Makley Image Archive

Gabriel Tusinski

Any inquiry into the semiotic content of a body of print advertisements at once alerts the analyst to the complexities of such an investigation. A single page advertisement garnered from the glossy leaves of a fashion magazine contains within its frame a surplus of meaning that can not in any case be adequately treated in a few brief pages. Ads such as these can be combed free of context for both obvious attributes and barely visible details that ultimately have considerable influence on their effectiveness in stimulating consumption of their respective products or prolonged thought about their intentions. This approach is important. Equally important, however, is the contextualization of an ad within a broader campaign, and within a history of branded advertising campaigning more generally.

The purpose of this paper is thus two-fold: to subject the attached Christian Dior advertisement from the pages of Vogue Magazine (October 2003) to both of the above-mentioned assessments. I will begin my analysis by contextually framing this particular ad within a broader campaign, and within a history of Dior campaigns and advertising trends that push the envelope of public acceptability to its furthest extreme: the commodification of hyper-sexualized femininity, desire, voyeurism and sexual fetish. With this context serving as prolegomena, I will investigate the construction of the single frame with regard to compositions and positioning of its elements. I argue that the distinct content of this single ad is indicative of a broader trend in Dior advertising more generally that presents female models as hyper-sexualized and potentially open to the ravages of the masculine (and perhaps feminine) gaze, and that this avant-garde sexuality serves as Dior's main selling point.

The particular advertisement in question here is an accompaniment to the newest lines of clothing and accessories created by Christian Dior's most famous designer John Galliano and presented to the public beginning in mid-2003 in fashion shows around the world. These two related clothing and accessory lines has very notably been dubbed "Hardcore Dior" and "The Latest Blond" by their designer (see www.dior.com for a the complete line of current Dior designs and campaigns). According to a recent article from Lucien James marketing research (www.lucjam.com) both the "Hardcore Dior" and "The Latest Blonde" print ad campaign and the runway displays of these clothes and accessories have been touted by its designers as simultaneously presenting senses of extreme sexuality and true love. The current campaign consists of women dressed in Galliano designed clothing and accessories assuming often sexually open or evocative poses in an ambiguous setting. Their clothing is of black leather and red vinyl, covered with straps, buckles, rivets and eyelets, skin peaks out through the laced up seams of impossibly tight pants.

This campaign might seem rather mild upon first investigation, but when viewed in light of Dior's past campaigns, it embodies a surreptitious sense of the sexual. Dior has been vehemently criticized most recently for its production of the 2003 "Addict" perfume campaign (closely associated with the "Admit It" clothing line), which features an underwear clad, sweat-soaked model who by way of not-so-ambiguous imagery involving a mirror and her nose is suggested to be a cocaine addict. This campaign was widely criticized for its association of Dior products with uncontrollable and destructively consumptive tendencies. Other past add campaigns have presented dirt-covered and sweat-soaked females contorted into strangely sexual and certainly submissive positions, usually framed by the interior of cars or other vehicles. Also in the last year, foreign Dior advertisements (in games of competitive brinkmanship with other advertising firms) have pushed the envelope of public acceptability to the inclusion of male genitalia in print ad campaigns. It is within this history of presentation of Dior fashion as representative of unhealthy consumption and promiscuous (as well as often-submissive female) sexuality that I frame my analysis of this particular ad.

Given the current of lightly veiled perversion and consumption suggested by past Dior campaigns, it is very simple to see this ad as an extension (and perhaps a tempered modification) of this earlier theme, drawing on easily recognizable bodily signs of sexuality and (mostly visual or borderline pornographic) consumption. The posture of the model is indicative of a submission to the gaze of the observer. About-Face, a media-education oriented activist group, suggests that Dior ads exemplify well Irving Goffman's (1959) declaration that the presentation of the self informs hierarchy and power relationships through positionality, size and posture. The bent posture of the models, their legs splayed or strewn in odd directions, presents an idea of sexual availability, of submission and of helplessness. The positioning of the model's hands in the vicinity of the most sexualized parts of the western female body (the chest and the crotch) is further indicative of the model's presented sexual willingness. The clothing and location similarly carry overt undertones of fetishized and voyeuristic sexuality and bondage. Leather and vinyl suits that expose skin, lacing, buckles and metal eyelets are all typical of fetishistic and bondage-oriented sexual practices. The ambiguity of the location as either outside or inside a glass building is suggestive of the voyeuristic nature of the ad. The audience is watching a sexual activity and as a voyeur (either male or female, as consumer or identifier) is participating in it.

The Christian Dior Group (as part of the Moet Hennesy-Louis Vuitton conglomerate) thus has a long history of situating itself at the edge of consumer and media acceptability. Ambiguous and quasi-veiled references to sexuality and consumption, most notably embodied by the names of the recent campaigns "Hardcore Dior", "The Latest Blonde" and "Addict", are indicative of the broad pattern of Christian Dior advertising campaigns and their drive to stay on the cutting edge of competition. I believe it is precisely by way of the presentation of visually consumable sexuality and otherwise avant-garde images of fashion that Dior hopes to maintain an edge over competition in the fashion world. This advertisement and other recent Dior ad campaigns serve to exemplify the wider trend in the fashion world of capitalization on objectification of femininity (as typified by the voyeuristic gaze and the submissive posturing of female models) and desire both sexual and more broadly conspicuously consumptive.

Bibliography:

About-Face

2003: Gallery of Offenders. Electronic Document

http://www.about-face.org/goo/newten/4/three.shtml

Dior

2003: Dior Women. Electronic Document

http://fashion.dior.com/dior.html

Goffman, Irving.

1971 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Lucien James

2003: Lucien James Marketing Research. Electronic Document