Sueyla Hamid
Foundation Year
Spring/Summer 2014
Elle Reynolds.

”The Gaze”

The goal of fashion advertising is to connect potential customers with the brand, as with other forms of advertising. As with other brands, fashion ads promote a lifestyle just as much as the product, teaching consumers to associate a particular brand with a specific lifestyle and social class. The tone and content of ads may vary, depending on which market the company is trying to target, ranging from very wealthy individuals to people with less disposable income who could still be a valuable customer base.
I have choosen two big adverts within the fashion industry, one is the Tom Ford campaign and the other Dior campgain. The reason why I choose these two was due to them being very different from one and other. However these both illustrates clearly the idea of the gaze.
In addition to working with fashion houses such as Tom Ford and Dior fashion advertisers also work with retailers who carry clothes and accessories. Stores use advertising to promote themselves and the products they sell. Whether high or low end, department stores want to present consumers with images of a specific lifestyle, using ads which tell a story to appeal to consumers and encourage them to buy the company's products.

Often, fashion advertising is heavily linked with sexuality. Scantily clad women in suggestive poses commonly appear in advertisements, whether they are marketing dresses, perfume, or anything else, and groupings of models may be used in print ads or commercials to create suggestive imagery. Some ad campaigns have crossed the lines in the view of critics, and have generated a great deal of controversy from people who feel that such ads are inappropriate, especially when they can be seen by young children.

A large majority of the ads that contain male objectification are in fashion advertisements placed in magazines aimed at women. These ads place men in overly sexualized, erotic positions. ;” this male is positioned in a sexually explicit way, rarely smiles and does not look at the camera. The “erotic male” is largely consistent with my findings from female fashion advertisements.
Females are now being given the opportunity to gaze at males in a way that was once reserved only for the pleasure of male to female gaze. Females are now being placed in a position of the subject, and males are more frequently being placed in the inferior position of the object. Women are more often taking on a position of power when placed in advertisements with men.
In the Tom Ford ad, the woman is considered as the ”Boss”, she does not look at the camera and she has an carefree attidue, maybe something that would be classified as the ”male gaze”, which i mentioned previously.

It is supposibly that the woman is often portrait as