Fashion speaks through clashing masks: encoding fashionability in and through the Hong Kong Fashion Media

Abstract

Fashion plays a significant role in the global creative industries and in urban social space. In the realms of art, history and cultural studies, however, fashion is often regarded as a peripheral or even unorthodox topic. Hence, this study aimed at remapping the relationships among the interdisciplinary and conflicting notions of fashion, determining which and how fashion theories are applicable to the real fashion industry in a specific place at a particular time, apprehending the nuanced mechanisms involved, and seeking to create a substantial case for the social construction of fashion. The role of the print media in reporting local and worldwide fashion news in Hong Kong was investigated. An array of conflicting theoretical views towards fashion are first discerned.  The participant observations and responses excerpted from interviews and conversations are presented. Those data portray partly conflicting, partly consistent notions of fashion among those working in the fashion media. They will be discussed with reference to the diverse notions of fashion. The focus of the observations was: What shapes one’s current understanding of fashion? What fashion messages do fashion media intend to communicate? The responses surprisingly demonstrate the contradictory rules guiding how media people determine what is fashionable. Real cases happened tend to echo the critical perspectives, however, the encoding process also involved aesthetic and creative judgment and validated the pluralistic perspectives. In general the media personnel were not very powerful in encoding fashionability, yet it does not mean they could not influence the fashion meanings at all.