Documenting Fashion

Elena Caoduro is Lecturer in Media Analysis at Queen’s University Belfast, UK. She is the co-editor of Mediated Terrorism in the 21st century (with Karen Ritzenhoff and Karen Randell, 2021). She has previously published on nostalgia, cultural memory, vintage media and fashion films in journals, such as Comunicazioni Sociali, NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies, and Cinémas Revue d'études cinématographiques. Boel Ulfsdotter is Reader in Film Studies at the Faculty of Humanities at Gothenburg University, Sweden. Her areas of research are rooted in theoretical perspectives on female subjectivity in visual and popular culture, with special focus on documentary cinema, visual style, and screen costume. She has also published on contemporary women’s power dressing, fashion exhibition practice, and screen costume. Boel Ulfsdotter’s latest scholarly publication is Documenting Fashion (2023), co-edited with Elena Caoduro. In 2018, Ulfsdotter co-edited a twin-volume on the topic of female authorship for Edinburgh University Press: Female Authorship and the Documentary Image, and Female Agency and Documentary Strategies.

An original, rich and timely compendium on the relationship between fashion and the documentary moving image that explores the topic from a variety of disciplines, from film and media studies to design, communication, history, and journalism. Documenting Fashion brings together contributions that compellingly illuminate the fundamental role of the non-fiction moving image in the theorization of fashion.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsNotes on the ContributorsIntroductionPart I: Film1. Fashion Documentaries and the tension between celebratory and critical approaches by Elena CaoduroExpanding Interview 1: Elena Caoduro in conversation with Lorna Tucker2. "The Helen Rose Originals are Fabulous": The Fashion Featurette and Fashion Show as Sites of Industrial Reflexivity by Julie Nakama3. The Fashion of East and West in German Cinema Newsreels (1950-1965) by Sigrun Lehnert4. Third Way Teenage Fashion: Housewives’ Films Documenting Ideals of Middleclass Youth Culture in 1950s Sweden by Mats Björkin5. A Maverick on the Streets: Bill Cunningham and the Documentary Process by Karen Ritzenhoff6. Extending the exhibition narrative: making sense of non-fiction fashion footage by Boel UlfsdotterExpanding Interview 2: Boel Ulfsdotter in conversation with Alexandra PalmerPart II: Television7. Documenting Fashion History: Television and the Temporalities of Cultural Remembrance by Jihane Dyer8 Italian ready-to-wear fashion through Cori-carousels by Giulia Caffaro9. Fashioning Self-Care: Queer Eye, Affect, and Makeover Culture by Elizabeth AffusoPart III: Digital media10. From Newsreel to ‘See Now, Buy Now’: A Genealogy of the Fashion Show Live Stream by Rebecca Halliday11. Documenting fashion in the era of Instagram: A critical reading of Asri Bendacha’s Follow Me and Chiara Ferragni’s Unposted by Marco PedroniIndex