Analysis Of The 1950's

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“Modern democratic society has made Fashion into a sort of cross subsidising organism, destined to establish an automatic equilibrium between the demand for singularity and the right for all to have it.” Roland Barthes, Dandyism and Fashion
Theorist Christopher Bernard believes that “Fashion occupies the central ground in popular understandings of modern culture.”(Sheridan, 2010, p.71) Roland Barthes developed a semiotic system for interpreting the discourse of fashion while historian and philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote on fashion’s relationship to modernity, temporality, history and memory analysing the concept of fashion materially, culturally and through his own brand of Marxist analysis. Such critical readings of fashion only goes to …show more content…

While feminist movements were still to gain force in America and Europe, cinema in the 1950s had already begun to adorn their characters with comfortable clothing which began to be associated with American fashion, an alternative to the restrictive French style (Strassel, 2008). For instance, in both TV shows and popular cinema women began wearing pants for the first time visual history. Even though the 1950s have been criticised by theorists as an age of conformity rather than expression of individual identity, the films especially the characters produced in this era captured public imagination so much so that their costumes ignited worldwide fashion trends. Through the iconic figure of Audrey Hepburn known for her signature pixie cut and minimalist fashion, I will analyse her character and her fashion transition in the iconic 1953 film, Roman Holiday by director William Welder. Since the 1950s fashion market was geared towards women, the paper will focus on the ways in which the film, Roman Holiday influenced women’s style trends and whether at all Hepburn’s style statement represented a conformist or an individual notion of

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