Digital Fashion Media from the book “Fashion Journalism” by Julie Bradford chapter 3 Fashion media and audiences Università La Sapienza Roma, AA 2019/2020 “FASHION IS AN INDUSTRY THAT HAS VERY CLEVERLY CREATED ITS OWN MEDIA TO SUPPORT IT” (Caryn Franklin, journalist, 2013) Maybe the relationship between fashion media and fashion industry is more subtle than this, and apply to some media more than others. Surely it is a lot closer than in most other journalistic fields. Fashion was a driver for the spread and popularity of early magazines and its rhythms, needs and advertising still sustain the print media today. in the fashion media are crucial … the centrality of the brand the importance of the target reader Traditionally fashion journalism is criticized as largely uncritical and kowtows too much to advertisers. Why? Journalists are a crucial cog in the fashion wheel, acting as gatekeepers declaring what is in and what is out, making new trends sound desiderabile and explaining a designer’s ideas to the public. (Kawamura Y., Fashion-ology, 2005) One connection to motivate the symbiotic relationship between media and industry in fashion is frequency - how magazine publication dates fit round new collections. E.G. Biannuals come out twice a year to fit with the two fashion seasons, AW and SS. The trouble is people can now see (and sometimes buy) collections instantly online. The system of media changed as the system of fashion. Fast Fashion introduced new types of magazines or the change of the frequency for old ones. “So we know how important it was to a have a fashion weekly that could really keep up with the change of pace” Fiona McIntosh, editor-in-chief of the weekly magazine Grazia when it was launched in 2005 The fashion system we know now grew up alongside the development of mass media. Fashion was always a preoccupation of social elites, especially at royal courts. By the XVII century illustrations of the latest dress styles could be engraved, hand-coloured and reproduced as fashion plates. As printing improved, these plates could be gathered into collections and distributed throughout Europe. first fashion magazines: In France/ Le Mercure Galant (from 1672) in UK/ Lady’s Magazine or Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex (1771) They spawned many imitators and found a ready-made audience in the newly affluent upper middle-classes thrown up by the Industrial Revolution, in the latter part of the XVIII century who were striving for social respectability. The magazines as providing ‘imaginary communities for female readers, who had no real way of meeting other women in groups (Martin Conboy, historian, 2004:135) These first magazines also set the pattern of addressing women in the private world of home, rather than the public world of work, and of defining their look as the most important thing about them. XIX century: huge boom of magazines thanks to new leisure time, mass literacy, railways to distribute them, and improvements to color publishing. between 1870 and 1900 in England: 50 new titles, many based in London where huge department stores were opening (Selfriges, Harvey Nichols and Harrods). These new women’s magazines were made up 50% of adv pages. Shopping and Consumption were the driving forces behind these issues. Vogue It was a social gazette when it first came out in NYC in 1892. Few famous designers, non catwalk shows, so fashion coverage consisted of what the rich were wearing at social events. In 1909 Vogue was taken over by lawyer Conde Nast. He set about turning it into one of the first specialist magazines deliberately targeted at a wealthy niche audience with the aim of pulling in high-end advertising. Vogue didn’t just chronicle the most of the changes in women’s life in the XX and XXI centuries but it actually helped propagate them in the early days by showing women new images of themselves they could identify with. It worked. Today event the more mainstream glossies and other consumer magazines secure around 60% of their revenue form adv (McKay, 2013). It is this reliance that has led to accusations that their editorial is compromised. Women’s magazines continued to boom in the early XX century and reached an all-time high in the late 1950s and 1960s. In the 1960s teenagers were identified as a separate market with their own disposable income and similarly happened for the male market in the 1980s. In 1988 was launched GQ, a lifestyle manual for men. Fashion was represented as unfussy, classic and timeless to avoid accusations of triviality, while articles about news, sport and women kept everything absolutely masculine. Throughout the 20 and 21 centuries the high cost of publishing meant the development of large corporations owning a stable of magazines, with only a handful of independents. This is important to understand the hostile climate to traditional fashion magazines and fashion journalists that was largely diffused when digital media exploded and new fresh figures as fashion bloggers appeared on the market. Fashion coverage in newspapers was largely a post-war development but even then it was largely limited to a weekly slot in the qualities (McRobbie, 1988). It was generally in the form of fashion editor’s report on couture shows, trends and on what to wear for various social occasions (Polan, 2006). It began to be taken more serious from the 1960s, buoyed by the strong trade press, and writers began to analyse fashion in social and economic context to appeal to a general reader. From the 1980s fashion reporting grew yet more prominent along with other forms of lifestyle journalism. Fashion stories began to appear on news pages, stylists were hired to produce shoots for feature pages and colour supplements become a natural home for extended coverage. Overview on the today’s print market The British Fashion Council estimates that fashion magazines employ 3.101 people and contribute 205 minion pounds to the UK economy each year (BFC, 2010). They can be divided in 3 types: biannuals, monthlies, weeklies. The biannual tend to feature high production values, luxury brands and lavish photo shoots with top models and photographers, together with wider arts and culture coverage. They have relatively small circulations but are read by many influential people in fashion. They are supported by luxury advertising. Weeklies were once associated with traditional older women’s magazines and downmarket titles, but 2005 onwards saw a wave of new fashion-and- celebrity titles for younger women. It was a very delicate balancing act in the early days trying to put together the “news & shoes” that didn’t upset upmarket advertisers. Newspapers don’t work with brands as closely as the glossies. Newspaper fashion journalists often describe themselves as freer and more ethical than magazine journalists. They write for a general audience that may or may not be interested in fashion. Explaining fashion and setting it in its economic, political and social context are part of how newspapers will make it relevant to the general reader. 2013 the orribile black year for all magazines Editors must go where the audience is By 2013 the audience is online, increasingly on smartphones and tablets The problem is making money out of websites and social media channels. Most website content is free, so there’s mo money from sales. And advertising, which provides the bulk of a magazine’s income, is nothing like as expensive online as it is in print. When magazines and new papers first launched websites in the late 1990s, it was very much a case of print product first, and website off the back of that, either reproducing the print content or acting as a shopfront. Now they radically changed. We had to change our definition of magazines. “We used to talk about magazines and websites; now we talk about brands.It’s not about a product anymore, it’s about curated, trusted, quality content, whatever the platform that’s on” Loraine Davis, PPA Content-sharing sites and fashion blogs sparked a new interest in street style, which magazines use to drive traffic to their sites. And magazines and news- papers are able to reconnect with fashion brands online with shopable contents. When a reader clicks on a product in a digital magazine, or on an app or on a web page and gets redirected to an online store to make a purchase, the publication gets a sum of money in what’s called affiliate marketing. As for websites, publication approach them in different ways. Some have a separate web team; some have writers working across platforms. News and features from the print edition are often published online too, but perhaps with added video or photo gallery. Tablet editions At one point tablets were being hailed as the saviour of magazines, as publishers saw at last how they could charge money for digital versions of their print products. These tablet versions give readers something extra: to shop, share and save. The tablet versions didn’t gained enough success. Why? The Business of Fashion speculated that the publisher didn’t differentiate them and so they remain “paper for the screen”. The importance of brand Your content is appearing across so many touchpoints, you must have a clear idea of what your brand is so you can be consistent. A brand is literally a company name, but in publishing it’s more what the brand stands for that counts - what identity or image it has, what positive values it connotes, its tone of voice and its relationship with its audience. As a voice of authority in a certain industry, trade magazines are in an even better position to extend their brand.