Understanding Fashion a Qualitative Content Analysis of the Audience Reactions to the Covers of British Vogue April 2021
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Understanding Fashion A Qualitative Content Analysis of the audience reactions to the covers of British Vogue April 2021 Piotr Talarek Media and Communication Studies – Culture, Collaborative Media, and Creative Industries One-year master 15 credits Spring/Summer 2021 Supervisor: Temi Odumosu Word count: 16 102 Abstract This thesis aims to examine different independent fashion audience reactions to the covers of UK Vogue April 2021, which featured four upcoming models of color: Mona Tougaard, Janaye Furman, Achenrin Madit, and Precious Lee. The study focuses on responses gathered from two fashion sources: The Instagram account Diet Prada, and a fashion forum called The Fashion Spot. In addition, the design has been extended by The Fashion Spot fashion crowd’s reactions to the Vogue Italia July 2008 also known as “The Black Issue”. The thesis intends to associate the main research problem with the magazine industry and digital world of fashion, media producers and advertisers, the issue of power and female models diversity on the covers of Vogue. The study employs a method of qualitative content analysis. Additionally, Stuart Hall’s encoding and decoding model has been implemented to define the message displayed on the fashion magazine covers and to examine the readers' reactions based on the collected data. The findings show that even though the UK Vogue April 2021 covers met with positive reactions and approval from independent industry voices, some concerns have appeared. While British Vogue has been praised for its decision to feature four black models on the covers, it has been mentioned that other international editions of Vogue did not decide to follow this idea. Moreover, the lack of more diverse fashion producers, such as fashion photographers or stylists has been pointed out. A comparative analysis of the reaction data studied also showed that the audiences of the two independent fashion platforms tend to differ in terms of reactions to the covers. Furthermore, an additional comparison between the Vogue Italia July 2008 and UK Vogue April 2021 has highlighted the differences between the social and cultural changes as well as the perception of a fashion magazine as a media. Keywords: Vogue, Edward Enninful, diversity in fashion, independent fashion audience, Diet Prada, The Fashion Spot 1 Table of Contents Abstract 1 List of Figures and Tables 4 1. Introduction 5 2. Background 10 2.1 Fashion Magazine Industry in 2021 10 2.1.1 What is a fashion magazine? 10 2.1.2 Vogue 11 2.1.3 New challenges 13 2.1.4 Problem of representation 14 2.1.5 Power of advertisers 15 2.2 Vogue UK and Edward Enninful 16 2.3 Independent fashion media platforms 17 3. Literature Review 18 3.1 Independent Fashion Media Platforms 18 3.2 Representation 19 3.3 Vogue 19 3.3.1 Diversity on the pages of the UK Vogue 21 4. Theoretical Framework 22 5. Methodology 24 5.1 Research Design 25 5.1.1 Logic of Inquiry 25 5.1.2 Research Paradigm 26 5.1.2 Research Questions 26 5.2 Method 27 5.2.1 Qualitative Content Analysis 27 5.2.2 Diet Prada 28 5.2.3 The Fashion Spot 28 5.2.4 Data collection 29 5.2.3 Codebook development 31 5.3 Limitations 32 6. Ethics 33 6.1 Role of the researcher 34 7. Key Findings and Analysis 35 7.1 Diet Prada 36 7.2 The Fashion Spot 37 2 7.2.1 UK Vogue April 2021 37 7.2.2 Vogue Italia July 2008 39 7.3 Comparative analysis 40 8. Conclusion 42 8.1 Future research 46 References 47 Appendix 53 3 List of Figures and Tables Figure 1. The covers of Vogue Italia July 2008 issue Figure 2. The covers of UK Vogue April 2021 issue Figure 3. The cover of US Vogue June 1969 issue Table 1. Results Table 2. Statistics from the Diet Prada’s audience reactions to the covers of UK Vogue April 2021 issue Table 3. Statistics from The Fashion Spot’’s audience reactions to the covers of UK Vogue April 2021 issue Table 4. Statistics from The Fashion Spot’’s audience reactions to the covers of Vogue Italia July 2008 issue 4 1. Introduction People are interested in the way they look and dress. They are constantly exposed to the fashionable aspects in the media such as films, series, shows, and different kinds of magazines. They make several choices regarding the styles, colors, sizes, shapes as well as looks. They create an appearance and a message of how they want to be perceived by others with a tool that can be described as fashion. The term fashion is complex as it can relate to a large number of phenomena. It can express a certain mood or set of trends, general tendency, the way people dress, or temporary behaviors that result in a certain visual appearance. It can also refer to a large and vital economy - the fashion industry that consists of the designers, models, editors, artists, producers, but more important fashion enthusiasts and the consumers. Fashion as an industry relies heavily on the images, visuals, and appearance that not only results in the garments people wear but a large set of produced covers, editorials, fashion shows, adverts, and commercials. Over the decades, the fashion magazines created hundreds of marvelous and remarkable shots permanently engraved in the history of fashion, photography, and pop culture. On their pages, they presented artists, actors, directors, politicians, and activists as well as models captured in the lenses of photography icons. Western fashion publications were and are often ambitious, provocative, and not afraid to tackle uncomfortable topics such as sex, sexuality, gender, inequality, or racism. Among many of such titles, one became a distinctive part of not only the fashion panorama: Vogue. Looking at the fashion magazines industry, it is obvious that titles like Vogue play a significant role in shaping its reader’s style, setting up the fashion agenda for the current season, and creating a platform for fashion creatives. This can be observed especially in Western European societies with long fashion traditions such as in France, Italy, and the UK. Respectively, Vogue editions in those countries are seen as the most influential ones not only when it comes to creating trends (Koh & Lee, 2013; Rocamora, 2009), but also in controlling one of the "most important industries driving the global economics" (Furukawa et al., 2019, p. 247). Fashion creatives in these nations have the most of the control over the entire industry: from curated content in the form of fashion covers, editorials, live fashion shows, and articles, to advertising relationships and the establishment of representational norms. This industry structure (creative and 5 commercial) is profoundly influenced by a disturbing lack of diversity and inclusivity among them (Parkins, 2018). Magazines in particular have been guarding the declared canon of beauty over the past decades. The slim white faces seen on the covers of these magazines have been dominating the industry’s norms for well over half a century. In recent times, however, we have seen a visible shift in many sectors of the industry of European fashion magazines. July 2008 was a pivotal moment. Editor-in-chief Franca Sozzani at Italian Vogue decided to challenge the limited selection and representation of female models seen on the covers of the iconic fashion magazine. She orchestrated the issue that is also known as "The Black Issue", which has been described as a milestone in the industry, not only by the professionals but also scholars dealing with the wider problems of diversity and inclusion in fashion (Thompson Summers, 2017; Kuipers et al., 2014). For the first time in the magazine's history, the entire issue was dedicated to black models, from cover to cover. This was not the first time that Franca Sozzani had decided to challenge the industry. In previous years, together with noted fashion photographer Steven Meisel (who shot all the magazine covers between 1988 and 2015), she created stunning visuals that raised concerns regarding the American participation in the Middle-East conflict (September 2007), the industry of plastic surgeries (July 2005) or the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 (August 2010). This time in 2008, however, her decision resulted from more in- depth industry reflections, as she states in the interview with the TIME magazine: "I was at the shows, and of all the (white) models, there was nobody who struck me: not one name, not one face." (Isrealy, 2008). Naomi Campbell, Liya Kebede, Sessilee Lopez, and Jourdan Dunn were selected as the cover stars, together with other fashion icons such as Iman and Tyra Banks in the inside editorials (See Fig.1). Contrary to the longstanding myth that models from different backgrounds did not „sell” as well in the mainstream, "The Black Issue" resulted in astonishing commercial success, with additional reprints of the magazine needed (Watson, 2008). Vogue Italia is seen as one of the four most influential editions of Vogue together with the British one, American and French. This is mainly connected with their economical influence on the industry as well as the developed fashion culture in those 6 countries. Sozzani's decision to use only black models was radical for the time, and has since opened new discussions about representation in the industry. Figure 1. The covers of Vogue Italia July 2008 issue Over a decade later the situation has improved. Last December, the leading fashion portal and an independent fashion forum called The Fashion Spot published its annual report on model diversity on magazine covers during 2020 (Schimminger, 2020). That year was an exceptional period for racial, cultural, age, and body diversity in this fashion media space.