The Fashion Show Goes Live: Exclusive and Mediatized Performance

The Fashion Show Goes Live explores how digital and social media have disrupted social structures within the fashion field, transforming the way it is communicated and consumed. It analyzes key case studies and evaluates the performativity of consumer relations to live streams and other mediatized content, challenging the notion that new technology has fostered inclusivity.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 21 September 2023
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

The impact of digital and social media on the fashion industry has been profound, transforming the way it is communicated and consumed. Beginning with Alexander McQueens infamous attempt to live stream his 2009 Plato's Atlantis collection on SHOWStudio, this book traces how these platforms have disrupted social structures within the field and revolutionized the way fashion is presented and experienced.

Analysing key case studies from Chanel, Givenchy, Yeezy, and Opening Ceremony to interactive social media and'see now buy now' campaigns from Burberry, Topshop, and Tommy Hilfiger, The Fashion Show Goes Live delves into the mode and impact of fashion show transmission. Through the rise of experimental film, fashion shows tailored for media transmission, and the use of live streaming and social media to render shows 'immediate to consumers', fashion weeks have become not just trend barometers but material sites that demonstrate the effects of media.

Rebecca Halliday evaluates the performativity of consumer relations to such live streams and other mediatized content, demonstrating that although intended to communicate fashion to mass audiences, these practices also promote it as exclusive and aspirational. Despite democratized international access to content, the shows themselves remain elite events, kindling new forms of consumer attention, interaction, immaterial labour, and desire.

Through the microcosm of the fashion show, The Fashion Show Goes Live asks broader socio-political questions about the effects of the fashion industry's mediatization, challenging the notion that new technology has fostered inclusivity.

Weight: 406g
Dimension: 153 x 235 x 16 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781350226357