Modeling in the Fashion System: Trends and Means of Communication

Abstract

This study has two purposes: to highlight the basic definitions of modeling as a fashion industry component and to analyze the experience of personalization and co-creation of a designer and a clothing demonstrator model. The research methodology. Analytical, comparative, biographical, systematic, historical, and chronological methods have been used in the research, which made it possible to outline the degree of demonstrator models influence on the fashionable clothes representation and consumption and on the fashion aesthetic ideals formation. Methods of observation and generalization have been applied to determine modern development trends and communication means of modeling. The scientific novelty is in the distinguishing of modeling as the fashion system component and an independent direction of the research; in revealing the approaches of prominent foreign and Ukrainian designers regarding model selection and the way of new clothing developments representation; the identification and analysis of communication means of modeling – personification and co-creation of a designer and a clothing demonstrator model. It has been proved that the costume personification with the help of external plastic and personal features and qualities of the model-demonstrator is the prerequisite for the fashionable clothes successful promotion and consumption on the examples of the work experience of Christian Dior and Alla Ilchun, Yves Saint Laurent and Veruschka (Vera Gottliebe Anna Gräfin von Lehndorff) and Catherine Deneuve, Gabrielle Chanel and Marie-Hélène Arnaud, O. Yasynska and the Kyiv House of Models, SOVA Jewelry House and N. Gotsiy, M. Voronin, V. Shvets and S. Chudovsky. Conclusion. Such trends as the ready-to-wear clothes segment development by designers and its availability to a wide target audience; the interculturality and globalization context in the fashionable clothes creation and presentation have been outlined in the fashion system in the period of the late 1940s–1960s. Designers have changed the function of a “live” model from a silent demonstrator with an unknown name to an expressive, meaningful personality who, with the help of professional photo shooting and fashion shows original techniques, became the “face” of a collection or a separate item of clothing. In such context, the personification of the item of clothing and the co-creation of the designer and the model must be considered as the communication means.