Fashionating Images. Audiovisual media studies meet Fashion
This CS Journal special issue (No. 1/2017) aims at exploring the encounter and intersection between fashion studies and media studies, with particular reference to visual and audiovisual products, e.g. cinema, television, advertising and digital media. Over the past decades, fashion acquired centrality in social and economical dynamics in Western culture for its capability to penetrate and influence both production and identitarian practices. Fashion both fully takes part in artistic processes as an autonomous aesthetic and semantic object (fashion as a medium) and has a pivotal role in creative industry as a provider of fundamental material for the formation of imaginary worlds and characters (fashion as a media industry). At the same time fashion has established as an autonomous and institutionalized social field able to influence and shape contemporary culture.
Thanks to both its symbolic and corporeal substance, the outfit can be thought as a vehicle and a means of direct expression of identity (fashion as a social and personal medium) and as a prosthesis of human relational faculty (fashion as a “technology of the body”). Symptom of this centrality is that, although fashion has been part of the cinematic mise-en-scène since the birth of cinema, in recent years new genres have arisen at the encounter between cinema and advertising, e.g. short fashion films. The world of fashion became the theme or the setting of a number of television broadcasting networks or streaming services, programs and genres. Finally, it should be also considered the growing role of social media and the rise of digital influencers such as fashion bloggers, YouTube and Instagram stars, who are challenging the field of traditional fashion media and using multimediality as a resource to establish themselves as celebrities in a new media ecology.
We encourage scholars from the fields of both audiovisual media and fashion studies to explore this intriguing intersection and the new horizons of audiovisual fashion. We particularly welcome contributions that discuss how audiovisual studies and fashion studies can cross-fertilize each other and expand the theoretical framework of each approach. Objects of analysis and theoretical and/or methodological reflection may include (but are not limited to):
- Theoretical/Epistemological intersections: Relationships between fashion studies and audiovisual media studies; Phenomenology of the body and fashion; Mediatization of fashion; Fashion and the visual mediascape; Fashion and visual culture.
- Fashion and audiovisual media industry: Fashion and audiovisual media professionals; Costume design.
- Fashion and cinema: Fashion films; Fashion documentaries; Fashion film festival; Fashion in cinema.
- Fashion and television: Fashion and TV commercials; Fashion-themed TV series; Fashion-themed reality TV shows.
- Fashion and audiovisual aesthetics: Fashion and videoart; The use of audiovisual media in runaway shows.
- Fashion and internet-based media: Fashion vlog and vloggers; Fashion and video social network sites; Fashion and video-celebrities.
The special issue will be co-edited by Marie-Aude Baronian (Universiteit van Amsterdam), Adriano D’Aloia (International Telematic University UniNettuno) and Marco Pedroni (eCampus University).
Deadlines & Guidelines
Please send your abstract to redazione.cs@unicatt.it by June 30, 2016. Notifications of acceptance will be emailed shortly after the deadline. Abstracts must be from 300 to 400 words long. The proposal shall include 5 keywords, authors, institution, and contacts (e-mail), together with a short curriculum (up to 5 lines) for each author.
In case the proposal is accepted, authors will be asked to send the whole article preferably in English by October 2, 2016. Articles in Italian, French and Spanish will be accepted too. Contributions will be sent to two independent reviewers in a double-blind procedure prior to publication decision. Articles should be of between 4,000-5,000 words in length (no more than 35,000 characters, spaces and notes included), but shorter articles will be considered.