After a Fashion: Kays Catalogue, Modernism and Fashion Persuasion According to The Observer's Lauren Laverne, ʺ Nothing 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
rue du Chat-qui-pêche à Paris, 1900 The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters Francisco Goya circa 1797 – 1799 Parisians walking down Boulevard des Italiens by Maynard Owen Williams, National Geographic, 1936
Kay’s 1933 repeating the rhetoric of body management: inner (moral) health is confirmed by outer appearance
Kay’s S/S 1963 : how is the moral imperative of inner health and outer looks expressed here?
Kay's A/W 1963 : What modernist appropriations are deployed over the next pages?
Kay's 1950 cover Kay's S/S 1959 : two-piece suits
Kay's S/S 1940 : Hosiery Kay's A/W 1947 : Leisure wear
Kay's A/W 1940 : underwear
Kay's 1933 Men's business suits
Kay's S/S 1967
Kay's A/W 1937 Men's business suits
Kay's 1933 suiting patterns
Kay's A/W 1960 : outerwear: use this page to discuss how taste historically and culturally contingent?
From Kay’s 1931 Savile Lumley commissioned by The British Parliamentary Recruiting Committee,1915 the next few slides are about interpellation and the use of the look / ‘gaze’. In what way do the images report on these theories?
Kay's S/S 1940 : men’s outer wear: patriotic moral coding: “be prepared for unsettled weather”
Arrow Shirts c1920 Kay's S/S 1940 : business wear
Kay's A/W 1957 : Men’s business wear
Kay's S/S 1933 : sports and leisure wear
Kay's A/W 1937 : nightwear
Kay's S/S 1940 : underwear
Kay's S/S 1940: Ladies’ night wear
Kay's S/S 1963: Leisure wear
Kay's A/W 1958 : Outerwear
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!)
Kay's A/W 1954 : underwear – use the terms salience; information value; framing and structure
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
Kay's A/W 1960 : How does this page spread male assumptions about the reader?
Kay's S/S 1967: women’s suits – what are the assumptions made about the singularity of fashion in this spread?
Kay's S/S 1953 : household and bridal – how is the spread encoded to provide meaning while making assumptions about the reader?
Recommend
More recommend
