Fashion Communication In Asia: Participant Observation And Qualitative Interview With Media Personnel At MILK X Monthly

Abstract

This paper investigates how global fashion brands and Hong Kong print media appropriate and negotiate the meaning of ‘fashion’ and its vicissitudes in and through the process of marketing communication in the local context. The researcher played the role of participant observer in the editorial team of high fashion magazine MILK X Monthly (2011). Through the process, the author partook in the realistic work environment and daily routines, and examined the interactions of fashion media workers; befriended and dialogued with eight internal co-workers from ad sales executives to editors, from (advertorial) copywriters to graphic designers; connected and interviewed other external fashion media workers in the Asian context, altogether help the researcher acquire valuable insights to outline the contemporary fashion media landscape in conjunction with diverse academic theorisations of fashion and fashion communication. The interviewed fashion media personnel come from an array of cultural, experiential and organisational backgrounds, which contributes to the comprehensiveness and first-handedness of this case study. The transcribed interviews have been thematically coded and analysed. The interviewee’s position within the media organisation, understanding of the publication’s positioning and intended portrayal of fashion, perception of the power of various fashion media in defining ‘what fashion is’ were inquired and investigated. The result shows that, in the production process of textual and graphical/visual fashion, various internal and external negotiations of how to demonstrate the appropriate fashion messages were frequently staged. Such process narrowed down, redefined and consolidated a wide range of fashion meanings, followed by the final representations of such in specific manner. The findings validate the ‘exploitative and creative’ nature of fashion communication theorised in the Western academic discourse.