Fashion Media

Fashion is a continuous trend in style or practice of a person’s dressing, it is a constant change in a person’s clothing, hairstyle, makeup, accessories and footwear. It usually involves current and newest creations by textile designers. Technology has created a huge impact on the fashion industry as it has been able to shape and put into position the current and even the future trends in fashion for example the introduction of clothes installed with solar panels to charge devices while away from home and also the innovation of smart fabric that is able to change texture and color based on the environmental conditions so as to make the wearer comfortable at all times, all these are as a result of the technologies. The media also plays an important role when it comes to fashion as it helps in spreading fashion tips and trends all over the world within a short period of time. Nowadays variety of things on fashion can be found on our local television channels, magazines, newspapers, fashion blogs and websites and other social networks.  Things like the editorial critiques, guidelines on fashion and fashion shows can be watched on TV and even published on magazines and our local newspapers. In the modern day fashion magazines have become more influential than in the past by including pictures of different fashion designs in their articles and in all over the world magazines have been preferred to have an intense effect on the public taste of clothing. The most famous magazine came into existence in 1912 and was called La Gazette du Bon Ton. The television coverage of fashion began in 1950s with small features of fashion and by 1980s the now most famous show of fashion; Fashion TV emerged and has now grown to become the leader in fashion media channels (Rowena, 2012).

Earlier in the days before the influence brought by television, film and movies, before even the blogs and social media, fashion magazines took the monopoly of spreading various fashion trends across the world. Harper Bazaar founded in 1867 in the U.S. and Vogue founded in 1892 were originally created to provide sketches and fashion patterns derived from Paris designers, Vogue was distinctly designed to promote the supremacy of couture of the French to the American clientele. As time went the fashion magazine began to publish photography and in 1900 they started to do fashion illustrations in their magazines using the modern visual arts thereby making it known to the people that fashion is a form of an art. The first magazine also facilitated the emergence of celebrity culture of today as the old time readers eagerly followed the fashion trends of the early movies stars that were published in the magazine pages. The early movie stars included Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson and Clara Bow. A fashion plate was considered the first fashion magazine that came into existence in the late sixteenth century since they were the drawings that showed the accurate details of a dress. During those times fashion was treated as a social regulation, a hierarchy, and a custom that is social and social process. They printed the description of fashion drawings, giving details of construction, fabric, color and the trim. The selling of printed fashion plates became widespread that even some publishers in Europe began to add fashion plates to their content of women’s magazine as they determined the legitimate aesthetic taste of a fashion. Shortly after the invention of the printing press, printed page started to be used to disseminate fashion information that later had a greater influence on the culture of the Europeans. Also the continuous historical changes like the middle class growth and the growing rifts between the luxurious Catholics and the plain Protestants lifestyle greatly impacted on the European culture and way of dressing. In the late seventeenth century after the invention of fashion information in the pages of magazines, a French publication Mercure Galant was crowned as the earliest fashion magazine to report on fashion world. Mercure Galant had a great impact on the development of journalism history in the whole world as it disseminated court news, madrigals, comedy reviews and fashion news to the provinces and the world. The most important revolution considered to be real is the development of steam powered press that was invented by Friedrich Koenig in the nineteenth century. Revolving impression cylinders were used instead of hand press flat platen and this was able to produce about 1100 sheets printed pages per hour. The printing technology and the demand for reading materials increased suddenly in the nineteenth century. In 1990s fashion advertising became an important means to build and promote a look and fashion brands and by this the fashion houses began to seek the help of photographers to capture their fashion images and put them on the magazines for marketing (Perlman, 2010).