Week 2 EOC: Questions

1. How has fashion advertising changed since the mid-twentieth century? What are some of the differences between ads that appeared before the 1950’s and those from the 1950’s, 1960’s, and today?

“During what is known as the modern period (c. 1890-1945) function and use value were emphasized in fashion. Consumers were influenced by practicality, style, fabrication, and availability of products that were new to them. “ (Brand/Story, p. 14) Thus this is what advertisements demonstrated before the 1950’s. After that advertisements started to portray a lifestyle that the company wanted to make the consumer believed they could attain by purchasing the product. Fashion started to take on a language of its own.

2. What are some of the theories related to fashion branding (i.e., Barthes and Baudillard)? What do they say about fashion branding as a means of communicating with consumers? How do the contemporary ideas of Hamilton, DeBord, Agins, Gobe, and McCracken relate to those of Barthes and Baurdrillard?

“According to French philosopher Roland Barthes, clothing garments are created and stylized in the design process to suit current fashion. Barthes believed that a garment is actually present in the fashion system at three distinct levels: the real garment or actual garment itself; the terminological garment, which signifies the word used to describe the object; and the rhetorical written garment, which includes how the clothing is described through words and photographed images. “ (Brand/ Story, pl 17) Jean Baudrillard theorized that this is a time of simulation in which the boundaries of what is real and what is perceived to be real have been blurred and are not as distinguishable by consumers. He said that those with a social standing create this distortion. “According to Baudrillard, ‘those of social standing have repackaged consumer products in hyperreal scenarios in order to generate continuous consumption.’” (Brand/ Story , p. 20) Hamilton continued with this philosophy by studing how culture and fashion arbiters influence consumer interpretations of ideas. DeBord, Agins, and Gobe all agree with Baudrillard in the fact that branding is the most important thing for a product to be successful.

3. What types of meanings does Grant McCracken associate with fashion products? Do you agree or disagree? If you disagree, what would you add or delete from his list? Give an example of one of the meanings?

Grant McCracken’s research “emphasizes that studying clothing is essential to understanding the cultural evolution of society. According to McCracken, meaning moves from the ‘culturally constituted world’ to the gatekeepers of consumer goods to the individual consumer, all three add meaning to a brand as it passes through their domains. McCracken’s theoretical models suggest that through social interaction, individuals assign status to fashion-branded garments as well as types of consumer goods. He identifies 9 different types of meanings that are usually targeted by companies: gender, lifestyle, decade, age, class and status, occupation, time and place, value, and fad, fashion, and trend meanings.” (Brand/ Story, p. 30) I agree with this assessment because these are generally the reasons that people purchase what they choose to buy. We look for certain brand names because we associate one of these things to that brand and it, in turn, is what we want to represent about our personalities to the world. Someone that buys Dolce and Gabana wants to be perceived as rich, successful, and on the cutting edge of fashion.