Fashion Media: Past and Present – Djurdja Bartlett

In chapter one, ‘Taste, Fashion and the French Fashion Magazine’, from ‘Fashion Media: Past and Present’, Sanda Miller discussed the role of the French fashion magazine, from its conception in 1672 as an arts and literature magazine featuring “captioned illustrations of fashion, complete with addresses of suppliers” (Blackman, 2007), to something people looked to in order to see what was in style in both fashion and interiors and went on to include not only fashion but also “anecdotes, literary productions, comparisons between French and English fashions, which extended also to jewellery and furniture” (Bidou, 1912). Miller goes on to discuss the subject of taste, where the concept came from and whether “only a qualified observer is in a position to provide a proper verdict of the true standard of taste and beauty” (Miller, 2013). She summarised the fashion magazine as being “truthful mirrors of their time. They have functioned not only as repositories of the progress of sartorial fashion and the most up-to-date social, cultural and artistic developments but also as self-styled barometers of taste.”, which I firmly agree with as you need only look through a modern fashion magazine to see that these points still ring true.

Having read Cally Blackman’s ‘100 Years of Fashion Illustration’ I learnt that the French Revolution caused the publication of fashion magazines to stall in France, leaving the German publication the ‘Journal der Luxus und der Moden‘ (1786-1826) to become the most widely read fashion magazine of that time. England had also caught up with France in the pursuit of fashion, with Heideloff’s ‘Gallery of Fashion‘ (1794) being the most reputable and well-read magazine. With the emergence of fashion magazines, naturally came the question of taste; what was thought of as good taste and what was considered bad taste. After listening to BBC Radio 4’s radio show ‘In Our Time’ hosted by Melvyn Bragg on the topic of ‘Taste’, I learnt of the origin of the concept and how it became synonymous with luxury, extravagance and femininity; with some of the first ideas of taste having come from the court of Louis XIV this hardly surprises me. However, in England where there was no Versailles, there was more dispute on what ‘taste’ actually was. One of the first people to be credited with the invention of the concept of taste was the Earl of Shaftsbury. He “sought to provide a rational foundation for a seemingly subjective, emotional response to the aesthetic experience by postulating a special faculty – taste – which provided a rational basis on which such response could be regarded as universal” (Miller 2013). On ‘In Our Time’ the question whether taste was a birth right also came up, taste being originally associated with wealth and luxury and the rich having been thought of as the tastemakers, however, that is no longer the case with the emergence of high street fashion in even high-end fashion magazines, ‘good taste’ is available to everyone.

• Bartlett, Cole and Rocamora (ed.) (2013), Fashion Media: Past and Present, London: Bloomsbury
• Bidou, H. (1912), ‘Introduction’, Gazete du bon ton, November 1-4
• Blackman, C. (2007), 100 Years of Fashion Illustration, London: Laurence King Publishing
• BBC Radio 4, (2007), In Our Time: Taste. Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0082dzm (accessed 23/11/17)