我通常都回答說 "我們學校的communication很理論派的 我是specilized in 廣告"
雖然我們科系自己有分不同的streams 可是在畢業證書上也不會寫
而且我們讀的廣告 絕大部分還是有關廣告概念 和一般college裡面教的很實際的那種不一樣
所以我讀的東西 不算是太實際 還頂哀怨的
不過也有人說 廣告這東西最難的就是他的idea 只有這東西門檻是比較高的
well 不管怎樣讀這玩意兒的就業度也是非常未知
anywayz 為了讓大家了解我平常都在讀什麼 plus我想試試看銀級會員的一篇blog可以放多少字
我打算po一篇我這周其中一堂課的reading上來
我常說我們讀的東西很多 可是滿大一部分還滿有趣的 大家稍微看這一篇就大概懂我的意思了
這篇是 Stephen Engel寫的 主要是關於美國品牌Abercrombie & Fitch在意識形態上
對消費者的引響力 感覺好像很有趣 可是他有一萬多字 讀起來還是很X
其實我還沒讀完啦 只是給大家看看我們typical的reading是什麼
有人說我們唸的東西和marketing很像 可是我又覺得我們更理論一點
我真的生氣了 無名有時候真他X的該死
我剛剛打了多打了幾百個字summarize下面這篇文章 明明按確定可是內容卻沒出來
搞屁呀~~~~ 我還一直修改什麼的 浪費我一堆時間........幹
雖然知道在blog寫髒話不好....可是我真的很~~~~~~~~氣
套句台中人用來形容很氣的時候的話 "懶啪著火"
不是我在說 這句話還真不是很好聽
Marketing Everyday Life:
The Postmodern Commodity Aesthetic of Abercrombie & Fitch
Abstract:
This essay tracks the blurring of boundaries between everyday life and advertising imagery, a concept I refer to as a "postmodern aesthetic." ?Utilizing primarily the fashion photography and text in the A&F Quarterly, the main advertising agent of clothing retailer, Abercrombie & Fitch, this essay explores how this shattering of boundaries calls into question what is meant by our notions of representation, reality, and identity as it also simultaneously points to a grander conception of the reaches of constructive performance.? The breakdown of the media/life binary widens consumers' potential for enacting the image staged before them, and yet, it questions the veracity of the subsequent constructed identity.
Dear A&F,
I'm living a major lie and I find myself torn. When I wear clothes from A&F, people see me as a much cooler person than I really am. The reality is, I can't even put an outfit together—I just wear exactly what the girls in the Quarterly do. Should I admit to myself and others that I'm not really the hotshot I pretend to be, or keep up the charade? If I do continue like this, what happens when the clothes come off and the real me shows?
Val, Champaign, IL1
Commodified desires and images are the strings regulating the puppet show of self . . . Self-presentations are increasingly intertwined with popular imagery, at times becoming parodies of the media images and celebrities. Life, or at least subjectivity, imitates mass-produced art.
Lauren Langman2
The first passage listed above, taken from the Spring Break 2000 issue of the A&F Quarterly3, while seemingly the anxiety-ridden statement of an adolescent searching for identity, neatly conveys the myriad concerns and paradoxes of identity construction and performance often discussed in postmodern theory. From whence does her panic derive, and why does it abate when she enacts the image of the Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) models? In her acknowledgement of the "real me" and the implication that clothing can either hide or reshape that realness providing an altogether surface-level image, she raises questions regarding the binary debate that perceives identity as either a performance of social constructs or the expression of a prediscursive essential self. By locating these concerns within the domain of fashion and, more specifically, within the everyday practice of dressing, she highlights not only the postmodern nature of current fashion as an unsettling revival and mixture of historical styles and fashion advertising as conflating reality and image, but also the commodification of both everyday practice and the identity derived from those practices.
Within the everyday act of dressing, clothes, mass marketing, and performativity intersect to produce a subjective identity. Indeed, the marketing of the everyday distorts and destroys the boundary between the real and the imaginary, resulting in the consumer's performance of image. The division between reality and image fiction collapses, since the image functions as a template to construct reality. This counterintuitive dynamic leads Guy Debord to suggest, "Image has become the final form of commodity reification."4 Hence the image—not the apparel—is the commodity. This assessment brings forth the somewhat alarming conclusion that if identity is not essential, if clothing does not enable the expression of an already always existing self, but rather serves as a possible mechanism to enable that self to be realized, then identity is neither based on our relationship to what we produce nor necessarily to what we consume (although this is closer), but to what we perform through consumption. In the case of fashion, we consume and enact image, and we are left as phantasmic compendiums of simulacra, as copies of copies with no original, as a so-called "puppet show of self."5
Fashion is a means of communication. It invokes a complex symbolic language of codes because its meanings are always double-layered in the following sense. Clothing is deemed as representing something intrinsic to the personality of the wearer as it simultaneously offers insights into the sociopolitical and class structure in which it is worn. Indeed, clothing appears as both a psychological and sociological phenomenon perpetually blurring the boundaries between the dichotomous poles of public and private. As theorist Malcolm Barnard argues, "Fashion and clothing then, existing in the gaps or spaces between these conceptual oppositions, are themselves undecideable in terms of these oppositions. They are not simply decidable in terms of public/private, subject/other, appearance/concealment, modesty/seduction, individual/group, and so on."6 However, adhering to his semiotic analysis of the meanings derived from fashion, Barnard concludes only by falling back on those binaries.
Postmodernism represents a crisis in meaning that results from the breakdown of these modernist binary categories. Fashion is a good means by which to explore postmodernity and the ideas of performativity, agency, and structure implied in that term because it occupies a certain in-between or third space. Fashion, or more specifically, the identity derived from fashion, cannot be either/or; it must, at once, be both. Unfortunately for Barnard, since "people do, after all, do something like communicate with each other . . . [then] a decision is made in favor of one or other of the dichotomous terms, rather than meaning being seen as endlessly deferred and postponed in the differentiated space between them. This differentiated 'play,' then, must be arrested or curtailed at some point in order for communication to take place."7
Within the context of clothing items and fashion advertising, citing specific examples from the Gap, Ralph Lauren, and especially Abercrombie & Fitch, this essay will explore this notion of "play" as it connotes a potential mode of action within a third postmodern undefined space between the modern polarities of self/other, public/private, production/consumption, and real/image. In what ways are these dichotomies collapsed, and how is this collapse reflected in fashion, particularly in mass-marketed fashion, and everyday dressing? What implications does this power of performative play have for any notion of individual agency and the dominance of structure? How is fashion related to the construction of identity, and when fashion images are performed, what are the possibilities both to reify and transgress these norms? When we dress, can we create something uniquely our "own" if we select from a cache of already existing mass-produced and commodified images? In short, what are the possibilities for resistant performance via fashion, and where do these possibilities lie in postmodernity, this age of image?
This essay seeks to answer these questions primarily through an analysis of the marketing strategy and fashion photography of clothing retailer, Abercrombie & Fitch. Advertising imagery is taken from the A&F Quarterly. This publication is part clothing catalog and part lifestyle magazine, featuring articles, reviews of books and films, and advice columns. The hybrid is commonly referred to as a "magalog," and it is released four times per year in issues that correspond to the academic calendar of the company's target demographic: American high school and university students. Hence, issues are themed around back-to-school, Christmas, spring break, and summer. My analysis focuses on magalogs from 1999 and 2000, since I judged the spreads in these issues to epitomize most clearly the postmodern aesthetic blurring of reality and image explored in this essay. The examples do not extend beyond this time period, since, by the summer of 2001, the Quarterly became mired in a public debate regarding its sexualized and erotic photography, which subsequently overshadows much of the discussion of identity construction presented here. Furthermore, given that the bulk of the empirical analysis centers on Abercrombie & Fitch, the frame of reference when discussing identity construction, sexuality, and consumer behavior is clearly bounded by the American experience. Although the theories adduced from the connections of postmodernism and fashion may have more global leverage, the discussion in this essay is limited to the United States.
This essay proceeds in nine parts. Part I defines the terms of the analysis. Postmodernism as a theoretical concept is discussed and its usefulness for interrogating the relationship between identity and fashion imagery is assessed. Part II investigates how clothing creates meaning within the postmodern cultural economy. Part III introduces the possibility for agency and resistance within the context of image-based identity construction. In this section, the concepts of tactic and strategy, as defined by Michel de Certeau, are used to explore this possibility. This section completes the theoretical foundation of this essay by reaffirming how fashion occupies a third space—a concept I refer to as hybridity—which collapses modernist binaries into simultaneity. Parts IV, V, and VI offer empirical examples from the Gap (www.gap.com) and Abercrombie & Fitch (www.abercrombie.com) to provide some much needed flesh to the theoretical skeleton. Part IV focuses on the postmodern notion of image as commodity exemplified by Gap commercials and Abercrombie photo spreads. Parts V and VI explore how this advertising—especially in the case of Abercrombie—transforms image into identity. In these three sections, numerous examples from the Quarterly illustrate the theories outlined in the first third of the essay. Part VII briefly returns to the realm of theory by introducing a new question: If Abercrombie & Fitch marketing so neatly captures the blurring of reality and image, why is this technique so economically successful? This question returns us to theorizing identity as either essential or socially constructed and provides rationales for the need of self-definition within the context of these two somewhat contrived poles. Part VIII embeds the Abercrombie & Fitch marketing strategy within the larger context of postmodernism's cultural economy, namely the appropriation of the subversive for profit maximization. Part IX concludes.
Part I: To Define Postmodernism is Decidedly Not Postmodern
The concept of postmodernity as a qualitatively distinct era from modernity is hotly contested; some theorists contend that while exhibiting new characteristics not witnessed in modernity, postmodernity is a responsive backlash against modernity that fails to alter the latter's foundational assumptions.8 This debate aside, postmodernity represents a fundamental shift in identity construction as the logic of late capitalism emphasizes not the relationship of people to the mode of production, but instead stresses consumption.9 Much of the impetus for understanding identity in these terms derives from Karl Marx, who posited "men entered into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, [into] relations of production . . . It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness."10 The postmodern social being, as opposed to his or her modern predecessor, is not marked by the productive forces of society, but by the consumptive forces. Our identity having been destroyed through a process of alienation—from our product, from each other, and from ourselves—we seek solace in what we consume. Indeed, consumption is construed as the only activity that clings to the possibility of the social. As Gail Faurschou articulates,
the power and seduction of consumption lies in the degree to which it establishes itself as the only form of collective activity in which the atomized individual of bourgeois society can participate. As the universal code of contemporary socialization, this abstract order and formal systemization of the consumption of sign objects becomes the substitution for all previous forms of symbolic unity and of its collective elaboration? . . .? The collection of objects thus dissimulates the disappearance of the collectivity of subjects.11
In other words, shopping for clothing enables the individual to engage in a process that relies on the communication of codes, and the mere existence and the ability to comprehend these codes attests to the existence of a social environment. Alienation is thereby overcome by consumption. The individual becomes trapped in a cyclic system of his or her own making. Production causes alienation and consumption mitigates such feeling; yet, consumption demands production, thereby fostering alienation and demanding more consumption.
By overcoming alienation, consumption does not merely reconnect the individual with his or her fellow beings. Alienation is a three-pronged circumstance. According to Marx, workers become alienated not only from their product and their compatriots, but also from themselves. Hence, consumption necessarily overcomes the alienation of self. It enables the reconstitution of a sense of self. At the same time, the rise of mass production leads to yet another paradox: "At the heart of individual identity, then, at the heart of something that is supposed to be specific to an individual, is the mass produced, the garment that exists in the form of hundreds or thousands of copies."12 In this sense, the notion of a unique self becomes a farce as those commodities constitute identity. Evacuating any possibility of agency, Gail Faurshou suggests that " rel="nofollow ugc noreferrer noopener"postmodernity then is no longer an age in which bodies produce commodities, but where commodities produce bodies."13 Having alienated ourselves from ourselves, having fragmented our bodies through the division of labor, late capitalism and postmodernity, characterized not only by the transformation of the commodity into a sign of symbolic logic but also of this manufacture of image and commodification of spectacle, offer a means by which to reconstitute a fixed self, a total body.
As further elaborated below, this idea of fixity—not just of a total look, but of a total identity—is marketed through fashion photography, particularly in the so-called "lifestyle branding" of Abercrombie & Fitch. Yet the disconcerting paradox continues to re-emerge, namely that the fixity is false, that it is an image constructed by the photographer. In short, the reality of personal identity is construed on the basis of other media. Through consumption, we take refuge in what Baudrillard has termed the "hyperreal." In other words, by enacting a particular look—the all-American masculinity of the A&F photography, for example—we generate a realness without any original reality. As Baudrillard suggests, in this age of enacting image, "it is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of signs of the real for the real."14 How fashion photography provides signs and how fashion marketing enables the performance of these signs—the performance of image and the subsequent transformation of image into reality—should become clearer in the more detailed analysis of the content and images in the A&F Quarterly made below.
Part II: Fashion as Postmodern Meaning Making
Baudrillard's concept of hyperreality derives directly from the shift of emphasis away from production and toward consumption. If production is not the constitutive force of late capitalism or postmodernity, then the symbolic meaning or value of a manufactured good can neither emanate from the labor that produced it nor the relations among people during its production. Neither can its meaning necessarily be derived from consumption. As a practical outcome of Enlightenment rationality, capitalism is founded, like other modernist concepts, upon a binary logic: production and consumption are perceived as two oppositional and separate spheres.15 According to Marx, the value of a commodity is determined in the moment of exchange between these two spheres. The exchange value is the rational mathematical abstraction of quantifiable units of labor time used in the manufacture of a good.16 The exchange relation occurs with such speed that it is difficult to see whence in this sequence—as opposed to mere utility—value is constructed. Theoretically, the value of a good is derived in the process of consumption, which activates the commodity's use value. However, clothing items have more than use value. They do more than guard against the elements. They communicate status. They are invested with symbolic meaning. Whence does this symbolic meaning derive? It is not created in the production process, and it is unclear whether the social relation of exchange can imbue such meaning. Can it be created in consumption?
Consumption is predicated on the existence of such meaning. It presupposes that meaning is already extant. If a good did not have an already ascertained symbolic use-value, it would not be consumed. Indeed, as Gail Faurschou suggests, the symbolic value of a good must occur outside of the production-exchange-consumption dynamic altogether.17 The good derives its meaning from outside the market and thus, it is only meaningful in relation to all other existing objects. In order to give a commodity a symbolic value, the fashion industry is forced to excavate history or turn to so-called exotic cultures, i.e., the military, subcultures such as queer or punk, or the developing world, that are perceived to exist on the outskirts of, or outside, the market. Yet the meaning of this appropriation is questionable precisely because it is an appropriation. The fashion object becomes a copy of a once-considered authentic and original item. As Faurschou argues, the "idea" or "sign" of symbolic meaning is appropriated.18 The meaning itself is lost because the commodity is removed from its context and relocated in the market. It is abstracted into a mathematical exchange value. Baudrillard suggests that this commodity is an "object-become-sign . . . [that] assumes its meaning in its differential relation to other signs."19 With no intrinsic meaning, the object-as-sign is essentially free-floating, enabling various combinations with other signs producing continuous difference, the illusion of newness, and one of the defining characteristics of postmodern fashion: pastiche.
Postmodernism is often characterized as a new form of depthlessness that finds expression in image but that also results in what Fredric Jameson termed a "weakening of historicity."20 When discussing architectural design, David Harvey comments that "if, as Taylor puts it, history can be seen 'as an endless reserve of equal events,' then architects and urban designers can feel free to quote them in any kind of order they wish. The postmodern penchant for jumbling together all manner of references to past styles is one of its more pervasive characteristics."21 The postmodern deconstruction of privilege and its recognition of difference and the validity of otherness enable the citation and blending of multiple temporally-located styles.
Within the context of fashion, the relative equality of all time-periods leaves each open to quotation, resulting in the technique of pastiche. Pastiche, according to Jameson, "is, like parody, the imitation of peculiar mask, speech in a dead language; but it is a neutral practice of such mimicry without any of parody's ulterior motives, amputated of the satiric impulse, devoid of laughter and of any conviction that, alongside the abnormal tongue you have normally borrowed, some healthy linguistic normality exists. Pastiche is thus blank parody."22 As such, pastiche does not and cannot subvert overarching structural dynamics. This power is reserved for parody as exemplified in Judith Butler's analysis of the gender parody of drag. Through gender parody, the supposed essential quality of gender is debunked: "In imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender."23 Drag provides insight into the social construction of gender. Pastiche is a cannibalism of the past; it lacks any revolutionary critique. Postmodernism remains at the surface. It offers no socially transformative aim. Rather, postmodernism operates in concert with the perpetuation of the market's drive for profit.
While Jameson defines pastiche as a temporal and historical phenomenon, it can also function cross-culturally to quote and thereby incorporate artifacts of cultural others into the mainstream. The Spring 2000 collection of the Gap exemplifies this phenomenon. Upon entering the Gap, a clothing retailer established in 1969, the consumer confronts a montage of past styles. The most prominent item in the Spring 2000 collection was the Capri pant, a style highly popular in the late 1960s. Yet the Gap also makes references to the past as well as other cultural contexts. For example, the cargo pant is a popularized appropriation of a military uniform. The utility of the cargo pocket is marketed as a stylized accessory. Furthermore, piled on shelves and draped on the eerily headless mannequins are the "1969" collection of vintage jeans that recall the heavy stitching, stiffer but worn fabrics, and faded tones of denim styles from 30 years ago. In 2000, the Gap had also revived the flare pant, renamed for the new millennium, but once known as the bell-bottoms of the 1970s.
Abercrombie & Fitch further exemplifies this invocation of past styles with the repeated use of "vintage" to describe its clothing.
Photo Cluster A24
This retailer, established in 1892, appropriates stylized military culture via its extensive array of cargo pants, paratroop pants, and cargo shorts. Drawing on the historical credibility of its one-hundred year history, A&F advertising claims that its latest collection of t-shirts is "inspired by the athletic tees from the archives of Abercrombie & Fitch."26The t-shirt is thus a quotation of a style that existed in some unnamed past, but which A&F can confidently evoke, given its long history. Abercrombie thus takes the notion of "vintage" beyond its application to the clothing object and toward the promotion of a particular image. For example, when describing the "Kirtland Check and Corrigan Camp" shirts, the editors of the A&F Quarterly note that those shirts undergo a "Vintage Abercrombie Wash,"27 giving the fabric a lived-in, relaxed, and faded quality. The item must be new, but it cannot appear as such. If it does, then it betrays the unreality of the image that it is attempting to promote as real. The image is one of carefree existence (with undertones of American WASPishness heightened by the tendency to name clothing items after towns in Massachusetts and other New England states28), of play and sexuality while adorned in one's favorite torn t-shirt, faded baseball cap, and frayed khakis. The look and meaning are carefully crafted as haphazard; the sense of play is ostensibly more important than the neatness of the look.
Photo Cluster B29
Most importantly, if the clothing looks new, how then is the fashioned image to be immediately appropriated by the consumer? The marketing scheme relies on the impression that this style of dress represents an authentic way of living. It symbolizes a cultural environment in which a person grows up. If the clothing does not have an aged quality, if it looks mass-produced and recently purchased, then the performance of authenticity and depth becomes readily apparent and the appeal of the A&F brand is lost.
This enactment of image and the consequent conflation of image and reality will be discussed below in a more detailed analysis of the A&F Quarterly. Let it suffice for now that the clothing items for sale at both the Gap and A&F rely on pastiche, on quotation of past styles. Whereas the latter clothier makes reference to an unnamed mythical past and the former is bent on reviving the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, they both not only beg the question of which decade will be brought back this year, but, more importantly, why must any decade be brought back at all? Jameson answers this question by characterizing the postmodern crisis of which pastiche fashion is an emblematic symptom: "We seem increasingly incapable of fashioning representations of our own current experience."34As a result, we rely on nostalgic representations of the past. We invoke stereotyped cultural sentiment affiliated with a certain decade—a 1950s-ness or a 1970s-ness—by which to characterize the nature of our present circumstance.35 The recycling of style then gives context and expression to our own era. However, meaning appears forever reliant on ransacking the past. Such pastiche does not offer a critique of present circumstance perhaps because, to invoke Michel de Certeau's terminology, whereas parody is a tactic, pastiche is a strategy.????????
Part III: Fashion as Hybridity
A tactic, according to de Certeau, is defined as a tool of the other or the politically disenfranchised. A tactic "must play on and with a terrain imposed and organized by the law of a foreign power . . . It takes advantage of 'opportunities' and depends on them . . . It must vigilantly make use of the cracks that particular conjunctions open in the surveillance of the proprietary powers . . . In short, a tactic is the art of the weak."36Thus, the salient characteristics of the tactic are that it is employed by an other—defined as weak and outside—and that it exploits the opportunities to destabilize the status quo.
Another kind of tactic, which does not go to the extremes of parody, but which appears to provide new meaning, at least according to Barnard, is the art of bricolage. Bricolage, like pastiche, references the past, but it also involves a continuous recombination of elements.37 It is, in this sense, similar to de Certeau's notion of "making do," or of consuming an item in new and unexpected ways thereby conferring upon it new meaning.38Indeed, some items at the Gap appear more expressive of bricolage than of pastiche. The 2000 Gap Capri pant is more than a re-establishment of a specific decade's style; it is a compendium of various decades. The 1960s Capri pant was a fashion statement reserved for women, but that particular item is now available to men in the form of the three-quarter pant or the long short. The male version is often loose-fitted and appended with cargo pockets. The inclusion of a cargo pocket is critical because, deriving from military gear, it suffices to inscribe a masculine quality to a formerly feminine garment thereby not calling into question the gender or sexual orientation status of the American male consumer. The renaming of the garment and the inclusion of this military cargo pocket reaffirms the existing male/female gender binary. American masculinity remains intact even though the male ankle is now exposed. Ironically, de Certeau discussed such bricolage in hopes of reviving notions of individual agency and resistance to structural dominance of the market. In this example, the force that perpetuates the market's drive toward profit and its ever-widening nexus of exchange values, namely the Gap, has appropriated the tactic of bricolage and transformed it into what de Certeau would call a strategy.
Strategy is the weapon of the status quo. A strategy inhabits a realm within the structure, as opposed to operating against or outside it, and, as such, it can never be engaged in an open critique of that structure. As de Certeau argues, to do so would be to undermine the very position from which it gains authority and from which it acts.39 Pastiche, integrally tied to the logic of capitalist consumption, can therefore be perceived as a strategy, as expressive of, and not resistant to, that postmodern dynamic. Hence, clothing appears to operate both as strategy and tactic. It paradoxically offers the agential power of parody or even bricolage while the apparel itself exemplifies the structural dominance of pastiche, and, in some cases, market appropriation of bricolage. Fashion exists in this complex third space of hybridity between the modernist poles of acceptance/resistance, production/consumption, and structure/agency.
Part IV: Image as Commodity
The possibilities of resistance and agential expression are further undermined when we investigate fashion imagery as linked to another characteristic of the postmodern or the hyperreal, namely the commodification of image and the manufacture of spectacle by both the Gap and Abercrombie & Fitch. The Spring 2000 Gap advertising campaign brings both quotation of distinct style periods and the conflation of reality and image to the fore. Three television commercials were based on the 1960s musical, West Side Story, and end with one of three statements: "When You're a Khaki," "When You're a Jean," and "Are You a Jean or a Khaki?" Each commercial recreates the choreography, music, and retro 1960s look of the film version of that musical. The jean versus khaki competition recalls the gang warfare of the Jets versus the Sharks portrayed in the musical. The image's mimetic layers are captivating. The Gap's year 2000 ad campaign is an interpretation of the costume design of a 1970s film, which was a rendering of a 1960s musical, which itself was a modern adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
The chief executive officer of Abercrombie & Fitch, Michael Jeffries, brings the idea of marketing an image into clearer relief. Jeffries joined Abercrombie & Fitch in 1992 when it was a failing subsidiary of the Limited, Inc. At that time, the company had abandoned its 100-year history as an outfitter of travel gear with such illustrious patrons as Teddy Roosevelt and Ernest Hemmingway, and crossed over into the conservative menswear department. Jeffries geared the company away from a supposedly tight-fisted demographic he referred to as "from 60 until death" 40and by changing the entire line and style of products—from oxfords and paisley ties to vintage tees and destroyed denim—sought to capture the fickle and fastest-growing demographic of 14 to 24 year olds.41He accomplished this by shifting the marketing campaign from selling clothes to branding a lifestyle. Explaining the success that his company experienced over the past five years after retooling their marketing strategy toward a younger consumer cohort, Jeffries suggests that the consumer "buy[s] into the emotional experience of a movie, and that's what we're creating."42In other words, A&F is not merely producing clothes, it is creating a total sensory fantasy similar to that of a feature film. This fantasy is promoted in the images of the Quarterly and in the "choreographed" environment of the store. The company has established an image of the behavior and lifestyle associated with the apparel. A&F refers to this strategy as "lifestyle branding."43 It goes beyond the clothing to foster a self-perpetuating spectacle. Abercrombie, in some sense, is doing what every hot brand of the moment has sought to accomplish, namely to make its name synonymous with "cool." Yet, A&F has achieved something beyond this obvious goal that gets to the heart of my own concern regarding the conflation of image fiction and reality and the subsequent performance of that image in/as everyday life.
At some level, the Gap and A&F marketing schemes are similar in that they either rely on or refer to themselves as invoking the language of film. Indeed, the Gap ad invoking West Side Story is a clear expression of postmodern hyperreality, i.e., the grounding of meaning in image and not within the clothing object. The Gap image therefore operates along the logic akin to most fashion photography: "Much fashion photography beckons us into a world of unbridled fantasy."44To create this imaginary world, fashion photography like the Gap ad constructs "a narrative based on other media texts,"45thereby exemplifying the phenomenon of image based on image, of the depthlessness and infinite simulacra of Baudrillard's hyperreality. Yet these qualities are easily perceived in the Gap ad—its very postmodern nature is so transparent—because of the image on which it rests, namely a highly recognizable musical. While exemplifying the postmodern use of image to relay meaning, the Gap ad does not necessarily collapse the boundary between the real and the imaginary. The average person is not going to break into song and a choreographed dance routine when sauntering down the street. Thus, the ad is easier to decode as an innocuous image. The image really says nothing in particular about the clothes or, more appropriately, about the people who wear the clothes because they are conveyed in a purely fictitious context. There is no possibility that this ad would be enacted in the realm of everyday action.
An important aspect of marketing identity is conveying the authenticity of a certain look, lifestyle, and experience. As Malcolm Barnard notes, fashion is a means to convey a quality of ourselves that is supposedly uniquely our own: "Fashion and clothing are the mass-produced means by which the individual style is constructed; somehow we believe that the shirt, or the skirt, which both exist in thousands of copies, is 'us.' Mass produced garments are used to construct what is thought of and experienced as an individual identity, a way of being different to everyone else."46 Indeed, attempting to account for the Gap's sagging sales in the winter of 1999, that company's CEO, Millard Drexler, contented that "we weren't promoting a point of view, and it was confusing to our customers."47 The Gap made no statement, and by dressing in Gap fashions, the consumer made no statement, he or she offered no point of view, he or she embodied a non-identity.
Abercrombie & Fitch has prevented this problem by conveying a sense of authenticity within the Quarterly's text and photographs. First, the Spring Break 2000 magalog opens with a letter from the editorial staff suggesting that when searching for a "real" spring break experience, "we'd never find this within earshot of MTV, [and] we chose decidedly distant destinations."48 By recognizing the commodification of youth culture by MTV, A&F suggests that its own imagery is somehow more authentic because it escapes the packaged image associated with that network. It thereby deftly avoids acknowledging its own marketing of image and manufacture of lifestyle. Second, many of the photographs depict models wearing various items that have holes or are faded; in short, the photographs provide the illusion that the clothing is old and lived-in. In one extreme example, the Quarterly's Christmas Issue 1999 depicts a model wearing an A&F "Motivational Tee" bearing the phrase, "A product of superior coaching."49 The t-shirt is peppered with small rips and holes. The photography implies that this t-shirt is the model's favorite shirt. He has worn it every day for the last five years even though it is a new addition to the Christmas 1999 collection. Other similar examples of stretched collars, ripped seams, and frayed cuffs abound throughout each edition of the magalog. A third attempt to suggest the "uniquely me" quality of the mass-produced garment is the "vintage wash" Abercrombie administers to produce a faded look on some garments. This look, like everything else about the marketing scheme, ranging from the heavy eroticism of the Quarterly's Bruce Weber photography, to the specific naming of clothing items after New England towns, is carefully controlled to provide that image of a preppy, ingrained, and "I've always dressed this way and this shirt is my favorite even though it's new to the latest season's line" lifestyle. Cargo pants, shirts, and hats are subject to a "carefully calibrated stonewash and enzyme treatment"50 that give the authentic and unique look to a vintaged fa硤e.
Photo Cluster C51
The most salient example of this oxymoronic mass marketed non-mass quality, is the A&F "beyond destroyed cap" that has been "beat up and worn like you've had it for years and you'll never wear anything else. This cap has been washed over and over to achieve its unique destroyed character."54
The cap has already been marked. It has been imprinted with an identity even though an individual has never worn it. Thus the consumer easily slides into this imaginary and mass-produced sense of individuality. Yet that uniqueness, that quality of "me," remains purely fictional. By wearing such items, the consumer performs that fiction. Yet, the performance itself is undeniably real.
Part V: Image as Identity
Theorist Lauren Langman contends that "selfhood is expressed in everyday practices,"55 and the impact of A&F photography relies on the veracity of that statement. The photography in the A&F Quarterly relies on action, and, even more so, on realistic and performable action which blurs the lines between reality and image. This technique makes the image seem that much more attainable. Because their fashion photography exotifies the everyday, because it is on the cusp of being realizable and accessible, it so incredibly breaks those borders between fiction and reality and succeeds in commodifying identity. If selfhood is expressed in everyday practices and media images provide templates for those actions, then selfhood potentially becomes no more than the superficial performance of image.
A&F photography suggests acts performable by its targeted consumer cohort: predominantly white upper-middle class 14 to 24 year olds, especially hovering on the college-age demographic. For example, the Christmas Issue 1999 includes a spread depicting models on a high ropes course56, and the Christmas Issue 2000 contains photographs of models engaged in holiday shopping.57
Photo Cluster D58
There is nothing fantastic or unattainable about either shopping or a camping trip for upper-middle class college-age students and 20-somethings. The Spring Break Issue 2000, entitled "Wild and Willing" is centered on three spreads: 1) a spring break excursion in Costa Rica, 2) a trip to the jungles of South Africa, and 3) the production of an independent film.
Photo Cluster E61
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