Intro to Fashion Studies: Gender in Fashion Advertisement

This advertisement for Diesel is claimed to be gender neutral that blatantly subverts the traditional gender norms. Through the use of the models, their message is rather transparent, but also contradicting. Creative director Nicola Formichetti might have chosen models that consist of androgynous features to emphasize the unimportance of sex targeted, but the probable result could turn the advertisement into a guessing game for the audience, of the models’ biological sex.

Gender here, is portrayed to be both the focal, and non-focal point of this campaign/ad.

Notwithstanding, their intentions were clear. The indication of this ad emphasizes the irrelevance of gender in fashion, as conveyed by the body gestures of the models and clothes worn. The similar design sweaters suggest its versatile use of the wearer (worn by contrasting models), as they are posing in a position that suggests embracement of one another.

Comparative to the past advertisements released by Diesel, this advertisement will immediately result in a redirection of consumers that I personally think is a rather ingenious strategy that will widen their targeted group of consumers. As stated by Susan Kaiser, “ We cannot think of gender merely as a biological essence but rather as a social construction that is embodied. From a performative perspective, gender can be described as a way of repeatedly styling the body; this styling is regulated by cultural discourse, but it becomes part of the ongoing experience of fashioning the gendered body on a personal and social level.” (Kaiser 2012, p. 123). I think this advertisement drastically supports this statement, and breaks the atypical fashioning of the gendered body, that was constructed by society – resulting us, to also practice it personally. (We only wear clothes targeted by for our ‘gender’ because society and media says so.)