A whole new vogue the future of fashion photography
2018 was a watershed year for fashion. The veil was pulled off its ugly side by Dolce & Gabbana founder, Stefano Gabbana’s racist rants, Me Too’s outing of fashion photography legends, Mario Testino and Bruce Weber, for sexual misconduct, and public outcry about its disregard for ethical and sustainable production practices. According to global fashion search platform, Lyst, searches for ethical fashion surged by 47% in 2018. Fashion’s recent struggles are no more apparent than in Australia. Famous labels, Collette Dinnigan, Wayne Cooper, Alannah Hill, Jayson Brunsdon, Sass & Bide, Ksubi, Morrissey Edmiston, Charlie Brown, and Lisa Ho, have died.
How fashion is seen, advertised, and bought has also changed. For younger generations, digital comes first. Fashion accounts for 27% of online purchasing globally, according to a 2018 Forrester report. 266 of the top 1,000 online retailers are clothing brands, and across 32 countries the percentage of people who bought online grew during 2018 to 58% – half of them in fashion retail. 65% of the online fashion traffic is now done on mobile. And according to international consulting group, BCG, 57% of fashion advertising is now online. In fashion editorial, Cosmopolitan closed in Australia in December 2018 following a readership decline across three years. Only Vogue Australia (+11.8%) and Marie Claire (+3.1%) increased their readerships significantly throughout 2018, according to Roy Morgan data.
According to US fashion photographer Lindsay Adler, “The fashion and beauty industry has really pushed back against itself in recent years and split into two distinct aesthetic approaches – fantasy and authenticity. Fantasy is all about perfection and idealised beauty standards – the perfect skin, perfect clothing, perfect models. Authenticity is all about embracing the individual and what makes someone unique, perhaps in
