Poster Collection 32: En Vogue

Poster Collection 32: En Vogue – Poster Collection 32: En Vogue – Advertising creates dream worlds while simultaneously reflecting the times. These two trends are illustrated in fashion posters. Beyond the latest trends and beauty ideals, fashion posters reflect moral codes and social conditions. They are proposals of “life-style”; they tell stories, seduce and shock. Playing with conventions and provocation, the bodies are sometimes sumptuously veiled and disguised, sometimes sensually staged.

Sometimes, consumers are only indirectly encouraged to make purchases. By a simple button or coat collar, the quality of the products can be illustrated. A new, somewhat controversial approach to fashion advertising emerged in the Benetton campaigns of the early 1990s. The overtly ostentatious and erotic aspect contrasts with the poetic allusions that are the hallmark of particularly aesthetic Japanese fashion posters. Androgynous models and less normative images of men and women in the advertising industry mark the dawn of a new era. Androgynous models and less normative images of men and women in the advertising industry mark the dawn of a new era.

En Vogue involves a constant balancing of aspirations for individuality and a sense of collective belonging. En Vogue brings together fashion advertisements spanning a hundred years and deploying a myriad of different public relations strategies, each reflecting the cultures and times in which they were created.