Fashion Films and Net-aesthetics

Abstract

Fashion Film is the last communication tool in fashion market, that was born for the Web about 20 years ago, but in these last 10 years it has increased its diffusion and its expressive potentiality definitely and we think that it is designed to influence the communication in other markets. Nowadays Fashion Films are reinforcing the power of fashion images, building up new brand experiences for net-consumers: they are painting new worlds for fashion brands thanks to the old cinematographic language mixed to recent Internet logics. Starting from this observation, our main question was: Can we talk about a new fashion net-aesthetics for these new fashion tales? Using a semiotics approach, this study investigates how Fashion, Cinema and the Net come together, producing new aesthetics, with new languages and new imaginary in fashion. The result can be really visionary. Fashion Advertising and Fashion Tales  In last years Fashion Brands have matured a great ability and awareness in creating new kinds of Fashion Tales: indeed these stories picture imaginary worlds, that look very different in form and content compared to those of the past, beginning with their protagonists, the women models and ending to new communication format. In the 1990s, top super models were gifted with a strong personality, which was further enhanced on the runaway and showed off on the advertising campaigns. Their exclusive look, classical beauty and lifestyle conveyed a shimmering luxury, which was a symbol of perfection. In contrast, current models are often anonymous, hardly ever recognisable and very pale, with short professional careers and they do not represent classical beauty. Obviously, the exceptions are those top models who have been able to embody fashion. In the past Veruska and Twiggy were successful in this, whereas today Eddie Campbell and Georgia May Jagger or Kristen Steward and Cara Delevigne appear to have this quality. But the extraordinary phenomenon of top super models in the 1990s consisted of a solid block of divas who symbolised women who were successful in their public and private lives, and constituted an aspirational model of perfection and luxury. It may be a paradox, but current models do not aim to be liked as women, rather only as models. Often such women seem to have a talent for appearing like ghosts, or they represent strong and pugnacious women. Such a huge difference in the choice of fashion's protagonists is closely linked to the background values attributed to fashion production, which also differ in the two periods being compared. Indeed, in the 1990s, the