Development of Fashion Film

After looking at the visually stimulating fashion Films of Gareth Pugh and Ruth Hogben, I feel extremely inspired to create a fashion film that explores feminine gender representation in an abstract, non- linear sense.

I love the focus on the body through the exaggerated movements within the strong silhouttes, explored by Natalie Khan in 'Stealing the Moment: the Non- Narrative Films of Ruth Hogben and Gareth Pugh' (2012). Khan promotes the medium of the fashion film as the future of fashion, as it allows the designer to have complete control over the depiction of the clothing. Hogben is able to remove the fashion from any sense of reality through the isolation of the model within a featureless space. This void removes the fashion from being connected to any form of time or place, rather existing only within this highly controlled form of space: 'Her bodies appear disposed and dispersed in space'.

Khan suggests that this leads to the objectification of the female figure as their is no difference between the fashion as an object, or a representation as their is no context to connect to, thus the clothing almost becomes 'non-existent', existing in an alternate time and place.

Khan doesn't present the danger that the artificiality of the image presents, a level of bias existing, as she presents a one sided argument of the positive attributes of the fashion film. I think that the ability to have complete control over the depiction of the clothing and the model only serves in one sense to further remove fashion from reality, creating even more unrealistics ideals of beauty and sexuality. I think that by removing fashion from a context, it prevents the viewer from having the ability to question how realistic the image is. This could lead to ever more severe ideals of beauty, that are formed  from totally artificial images.


We have decided to explore the notion of freedom within our film, specifically the use of colour as a tool to restrict expression through clothing.

I think that fashions from the 1960s and 1970s could be of great inspiration for the film, as designers of this time used fashion as a means to challenge the oppressed state of femininity, challenging social values through the generation of new forms of female dress.
I think that we will try to edit the footage heavily, to create an isolation of the film from a time or place, similarly to the films of Pugh and Hogben.


 Khan,N. 2012, 'Stealing the Moment: the Non- Narrative Films of Ruth Hogben and Gareth Pugh', Film, Fashion and Consumption, vol 1, No3, pp 251-262