Abstract

The New Yorker is a magazine perhaps best known for its cultural commentary on fields such as music, theater, art, film, and television. However, since its founding in 1925, it has also turned its irreverent eye and acerbic wit towards fashion with two issues dedicated to the topic – “Style Issues” – published twice a year. The nature of its fashion discourse, situated as it is among some of the most celebrated political and cultural writings of the day, is the subject here. A text analysis of ten “Style Issues” offers opportunity to explore fashion discourse and criticism outside the traditional realm of the fashion media landscape. While it is not a venue often considered under the heading “fashion media,” The New Yorker’s long history of positioning fashion reporting as of interest to their readership offers a new space in which to deconstruct how tangential, yet relevant, media spaces engage with this multifarious cultural product. The magazine’s literary/narrative approach was less about offering assessment and more concerned with creating an emotional connection for the reader. Though style and fashion served as a frame of reference, emphasis remained on the human experience of dressed bodies and their interaction in a broader socio-political context.

Highlights

  • Continuing the conversation started by McNeil and Miller (2014) in Fashion Writing and Criticism, I explore fashion criticism as meaning making to better situate it amongst other critical literary traditions in art, literature, film, and performance

  • I argue that fashion criticism, through multi-author storytelling, serves to establish an underlining consistency to an otherwise enigmatic industry

  • The New Yorker established their model for fashion writing with the initial hiring of Long, who Ross described as “having simultaneously a strong knowledge of the subject, excellent taste, the good sense not to take it seriously, and the writing ability and wit to carry it all off in print.” (Yagoda 2000, p. 77)

Read more

Summary

Introduction

Continuing the conversation started by McNeil and Miller (2014) in Fashion Writing and Criticism, I explore fashion criticism as meaning making to better situate it amongst other critical literary traditions in art, literature, film, and performance. As a first step in a larger project to explore the role and character of fashion writing in the New Yorker, I conducted a textual analysis on the ten most recent “Style Issues” which appear twice a year on the editorial calendar; one in fall and the other in spring. The goal here was not a closely detailed lexical or rhetorical analysis of text but a broader sketch of the ideological frames through and by which The New Yorker constructed meaning for fashion (as both object and concept).

Results
Conclusion

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call

Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.