Discuss: women department stores and fashion in the city - Essay Example

(The Fashion Plate and the Rise of Consumer Culture) Fashion appeared in cities of early stage of capitalist period. This fashion had features of urban culture, as it was created in modern world. Magazines that represented fashion during this period shared these features, and the fashion magazines can be regarded as the same symbol of consumption as the Great Exhibition. Fashion magazines focused on brightness, sophistication, metropolitan culture and commerce. There were some famous UK magazines that represented A French world of haute couture - The London and Paris Ladies Magazine of Fashion, Le Follet and The World of Fashion.

All magazines of this time, designed for women audience devoted larger or less part of the space in their magazines to fashion. All these magazines promoted one and the same image of a lady, who wastes her time for pleasures and leisure, and who pays much of her attention to dresses for the aims of display and consumption. (The Fashion Plate and the Rise of Consumer Culture) These magazines focused mainly on sophisticated hand-colored pictures with all the details that gave readers and dressmakers a full representation of textures of the fabrics used for the dresses.

During the last part of the XIXth century women were regarded as a target audience, essential for successful development of consumerism in capitalistic world. Accordingly, pictures in fashion magazines used either for advertising purposes or as images can be regarded as the prototype of a show window that is now designed to represent a set of products, for instance, textiles, accessories and patterns. The models on these pictures never looked into the eyes of the reader, and their look was averted regardless of its direction.

This should have symbolized virtue and modesty, and the models expressed sexuality, modesty and self-consciousness