Acceso usuarios
Rebecca Halliday
In the past decade, the fashion show has mutated into a mediatized spectacle, live streamed and circulated across multiple platforms. As Agnès Rocamora has observed, online access to fashion shows reduces the exclusivity of the events; however, ultimately only members of the field of fashion are permitted to see the collection in its original space. This article contends that the fashion show manifests high fashion as an exclusive social realm, while refocusing attention onto the live event to incite consumer desire. The argument draws upon Auslander’s definition of mediatization – as the infiltration of electronic media into live performance – as well as his matrices model of spatial and temporal co-presence, which it interweaves with White’s study of Internet spectatorship in order to evaluate online spectator positionalities. Following a historical overview of fashion shows on film and television, it employs the case studies of Tom Ford’s Spring/Summer 2011 and Autumn/Winter 2016 New York Fashion Week presentation to examine how the online fashion show addresses consumers. In September 2010, Ford showcased his collection to 100 invitees at his atelier; he later released a short film that, this article contends, re-articulates the glamour and intimacy of the live performance. In September 2016, Ford followed other prominent fashion companies by adopting an ‘instant fashion’ model, overlapping the timing of the fashion show with the in-store release of the collection. Ford launched his in-season collections at an elite dinner that was transmitted in both pre-recorded and live-streamed sections. This article concludes however that the fashion show component was nevertheless produced for Ford’s live audience, without due technical consideration of how the clothes translated via spectators’ screen interfaces.
