: at home, in class, in shops, or at (fashion) film festivals. These fashion films distinguish themselves from fashion commercials broadcast on TV in various ways, such as their length (they can be considered short films), their viewing space (The Internet) and their content and style (there is no specific product placement).1 Fashion films are presented in a variety of guises. In 2012, the Italian filmmaker Carlo Lavagna gave the viewer a glimpse into the world of the fashion house Valentino in his film L'Unico. He recorded the making of a Valentino's haute couture dress in a poetic sense and followed the dress from the designers' drawings to the eventual presentation of it on the runway. Images of women sewing complex patterns onto the dress are accompanied by serene music. These gentle scenes are in stark contrast to a fashion film made by the British filmmaker Ruth Hogben and the fashion designer Gareth Pugh for Pugh's Autumn/Winter 2015 collection. The film was used as a prelude to Pugh's fashion show and is featured by dark, horror images. We see a woman that starts cutting her long blonde hair with a large pair of scissors. In the next scene we see her wearing a black and white outfit as she starts putting red paint on her body and face, applied in the shape of a cross. After this she disappears into flames of fire. Ominous music accompanies the disturbing scenes. When the film ends, models appear on the catwalk, wearing similar outfits and are covered in red paint, as if they just walked out of the fashion film. These two fashion films seem to be completely different, which can be explained by the fact that the fashion both designers create is radical different. Valentino is known for its romantic, feminine designs while Gareth Pugh's designs are more experimental and play with the shapes of the human body. Although at first sight there can be found little similarities between these two examples that are both considered to be fashion films (they both depict clothing from known fashion designers), there can be found more parallels between these and other fashion films when they are analysed more closely. 1Product placement is an advertising technique that companies use to promote their products by integrating the products subtle in the films' or TV series' narrative without mentioning that it concerns 7 This thesis will examine the connections and relationships between fashion and film. By tracing the emergence of both discourses, forms and their connections with mass media and modernity, an in depth exploration of their corresponding concepts will be given. I will investigate how fashion and film developed in parallel, always exchanging shared characteristics,