Fashion and GlamourForWebsters Third New International Dictionary (1961), glamour is ‘an
elusive, mysteriously exciting and often illusory attractiveness that stirs the
imagination and appeals to a taste for the unconventional, the unexpected,
the colourful, or the exotic’. In its secondary meanings glamour is said to be
‘a strangely alluring atmosphere of romantic enchantment; bewitching,
intangible, irresistibly magnetic charm; [.. .] personal charm and poise
combined with unusual physical and sexual attractiveness’.
Today, this world of illusion, mystery, seduction and enchantment is to be
found almost exclusively in media representations but, as the magazines
referred to above show, this world is connected to everyday reality in many
ways. Through consumer products women are promised instant transforma-
tion and entry to a realm of desire.^10 In December in particular, women’s
magazines suggest ideas to assist their readers in preparing for the Christmas
party season by presenting photographic spreads of red gowns, black evening
dresses and sultry cosmetic treatments. On occasion, the message can be
remarkably simple. In 19 of September 1994, for example, the ‘glamour look’
is reduced to bright red lipstick, a party frock and high heels.
Where did these ideas come from? When and how did glamour become a
general phenomenon, indeed even a routine feature of contemporary culture?
Why is it associated almost exclusively with the feminine? Quentin Bell and
Daniel Roche both suggest that glamour’s origins are to be found in the ancien
régime.^11 Sumptuary laws reserved the use of certain colours and precious
fabrics for the aristocracy and the court in feudal Europe. In consequence,
elegance, luxury and seductive appearances were confined to the top of the
social system. Other authors, including John Harvey, have shown that the
bourgeois revolution witnessed the renunciation of colour and flamboyance
by men of all classes.^12 In the nineteenth century, black became the habitual
masculine colour, while decorativeness, luxury and seduction became a
feminine prerogative. According to another interpretation, glamour as it is
understood today, as a structure of enchantment deployed by cultural
industries, was first developed by Hollywood. In the 1930s, the major studios,
having consolidated their domination of the industry, developed a star system
- It might be argued that by the 1980s men were also being offered such promises. However,
consumption and shopping were connoted as feminine when they first emerged in the nineteenth
century and have retained some of these associations. See Rappaport, Erika, Shopping for
Pleasure: Women and the Making of London’s West End, Princeton: Princeton University Press,
- Bell, Quentin, On Human Finery, London: The Hogarth Press, 1976; Roche, Daniel,
The Culture of Clothing: Dress and Fashion in the ‘ancien régime’, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994. - Harvey, John, Men in Black London: Reaktion, 1995.