Fashion Film: Film, Fashion and Advertising
The digital revolution, further emphasised by the outbreak of COVID-19, has sparked the birth of novel, mutated modes of communication, transforming the way we approach the milieu of film and media. One such hybrid media form is the ‘fashion film’, the characteristics of which remain ambiguous, but which nevertheless bridges the gap between the artistic forms of film, fashion and advertising.
Film and fashion have always dependent on each other: mainstream (and indeed, some art) cinema is engaged with the promotion and representation of fashion, while the latter would become a fundamental element of the moving image. At the beginning of the 21st century, however, a crisis of conventional advertising catalysed by the rise of digital technologies – and the consequent shift of retail business into ecommerce – necessitated a change in marketing techniques. Fashion films became a tool for luxury retail brands to promote their brand identity. Haptic, tactile form generally takes over narrative in these films, and while some fashion films incorporate traditional filmic storylines, all focus primarily on the experience of the viewer.
The COVID-19 restrictions around the world did not allow for the celebrated Fashion Weeks to occur in their traditional format and thus, many companies put even more care into producing visually striking fashion films. As a developing genre, fashion films are rich in innovative audio-visual experimentation, inciting the creative transformation of film, fashion, and advertising. However, the economic aspects of the fashion film are imbued with a highly sexualised, misogynist image of femininity that is forcefully sold to female audiences. Needless to say the vast majority of such works are made by male directors.
This playlist offers examples of fashion films made by female filmmakers that pave the way to the future of ethical advertising, where women are allowed to shape what it means to be feminine. Each of these short films presents us with the artistic amalgamation of film and fashion that begets a singular image of femininity, seen through the eyes of women. These are still bound to the typical images of models (especially female models) as an embodiment of ‘anorexic elegance’ – unbelievably, unnaturally skinny, however they are also attempts to subvert the increasing ‘femvertising’ of brands (in which they use feminist discourses to attract customers). These films arguably bypass this through presenting us with an image of femininity that rejects the clothes-hanger function of models whose bodies are moulded by male god-like artists that must be praised. The past decade has been particularly rich in the development of fashion films, and it is from this decade that this playlist draw, with a view to embracing a future in which advertising strives towards ethical forms of consumption (though the persistent problems of high prices, exploited workers and unsustainable materials, of course, remains).
Muta (2011, Lucrecia Martel for Miu Miu)
MIU MIU’s ongoing series of short fashion films Women’s Tale, where renowned female filmmakers (such as Agnès Varda or Lynne Ramsay) are invited to construct their vision of the relationship between femininity and fashion as productive and generative. Although we recommend watching all episodes, for this playlist we chose the early instalment Muta, which in Argentininian means both ‘mute’ and ‘transformation’. Directed by Lucrecia Martel, Muta invites us into a surrealist tale which, as in Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland, is governed by bodily anomalies. In the film, an abandoned ship becomes populated by mysterious elegant women that emerge oversized from the walls. The language they speak is not verbal but bodily – they communicate by moving their lashes and making strange gestures. Their clothes are an extension of their bodies, evoking animality and the cyborg nature of their being. The film attempts to embrace female language anchored in bodily intuition.
Swallowable Parfum (2014, Lucy McRae)
This ‘speculative fashion’ film advertises capsules that if swallowed, incite the body to perspire fragrance. Although still in the early phase of development, Lucy McRae, a visual artist decided to start a marketing campaign in order to assess public interest. As such, the film is part of this campaign and evokes the future of the beauty and fashion industry as merged with the pharmaceutical industry – a prospect filled with dark and unknown potentials. Just as Muta embraces the image of femininity as a cyborg, Mcrae’s film fills a laboratory with female scientists and a female patient that is imbued with singular agency evoked through ferocious bodily movements.
Cabiria, Charity, Chastity (2017, Natasha Lyonne for KENZO)
Commissioned by the luxury brand Kenzo, this other-worldly, surreal tale is a journey through time as we follow performer Chastity attempting to resolve her past traumas. Although heavily referencing psychoanalysis, Natasha Lyonne’s film manages to construct an image of femininity which is not anchored in the notion of negative otherness but rather in affirmation of femininity as a positive difference. Spatio-temporal anomalies and nonlinear narrative allows Chastity to reconcile trauma through her body. The femininity that arises in this short fashion film is thus one in constant construction, constituted of signifiers of Chastity’s choice which she infuses with her own meaning.
Eclipse (2017, Philippa Price for Stella McCartney)
Eclipse is a futuristic, neon vision of the Wild West directed by Philippa Price, that alludes to the show Westworld (2016-), but also the otherworldly aesthetics of David Lynch. The motif of eclipse and the lunar cycle of this short evokes the force of singular femininity that goes against phallic film and advertising cultures. By prominently featuring a close-up of an eye the film foreground the importance of the female gaze that allows for feminine sensibilities to materialise on the screen. The sense of looming catastrophe begotten by the eclipse is additionally heightened by images of women in cowboy-inspired clothing, portrayed looking straight into camera, the barrel of their guns aimed at us. This is, however, not the famed monstrous feminine, representing Freudian castration anxiety. Instead, surreal aesthetics, and soft pastel colours and light tones, as well as techniques borrowed from experimental cinema, such as slow motion, or time reversion, allow for the image of femininity to be owned by the female herself.