Within Breach DE1162 Holly Iles

WITHIN BREACH

“SOCIAL PROGRESS CAN BE MEASURED BY THE SOCIAL POSITION OF THE FEMALE SEX” Karl Marx

How are we doing?

How do these images make you feel?

Empowered? Or embarassed?

Which image is more genuine?

Which image would encourage you to buy something?

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UNPROTECTED SEX: THE DANGERS OF ADVERTISING Fifteen years ago, sociologist George Ritzer wrote “[Advertisements] are all oriented to attracting the largest number of consumers, anything that might be construed as being offensive is ruthlessly eliminated”. Only a decade and a half later, this could not be further from the truth. The age of innocence is over, and if we’re not careful, the age of beautiful cultural variety could be too.

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It is estimated that we are presented with between 250 to 3000 advertisements every day, standing out has never been so difficult.

With this level of competition, advertisers found the most effective way of creating a lasting impression on consumers is to shock them.

This is nothing new, but I’d like to focus on one of their favourite methods of inducing distress among consumers; sex. Brands in all sectors now use it as a way to market themselves.

The unfortunate truth for us fashion faithfuls, is that our holy world of aesthetic beauty, cultural movements and eccentric icons is also shamefully guilty of using sex to sell. Fashion may even be one of the worst industries for it, have you seen American Apparel’s tube sock advert?

The purpose of an advertisement is to express a brand’s ethos or promote a product/lifestyle in the hope that we will relate it to a part of ourselves. An advertiser’s goal is to encourage sales, and there are now over 7.2 billion people on this planet all with their own personality and interests. So the question is, what is the single most relatable subject between seven million people? The answer is simple: sex.

It is the most fundamental connection between us all, everyone has a sexuality no matter the orientation. Although we all have a brain and heart, not all of us have two eyes, two arms and two legs. The few things we all possess include a personality, a story and a sexuality.

Advertisers quickly caught on to this and even more rapidly put it into practise. Concerns of advertisements being indecent are noted in the ASA’s (Advertising Standards Agency) annual reports from the mid-1980s, and its not hard to understand why.

If you design an advertisement with sexual undertones, more of the viewing audience is likely to relate to your content. Everyone can empathise with brands on this level but when it comes to their core values, not everyone can connect with them as well as they previously believed. This is damaging because lots of brands such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Tom Ford and Sisley now market themselves in this way.

By only expressing themselves on a surface level, a greater proportion of us think we have a connection with an incredibly large variety of companies. Many of which we would not normally associate ourselves with.

This is the true crime of advertisers today, they encourage monotony. If everyone empathises with the same brands because we think we share their ideals of sex, this results in us all chasing the same image that says nothing about who we are.

I spoke to fashion blogger Courtney Quinn to learn her views on personality and style; “Being individual is what get you noticed! I try to bring my own personal style and individual twist to every look I share to ensure uniqueness on my blog. Besides, what’s the point of dressing up just to fit in? Boring - I dress up to stand out!”

If we want to live in a world where diversity thrives, we need to reduce the explicit content we are presented with. Innocence is becoming too rare a virtue and it would appear a sense of personal truth is as well. When advertisers start being honest about the true dispositions of the brands they represent, we can start being honest with ourselves. No one should feel ashamed to express themselves genuinely, that includes the brands we express ourselves through.

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“IN THIS BRIGHT FUTURE YOU CAN’T FORGET YOUR PAST” Bob Marley

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Desperate for a change of scenery, we travelled north with Judy’s Affordable Vintage Fair to one of the stops on their nation-wide tour, to the cold but beautiful Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. Seeking inspiration from decades past, we spoke to the vendors supplying the people of this decade with clothing of those before them.

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“I was supposed to do design at uni, then I did psychology and then I ended up with this.�

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“You should see me in my leopard print coat!”

“Its really long hours but you get to travel to a different city every weekend and see beautiful town halls. I have a real passion for this�

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