Therése Andersson: Fashion as Attraction: The Mediation of Style in Film Magazines, Luxury Movies and Fashion Newsreels in the 1920s
Department of Cinema Studies, Stockholm University
In the 1920s, a new consumerist culture developed emphasising and visualising the female body, as novel means of cultural communication, such as advertising, photography and cinema, both articulated and mediated notions of femininity. These practices contributed to displaying and making the private person public, implying visual scrutiny, and highlighting the increasing importance of appearance. During this period cinema theatres screened both fiction and non-fiction films, offering visual access to fashion and style equally through features and newsreels. Cinema-going could therefore be understood as analogous to browsing in the department store, and the female spectators as an audience for sales with no obligation to buy, instead, allowing desires for fashionable clothes to grow.
In the popular press of the 1920s, not at least in the fashion reports of Filmjournalen, a distinction between Paris and Hollywood as fashion cities, and as influences on Swedish women’s ways of dressing, is noticeable. This distinction is also visible in the film repertoire as well, where the fashion newsreels display the latest Parisian fashion and the Hollywood film shows the latest trends of the film stars. Paris and Hollywood become emblematic for different styles, and further, expresses different notions of femininities. But, what these styles have in common is the idea of fashion as attraction, and as such appealing to a niche audience.
In this paper the mediation of style will be examined with the starting point of fashion reports in Swedish magazines, and the negotiation of French fashion newsreels, and the relationship to the popular Hollywood film. Questions considering how fashion is represented and visualised through the cinematic highlighting of commodities will be discussed.