Analyzing images Essay

Submitted By yungduzz
Words: 824
Pages: 4

The Fashion Industry
As young women, through the medium of advertisement so many people have said “we must use certain products to make ourselves beautiful”. For decades, ads for soap, fragrance mouth wash, and make up have established a sort of misplaced control over our lives, telling us what will make us attractive and what will not. Recently, however, a new generation of advertisement has emerged in the fashion industry, one that clearly equates the product shown in the ads with the quest for confident individuality. Ads such as the two for Kate Spade, and Teen magazines discussed below encourage us to break free from the standard beauty mold and be ourselves using mostly imagery, they remind us that being unique is the true origin of beauty.
The first ad promotes Kate's fashion as the smart chic, quite smart raising a unique personality onto a pedestal. These are fun! The background is so colorful and chaotic (graffiti), but the outfits blend in and stand out at the same time. There's also a lot of texture in the clothes here and you can actually see that as shown in fig. 1. Photographed in a standing profile, this pretty-looking young woman is wearing her hair in a Rocker waves style looking like she just got out from the pool with her hair wet. The downturn of her nose points to the light pink sweatshirt that covers her chest and shoulders moderately, and a multicolored short skirt that stops several inches above her knees with a purple feather jacket that hangs across her shoulders. The dress is colorful, but it is a perfect fit for the personality implied in the photo. Set against the background of a colorful and chaotic (graffiti) wall, the model leans back slightly on the wall. Her left knee is bent while her right knee remains straight, while her arms remain folded. Around her wrist, there is a gold bangle that are not really visible. Her expression is a simple mix of calm and concentration. It is as if the photographer took the picture while she was looking at something else.
Kate has taken an average looking college girl and dressed her in an outfit that speaks her own distinctive character. The image sparks the idea that her beauty comes from her internal base of secure self-confidence and moves outward to infuse her physical appearance and sense of style. Using the image alone, Kate advertises its products with the simple promise that they will support women in doing what they love and keep them original.
Taking the narrow perspective on originality, the ad for Teen Clothes shown in fig.2 dramatizes the idea that spontaneity is the key to a distinctive personal identity. The ad dares us to break free from the mold of society and do something fearless. It shows us a teddy like object on the floor laying lifeless, on its left there is a long basket with a dog's skull on it, behind that there is a stand with a rabbit's skull on it, while on the right it is kind of a bowl placed upside down with a unicorn's skull on it, and behind that there is a broken stool carrying a bears head with a red ribbon on it. Close to the bear, there are two giant shoes with giant