Table Of ContentTHE LIVE FASHION SHOW IN MEDIATIZED CONSUMER CULTURE
REBECCA HALLIDAY
A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO
THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
GRADUATE PROGRAM IN COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE
YORK UNIVERSITY
TORONTO, ONTARIO
November 2017
© Rebecca Halliday, 2017
Abstract
This dissertation examines the fashion show and its mediatization as a microcosm of online
media’s impact on consumer culture. The contemporary fashion show is a brief, on-eoff live
performance that presents a fashion house or brand’s upcoming seasonal colleciot n to industrial
insiders and invited clientele. The fashion show is the locus of communication between
corporations and consumers and an arena in which commodities, personnel and industrial
practices intersect. With the widespread mediatization of socia life and the prevalence of digital
media use in fashion in the past decade, critics mused that the live fashion show could become
obsolete. Instead, its structure remains intact, and the entire circuit has mutated into an online
spectacle, live streamed and proliferated in video, photographic and textual format son multiple
media platforms and applications. The fact that consumers can now see a collection at the
moment of its debut marks a fundamental shift in fashion communication timeframes.
Nonetheless, access to the fashion show remains limited to an elite cohort of fashion personnel,
influencers and celebrities. This dissertation argues that the fashion show remains a focal event
because it transmits the entire exclusive performance to an online spectatorship with an aim to
build consumer desire to participate in fashion – desire fulfilled in networked interactions and
material purchases. I seek to here to problematize claims that the mediatization of the fashion
show renders fashion democratic or accessible. To this end, I draw from performance and
mediatization theories to illuminate that the fashion show’s elite nature is predicated on a literal
and social distinction between spectators’ temporal and spatial access. I perform qualitative close
readings of fashion shows and transmitted footage and utilize content analysis and virtual and
on-site participant observation to examine the class-based social relations that underpin and are
re-asserted in mediatized fashion representations. This dissertation moreover situates the fashion
show as a focal site via which to assess the social, industrial and material transformations that
mediatization has effected in fashion’s economies.
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for Brian Batchelor
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Acknowledgments
Thanks first and foremost to the core members of my comprehensive examination and
dissertation committee: Susan Ingram, Marlis Schweitzer and Isabel Pedersen. At a certain point,
I looked up each one of your names in the hope of finding committee members with an interest
in fashion, and I could never have imagined the expertise and support that each of you would
offer me. Susan, you were on board with this research from the minute we met in Fredericton in
2011, and you have seen it and me through more conference presentatinos and chapter drafts
than I can count. Thanks for knowing when it was appropriate to touch base over a sushi lunch or
over a glass of wine. Thank you for your unwavering belief in me as a scholar and in fashion
studies as a scholastic field, and for always pushing me to develop the chapters a little bit further.
Marlis, you were the first scholar that I met who wanted to take on a porject about fashion shows,
and none of this would have been possible without your enthusiasm at the outse. tYou continued
to mentor me through crucial phases of the research and maintained a rigorous standard of
scholarship; I am forever grateful. Isabel, thank you for your kindness and generosity and for
pushing my cultural and media studies thinking in new, unforeseen directinos.
Thank you to my Internal Examiner Gail Vanstone for your excitement towards this research and
for sparking conversation about how it could be applied to a Canadian context. Thanks to my
External Examiner, Elizabeth Wissinger, for your extensive contributions to fashion studies, for
making vital recommendations to develop this work further, and for willingly taking on the
committee role within a short timeframe.
Thanks to the instructors and staff in the Graduate Program in Communication and Culturei,n
particular the phenomenal professors Steve Bailey, Jean Bruce, Darcey Callison, Greg Elmer,
Anne MacLennan, Catherine Schryer and Monique Tschofen, and the dedicated administrators
Angie Ciuffetta, Diane Jenner and Stephanie Margetts. To Markus Reisenlietner, an unofficial
committee member, whom I watched advocate for graduate education in the Humanities and
Social Sciences at a time when I needed to hear that validation. In the Graduate Program in
Theatre and Performance Studies, I was privileged to learn under Darren Gobert, Laura Levin
and Don Rubin and receive support from the tireless Mary Pecchia. This dissertation is a tribute
to the tenacity of the late Lisa Wolford Wylam, who was one of the first people to embrace this
research and who never let me forget that the fashion show is about desire. Thanks always to the
faculty and staff of the Writing Department for their continued moral support and collegiality,
and especially to James Robertson for all of ouro ffice conversations.
I have benefited from the mentorship and friendship of numerous like-minded scholars within
fashion studies and communication and cultural studies in Candaa. Thanks to the members of the
Fashion Research Group in Toronto and the attendees at the Canadian Fashion Scholars
symposia. I have had the pleasure to work with inspirational instructors and staff at the Ryerson
University School of Fashion. In particular, thanks to Alison Matthews David for the informal
coffee chats, for inviting me to present research to her Master’ sFashion Theory II seminar, and
for offering me the chance to develop and teach a Master’s course. Ben Barry -emailed me late
on a Friday night in 2015 to offer me a research assistantship ,at a moment when I was flat on
my couch, wondering if I should leave academia. Ben, the hours that I have spent in your office
discussing not just your research but how to navigate the completion of the PhD are part of the
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reason I completed at all. I am proud to call you a friend, and I hope that we can continue to
collaborate. Thanks also to my colleagues Tarah Burke, Daniel Drak, Beatriz Juarez, Grahame
Lynch, Joseph Medaglia and Kimberly Anne Wahl. The students in the Fall 2016 Master’s
seminar in Fashion and Popular Culture offered essential input into the current field of fashion
and its influencers and wowed me with their passion for and skill in academic research. The
undergraduate students that I now teach have prompted me to think in new directions about how
consumers interact with fashion media content.
I had the honour of meeting Agnès Rocamora in 2015 at the Fashion Tales conference in Milan,
and again in 2016 in Toronto – to have a scholar so influential to my research not only react with
openness to the ideas in the dissertation but also to accept me as a peer has been invaluable.
Caroline Evans and Marketa Uhlirova sat down with Marlis Schweitzer and I at Central Saint
Martins in 2012; the tour of the school was a thrilling experience that made me feel as if I could
be, or was, a member of the field of fashion studies. From the start, I have benefited from the
expertise and encouragement of fashion and retail professionals like Jessica Johnson, who hired
me as a freelancer and became a trusted friend and advisor, and Bronwyn Cosgrave, who gave
me her vote of confidence as a writer and researcher. Thanks to the publicists that let me see
fashion shows at New York Fashion Week and to my fabulous Airbnb hosts in Bushwick.
Thanks to the wonderful friends I have made in Toronto and in the fashion research scene: in
particular, Natalja Chestopalova, Aidan Dahlin Nolan, Lai-Tze Fan, Thea Fitz-James, Katie
Franklin, Alanna McKnight, Kim McLeod, Alya Naumova, Scott Pope, Sean Robertson-Palmer,
Katrina Sark, Kelsey Speakman, Nathaniel Weiner, Jessica Whitehead, Ted Whittall, Emilia
Zboralska and Han Zhang. Thanks to the System Fitness kettlebell crew for keeping me fit and
sane. This is also for all of the friends and the academic and professional mentors that I met as a
student and administrator in Edmonton, and whom I am blessed to still be in touch with.
Thanks to my mother, Brenda Halliday, for instilling a love of the printed word and for spending
hours teaching me how to search card catalogues and databases. I am the scholar that I am
because of you. Thanks to my father, William Halliday, and to Teddy Cameron for never letting
me settle for less than what I was capable of, and for countless meals. Thanks to my brother,
Jonathan Halliday, for his comradery and music recommendations. Thanks to the members of the
extended Halliday and Millikin families, and to the Batchelor and Medhurst families, for their
steadfast love and support at this wild career path Brian and I have chosen. To our friends in
Mexico, Ramses Romero and Doris Difarnecio, who remind me that there is fashion in the South.
To my grandfather, Doug Millikin, you are an inspiration to all who meet you. To my Nova
Scotia grandmother, Ella Halliday, who is in her one-hundredth year and wears rhinestone
glasses. I dedicate this dissertation to the memory of those loved ones who were there at the start
but unfortunately are not here to see its completion, in particular, Dorrie Millikin, who knew that
I could finish but often asked when that would happen. Grandma, you are forever a fashion plate.
This research was made possible with a three-time Ontario Graduate Scholarship award, as well
as conference and travel funds provided through the Canadian Media Research Consortium,
CUPE 3903 and CUPE 3904, the York University Research Cost Fund and Graduate
Development Fund, and the York University Graduate Students’ Association.
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Table of Contents
Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... ii
Dedication......................................................................................................................................iii
Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................................ iv
Table of Contents..........................................................................................................................vi
Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1
The Mediatized Fashion Show ............................................................................................................. 3
THEORETICAL OVERVIEW ........................................................................................................... 11
Fashion and/as the Field of Cultural Production ................................................................................ 16
The Mediatization of Fashion ............................................................................................................. 20
The Affective Economies of the Fashion Show ................................................................................. 29
The Labour of the Mediatized Fashion Show .................................................................................... 31
Chapter 1: The Evolution of the Fashion Show ..................................................................... 41
The Evolution of Fashion Week .......................................................................................................... 42
The Fashion Show and/as Theatrical Performance ........................................................................... 48
The Live Fashion Show in a Mediatized era ...................................................................................... 59
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 64
Chapter 2: The Fashion Show and/as Theatre ....................................................................... 66
Historical Confluences Between Fashion and Theatre ...................................................................... 68
100% Lost Cotton, Opening Ceremony, Spring/Summer 2015 ......................................................... 74
100% Lost Cotton: The Fashion Show as Theatre ............................................................................. 75
100% Lost Cotton as Millinery Theatre ............................................................................................. 81
100% Lost Cotton and Fashion-Themed Satire .................................................................................. 86
McQueen, St. James Theater, London, 2015 ...................................................................................... 91
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 96
Chapter 3: The Fashion Show as Simulation ......................................................................... 99
Fashion as Immersive Simulation ..................................................................................................... 100
Chanel Supermarket Fashion Show, Fall/Winter 2014 ................................................................... 104
Kanye West - Yeezy Season 3, Fall/Winter 2016 ............................................................................. 119
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 138
Chapter 4: Fashion Show Footage: From Newsreel to Live Stream ................................... 141
Fashion Shows and Print Media ........................................................................................................ 143
Internet Spectatorship and ‘Real Time’ ........................................................................................... 147
Fashion Shows on Film ....................................................................................................................... 153
Fashion on Television ......................................................................................................................... 156
Fashion-Themed Television ............................................................................................................. 156
Fashion-Themed Television in Film ................................................................................................ 159
Fashion Shows in Television Series (or Fashion Television) .......................................................... 161
Fashion Shows and/as Sporting Events ............................................................................................ 164
Fashion in the Live Stream ................................................................................................................ 167
The First Fashion Show Live Streams ............................................................................................. 169
The Handheld Live Stream ............................................................................................................... 172
The Handheld Front Row Perspective as Animated Photograph ..................................................... 175
The Live Stream as Cinematic ......................................................................................................... 177
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 178
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Chapter 5: Social Media Fashion Shows: Interactive and Exclusive ................................... 181
Fashion Shows as Pleasurable Interaction and Experience .............................................................. 183
Immaterial Labour for Brands .......................................................................................................... 185
Live Stream-Related Social Media Use ........................................................................................... 186
Burberry and Topshop – Digital Competitors ................................................................................. 188
Burberry and Topshop – British Brands ........................................................................................... 190
Burberry and Topshop – Social Media Use ..................................................................................... 192
Burberry – Digital Interaction in the Luxury Market .................................................................... 194
Burberry Prorsum, Autumn/Winter 2015 – #TweetCam ................................................................. 198
Topshop – Ready-to-Wear Takes to the High Street ...................................................................... 212
Topshop Unique, Autumn/Winter 2015 - #livetrends ...................................................................... 217
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 224
Chapter 6: Manufactured Affect in the Fashion Show Preshow ......................................... 227
Affect In and Out of Performance Spaces ........................................................................................ 234
Topshop Unique Autumn/Winter 2015 Live Stream Preshow ....................................................... 236
Affective Labour/Mediation of Affect ............................................................................................. 249
Exclusive vs. Mass Market ............................................................................................................... 253
Cinematic Mediation/Modulation of Affect ..................................................................................... 255
Analysis of Users’ Textual Reactions ................................................................................................ 256
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 260
Chapter 7: Internationalizing Cities, Re-classifying Streets: Tommy Ton’s Fashion Month
Street Style Photographs ....................................................................................................... 263
The Rise of the Street Style Blog ....................................................................................................... 268
Fashion on the City ‘Street’ ............................................................................................................... 272
Street Style in Discourse ..................................................................................................................... 275
Street Style in Photographs ................................................................................................................ 278
Methods ............................................................................................................................................... 285
Analysis: Tommy Ton’s Cities as Streetscapes ................................................................................ 286
Cities as Placeless ............................................................................................................................. 287
Tourist Locations .............................................................................................................................. 290
Fashion as Exclusive ........................................................................................................................ 293
Fashionable Mobilities ..................................................................................................................... 295
Embodied Fashion Capital ............................................................................................................... 296
Chapter 8: “This is the runway”: the Camera as Scriptive Thing at New York Fashion
Week ........................................................................................................................................... 305
The Camera as Scriptive Thing or Scriptive Prop .......................................................................... 307
Indoor Audience-Performer Relations ............................................................................................. 311
Outdoor Observations at New York Fashion Week ........................................................................ 328
Camera Interactions on the ‘Street’ .................................................................................................. 329
Models ‘Off Duty’ at Fashion Week ................................................................................................ 336
Street Style Photography as Embodied Practice .............................................................................. 339
Street Style Photography as Gendered and Racialized Practice ....................................................... 344
The Photograph as Action Sequence ................................................................................................ 351
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 354
Conclusion: the Fashion ShowR emains (with apologies to Rebecca Schneider )............... 356
References .............................................................................................................................. 366
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Introduction
On October 6, 2009, Alexander McQueen live streamed the Paris Fashion Week presentation of
his Spring/Summer 2010 ready-to wear collection, entitled “Plato’s Atlantis”. This initiative
marked one of the first documented attempts by a fashion house to stream its seasonal fashion
show on the Internet in so-called ‘real time’: meaning that members of the public could watch
the model procession at the moment it happened. The presentation feed was transmitted via
SHOWstudio, a website dedicated to the creation and showcase of experimental fashion film, as
well as on the fashion house’s own website (Uhlirova, 2013a, p. 152). As part of the spectacle,
during the finale procession, Lady Gaga gave a debut performance of her soon-to-be hit single
“Bad Romance”. Thirty minutes prior to the online broadcast, Lady Gaga tweeted to her millions
of followers that she would premiere the single at the fashion show (Mower, 2009c: para. 1). The
subsequent rush of online traffic to SHOWstudio crashed the site, and untold numbers of online
spectators were denied their chance to witness the fashion show at the same time as the invited
attendees. Critic Sarah Mower commented that this occurrence “may have replicated, in a whole
new audience, the sensation of a young hopeful stuck outside a McQueen presentation, waving a
standing ticket and being unable to get in” (2009c: para. 1). Mower’s prescient observation
captures the tension between the fashion show live stream as a medium that both democratizes
fashion and reinforces the exclusive nature of the live performance – one that reminds online
spectators that they are still not there.
The fashion show finds its origins in Paris in the mid-1800s, in the salons of couturiers
such as Charles Frederick Worth and later Paul Poiret. The show was then termed the mannequin
parade, a performance in which female models (or mannequins) walked about in salons,
bedecked in the latest creations available for adaptation, before an audience of aristocratic clients,
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retail buyers and, later, members of the press. The contemporary fashion show maintains much
of this tradition: in its fundamental iteration, it is a one-off live performance of brief duration,
usually lasting from ten to 30 minutes, during which a fashion house presents its upcoming
seasonal collection to industrial insiders. The usual audience is comprised of retail buyers, media
personnel – both accredited journalists and, more recently, fashion bloggers and other influencers
– and a roster of invited clientele, often a combination of preferred customers, It-personalities
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specific to fashion, and celebrities. The fashion show continues to be both an artistic celebration
and an industrial event, and functions as the locus of mediation between corporations and
consumers. Fashion shows offer a platform for the designer or fashion house to communicate a
set of cultural aesthetics and references: while this is achieved via the collection itself, fashion
shows also enhance this aesthetic through theatrical or conceptual production elements (Clark,
2001; Evans, 2001, 2003; Duggan, G. G., 2001). Attendees are then tasked with interpreting the
collection for the consumer public, either as written content or in the form of retail orders (Clark,
2001; Entwistle, 2009). Fashion shows result from confluences between multiple stakeholders,
all tasked with event coordination and the communication of a unified vision. Companies use
numerous, separate firms to produce one fashion show, dealing with such demarcated areas as
model casting, invitations, seating charts and press relations, in consultation with brands’ own
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public relations divisions (Associate, 2017, n.p.). Even more basic fashion shows without
opulent theatrics are often expensive affairs, especially when one considers the added technical
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costs of live streaming and other transmission methods .
Fashion Weeks are scheduled series of fashion shows and as such form a demarcated
arena in which commodities, personnel and specific social and industrial practices intersect.
These events are concentrated in specific cities and often include separate trade shows or trade
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fairs in addition to runway presentations (Entwistle & Rocamora, 2011; Skov, 2006). The most
important Fashion Weeks are held on a biannual basis in New York, London, Milan and Paris for
the seasonal presentation of women’s ready-to-wear collections: in Chapter One, I outline the
respective histories of their establishment. The storied “Big Four” circuit has been termed
Fashion Month in this decade, since the Fashion Weeks are held back-to-back, and international
personnel spend extended periods of time in transit between destinations and between individual
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shows (see Craik, 2013). This dissertation focuses on fashion shows held in the “Big Four”
series: firstly as Fashion Month constitutes its own defined unit of investigation, and secondly
because press discussions on the state of the industry tend to happen in tandem with Fashion
Month. My examination of fashion shows starts at the end of the last decade, when fashion
started to experiment with digital media use and live streaming, and continues through to the
adoption of an instant fashion or in-season presentation model in 2016.
The Mediatized Fashion Show
With the widespread adoption of online and digital media and e-commerce tools over the past
decade, fashion personnel have questioned the fashion show’s usefulness and even predicted its
obsolescence in the face of more direct and cost-effective communication mechanisms (see
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Menkes, 2010; Wang & Brillson, 2013). Instead, the fashion show’s structure remains intact,
and the performance has mutated into a mediatized spectacle: one that is streamed online in ‘real
time,’ transmitted in photographic, textual and video formats, archived for consumers’
convenient access, and, in recent seasons, used as a promotional tool for collection releases on
brands’ e-commerce platforms. Representations of the indoor performances, backstage scenes
and the streets outside venues circulate on fashion media sites, blogs (independent and attached
to media outlets and brands) and an ever-increasing number of social media platforms. These
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