The Inevitable Demise of Mainstream Fashion Publications: A Surrealist Exploration
Mainstream fashion magazines have long reigned as cultural arbiters, dictating trends, shaping perceptions of beauty, and influencing consumer behaviour. Yet, in recent years, these glossy publications have faced an existential crisis, grappling with declining readership, shifting consumer habits, and the relentless march of social media. This essay delves into the multifaceted reasons behind the decline of mainstream fashion publications, drawing upon the surrealistic movement as a lens through which to understand their inevitable demise.
Surrealism: Unleashing the Subconscious
Surrealism developed out of the ashes of Dadaism. Dadaism emerged during World War One as a response to the absurdity and chaos of the time and rejected traditional artistic conventions. It was characterised by irrationality, anti-bourgeois sentiments and an emphasis on the nonsensical. Surrealism, which developed in the 1920s, was built upon Dadaist principles but focused more on exploring the unconscious mind and dreams. Surrealist artists sought to channel the irrational and subconscious through techniques like automatism, which allowed for the spontaneous expression of thought without conscious intervention.
The Rise and Fall of Mainstream Fashion Publications
The ascendance of mainstream fashion publications in the 20th century paralleled the use of consumer culture and the democratisation of fashion. From Vogue to Elle, these magazines wielded immense influence, shaping not only what we wore but also how we perceived ourselves and others.
However, the digital revolution and changing consumer preferences have dealt a severe blow to the domination of mainstream fashion publications. The proliferation of online platforms and social media channels has democratised fashion discourse, allowing for a greater diversity of voices and perspectives. Moreover, growing awareness of issues such as body positivity, diversity and sustainability has prompted many consumers to question the values espoused by mainstream publications, leading to a decline in readership and relevance.
Surrealism’s Critique of Consumer Culture
At its core, Surrealism represented a radical critique of bourgeois society and consumer culture, challenging the ethos of materialism, conformity, and rationality. Surrealist artists sought to expose the underlying contradictions and absurdities of modern life, using their work to subvert dominant narratives and disrupt conventional modes of thought.
When applied to fashion, Surrealist principles offer a potent sense through which to deconstruct the facade of mainstream magazines. By decontextualising fashion imagery and challenging linear narratives of fashion trends, Surrealist-inspired critiques can reveal the underlying tensions that underpin consumer culture.
The nature of a fashion publication is to predict, narrate and determine trends. In doing so, however, they rather shoot themselves in the foot. Crawforth (2004) states about the fashion magazine: “…its contents necessarily out of date the moment they come into existence in print, and its function shifting over time from prophesying the modes of the future to serving as historical documentation of the past…”
Thus identifying a poignant issue, in determining the trends to the masses fashion magazines normalise them, and thus they are no longer trendy. In vain, the publication highlights the next trend and the cycle repeats. Vogue itself highlighted this flaw while unintentionally demonstrating the temporal nature of surrealist art.
The cover of Vogue’s June 1939 issue was an image of Salvador Dali’s work. The issue opens with an editorial by Edna Woodman Chase, accompanied by an illustration bearing many similarities to the work of a surrealist. Chase’s awareness of the boundaries of surrealism is apparent: ‘Don’t try to read Surrealist symbolism into this photograph. There’s plenty of real Surrealism in this issue to puzzle over: Dali’s enigmatic cover…his interpretation of the new chemists’ colours in bathing suits. The above is just a fantastic skirmish of ours.’
Here Chase makes sure the difference is clear: that she believes Dali’s cover was truly surrealistic and that the illustration similar to the surrealists’ work was not. Chase failed to make note of that, Vogue, by publishing Dali’s work in the form of a magazine, was limiting it to a temporary and disposable existence, the sort of existence Surrealists hoped for their work.
Vogue did not understand that in doing so they were also reflecting their fate. The fashion magazine represents a truly perishable and ephemeral symbol for the Surrealist movement and Vogue’s attempt to liken their issues to surrealistic work predicted their demise.
An Alternative Approach: zines
So, how does this apply to fashion press today?
In the wake of the pandemic and amid a climate crisis people have been reevaluating their moral relationship with consumption. An interesting development from this aspiration of change is the rise of the zine. A noncommercial often homemade or online publication usually devoted to a specialised and often unconventional subject matter - the zine can be seen to represent the shift away from mass production, overconsumption and the need to be ‘on trend’, all of which are ideologies that surrealists themselves strived to achieve.
Though it could be argued that zines themselves are becoming a trend, each is set within its own subculture, each has its own audience and niches that it caters towards, and, what I believe to be most important, none are reproduced to the extent that they can be deemed as “trendy”.
What happens when large fashion publications begin to imitate the aesthetic of zines? To put it simply, they won’t achieve what they hoped to. This idea can be paralleled to Vogue’s imitation of surrealism. Imitating a subculture does not make you part of that subculture as the imitation of surrealism does not make you a surrealist. Attempting to increase their audience by replicating the aesthetics of a zine does not change the foundations that mainstream fashion publications have been built on.
To conclude, the demise of mainstream fashion publications finds a provocative parallel in the surrealist movement’s critique of consumer culture. Surrealism, with its emphasis on the subconscious and its challenge to bourgeois norms, offers a lens through which we can understand the unravelling of traditional fashion media. Just as surrealists sought to expose the contradictions of their time, mainstream fashion magazines, in their quest to dictate trends, inadvertently hasten their own irrelevance.Mainstream fashion magazines have long reigned as cultural arbiters, dictating trends, shaping perceptions of beauty, and influencing consumer behaviour. Yet, in recent years, these glossy publications have faced an existential crisis, grappling with declining readership, shifting consumer habits, and the relentless march of social media. This essay delves into the multifaceted reasons behind the decline of mainstream fashion publications, drawing upon the surrealistic movement as a lens through which to understand their inevitable demise.
Written by Phoebe Violet.
References:
Crawforth, H. (2004). Surrealism and the Fashion Magazine. American Periodicals, 14(2), 212–246. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20770930