In this Bridge I explore how the erasure of labor plays the largest role in the construction of the “fashion image” and how dangerously this warps our perception of labor as a society.
(Taken from Elle Magazine January 2018, Georgia Fowler by Mark Salinger)
THE FASHION IMAGE MAKING MACHINE:
Many things about the fashion industry are completely fantastical. The models are altered in photoshop, the situations that take place in fashion advertisements likely never occur in real life, and the amount of work that goes into making all of this happen is completely concealed. So in the end we have a fantasy photograph, runway show, or video that is in no way real but all the more appealing. Fashion has mastered the process of doctoring and warping every aspect to create an intoxicating and intriguing form of visual consumption. This is the fashion industry’s hook: to make consumers feel as though they are buying a persona and a feeling instead of just a dress and that in some way this piece of clothing will allow them to be someone they want to, even if the person they want to be has gone through five sessions of photoshop doctoring. So what goes into constructing a fantasy fashion image to sell to the public? The biggest piece that holds this image machine together is the erasure of labor. The fashion image machine depends upon concealing labor and production of garments. Once this labor is removed from our scope it is easier to romanticize the industry and products within it, since our understanding of where clothes come from is then so warped, it is easier for us to distance ourselves from the detrimental problems produced by the fashion industry and our consumption of it, specifically harming the environment and the exploitation of labor.
This recent advertisement from Elle Magazine is the perfect example of the fantasy the fashion world is selling. Here we see a woman walking down a New York City street wearing a red evening gown in broad daylight. She’s staring into the camera as if she’s in a movie, and she might as well be, because this situation would never happen in real life. This photograph is so extravagant, dramatic, and over done. You could look at this photograph and think that it is a funny and intriguing juxtaposition of high fashion and everyday life, and while it may be that on the surface, there is a lot more going on here. When a consumer looks at this photo there is no information about where this dress is really from, how many factories it’s passed through all over the world, how many hands have touched every piece, and how underpaid and overworked those hands have been. There is not even a slight nod towards the extensive time and labor amongst so many people that went into making this one dress alone. That labor has been erased entirely. And what we are being told now is that this dress only exists in this context, on a supermodel in the middle of new york city, and for the people who can afford to buy it. So all the work and people involved are now non-important and basically non existent and the carbon footprint this piece of clothing is contributing to is not worth knowing about either.
In “Photography A Critical Introduction”, Liz Wells writes, “This face, this mask, this external image, invariably although not exclusively about beauty, sexuality, and pleasure, hides the relations of production to which the whole industry is so inextricably linked.” Wells is correct about this link and it being hidden, but beyond this, the concealing of labor aids in the type of distance that we as consumers can create between ourselves and issues of labor exploitation and harm of the environment. There is a type of disassociating that goes on when deciding that a problem is so much bigger than you that you have no impact on whether it can be improved or not.
The creativity that eludes from fashion advertisements and runways is incredible and the self expression and artistry is beautiful. This is something I have a great appreciation for but this style of presentation is so directly linked to the warping of our understanding of labor and therefore our comfortability and ease in participating in something so exploitative. Wells illustrates this again, “The relationship between our experiences of pleasure in consumption and our exploitation in the labour force, ironically, can be linked ones.” If we see clothing presented to us in only this distorted context over and over again it begins to alter our understanding of labor entirely. We are not able to understand even slightly the scope of the system we are participating in. Never seeing a glimpse of this labor process allows us to pretend as if it’s not happening and if it is then we probably aren’t directly involved. The fashion industry puts in a conscious effort to conceal the amount of labor and harm involved in the production of clothes so much so that they basically erase it, this aids in distance a consumer is able to create between themselves and pressing issues such as labor exploitation and environmental harm.
