After a Fashion: Kays Catalogue, Modernism and Fashion Persuasion - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Mar 15, 2023 268 likes •577 views

After a Fashion: Kays Catalogue, Modernism and Fashion Persuasion According to The Observer's Lauren Laverne, Nothing beats leafing through the pages of the latest thriller especially when it's a posh clothing catalogue. In its infancy,

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After a Fashion: Kays Catalogue, Modernism and Fashion Persuasion

According to The Observer's Lauren Laverne, ʺNothing beats leafing through the pages of the latest thriller – especially when it's a posh clothing catalogue.ʺ In its infancy, the fashion catalogue was the tool used by department stores to encourage loyalty and patterns of consumption, particularly amongst women. Through the 1920s to 1960s, the success of catalogues like Kays was partially the result of responding to modernist principals in balancing text and image and, to some extent, borrowing from the psychological techniques used in advertising. Since then, the proliferation of youth styles and media has left the fashion catalogue seeming a bit dated, but the recent resurgence in titles owes as much to internet shopping as to reimagining the relationship between the catalogue and consumer.

Kay’s S/S 1928 cover showing one cultural context for dressing the body on display

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The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters Francisco Goya circa 1797 – 1799 rue du Chat-qui-pêche à Paris, 1900 Parisians walking down Boulevard des Italiens by Maynard Owen Williams, National Geographic, 1936

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Kay’s 1933 repeating the rhetoric of body management: inner (moral) health is confirmed by outer appearance

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Kay’s S/S 1963: how is the moral imperative of inner health and outer looks expressed here?

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Kay's A/W 1963: What modernist appropriations are deployed

ver the next pages?

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Kay's S/S 1959: two-piece suits Kay's 1950 cover

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Kay's S/S 1940: Hosiery Kay's A/W 1947: Leisure wear

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Kay's A/W 1940: underwear

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Kay's 1933 Men's business suits

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Kay's S/S 1967

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Kay's A/W 1937 Men's business suits

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Kay's 1933suiting patterns

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Kay's A/W 1960: outerwear: use this page to discuss how taste historically and culturally contingent?

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Savile Lumley commissioned by The British Parliamentary Recruiting Committee,1915 From Kay’s 1931

the next few slides are about interpellation and the use of the look / ‘gaze’. In what way do the images report on these theories?

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Kay's S/S 1940: men’s outer wear: patriotic moral coding: “be prepared for unsettled weather”

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Arrow Shirts c1920 Kay's S/S 1940: business wear

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Kay's A/W 1957: Men’s business wear

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Kay's S/S 1933: sports and leisure wear

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Kay's A/W 1937: nightwear

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Kay's S/S 1940: underwear

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Kay's S/S 1940: Ladies’ night wear

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Kay's S/S 1963: Leisure wear

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Kay's A/W 1958: Outerwear

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Kay's S/S 1940: How is the page encoded to provide meaning to the reader? sans serif justified (rational) type for specific details with salience of type (bold and weighting); use of breathing space to box brand message; use of script to reinforce the casual gender imperative: Like Father Like Son! (note the exclamation!)

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Kay's A/W 1954: underwear – use the terms salience; information value; framing and structure

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Kay's A/W 1970: footwear – here the catalogue editorialises the subtext of competition with the boutique by envisaging the double page spread as an ersatz shop window

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Kay's A/W 1960: How does this page spread male assumptions about the reader?

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Kay's S/S 1967: women’s suits – what are the assumptions made about the singularity of fashion in this spread?

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Kay's S/S 1953: household and bridal – how is the spread encoded to provide meaning while making assumptions about the reader?