Fashion and Glamour3
Fashion and Glamour
Réka C.V. Buckley and Stephen Gundle
Few words are as ubiquitous in the contemporary mass media as glamour.
‘The new glamour burns bright’ headlined Interview in March 1997, while
Elle of December 1996 tempted readers with the following cover title:
‘Glamour! The people who live it – the clothes that scream it – the make-up
that makes it’. Yet quite what glamour is frequently remains unclear. When
fashion and women’s magazines from time to time conduct enquiries into
the meaning of glamour, they invariably seek opinions from a range of
experts and celebrities, whose views are strikingly contradictory. Confusion
arises over the gender connotations of glamour, whether it is an intrinsic
(charismatic) phenomenon or a manufactured one, and whether it is perma-
nent or temporary. In addition there is disagreement over its application to
age ranges, places and situations. Such is the lack of common ground that it
is tempting to agree with lexicographer Eric Partridge who, as long ago as
1947, included glamour in his list of ‘vogue words’ which had gained a
momentum of their own whatever the original impulse had been.^1 For
Partridge, glamour was a word without meaning that had been invested with
high status and picturesque connotations by authors and journalists.
One enduring feature of glamour is its identification with fashion. In a
recent analysis of fashion photography, Clive Scott contrasted ‘glamour’ with
‘sophistication’. He found that in the fashion press glamour was: youthful,
dynamic, pleasure-seeking, extrovert, voluble, short-term, gregarious,
uncultured, volatile, public (and thus downmarket). On the other hand
sophistication was seen as: mature, poised, restrained, introvert, taciturn,
long-term, solitary, cultured, controlled/severe (and thus upmarket).^2 In other
- Partridge, Eric, Usage and Abusage: A Guide to Good English, London: Hamish Hamilton,
1947, p. 361. - Scott, Clive, The Spoken Image: Photography and Language, London: Reaktion, 1999,
p. 156.