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Fashion and Glamour

designed stores and advertisements in Vienna, became an influential set and
costume designer for Paramount. The most famous such emigré was Max
Factor, cosmetic artist to the royal opera in St Petersburg and later to the
Tsar’s family, who migrated after the Russian revolution to the USA.
Following a brief commercial experience in New York he moved to the West
Coast where he quickly established himself as the leading purveyor of make-
up to the movie industry. On the strength of this success, he developed lines
of cosmetics bearing his name that were marketed to the general public
through department stores. By buying products such as Max Factor’s
‘pancake’ make-up, women were invited to buy into the world of glamour
that they saw on the screen and in magazines. The commodification of
aristocratic allure in this way completed its cycle.

Glamour and Modernity

In this chapter, we have shown that glamour is integral to capitalist modernity.
It emerged at a specific point in history characterized by: the shift in terms
of the general order of meanings and priorities from a society dominated by
the aristocracy to one governed by the bourgeoisie; the extension of commodi-
fication into ever wider public and private spheres; the development of a
new urban system of life permeated by consumerism and the importance of
fashion; the closer proximity of the theatre and high society; the creation of
patterns of leisure shared by virtually all urban classes; an obsession with
the feminine as the cultural codifier of modernity’s tensions and promise.
Glamour became more important as modernity spread and the mass media
developed. Popular magazines, cinema, radio and, later, television provided
opportunities for staging, representing and inventing people, events and
commodities. For this reason they were seized on by retail and cultural
industries. Over time, a language of commercial seduction evolved and was
codified. It may be suggested that, in recent times, the forms taken by this
language have tended to be nostalgic or to employ pastiche. The fashion
spreads that appeared in the leading magazines at the time of the glamour
revival of 1994, for example, had a dull and familiar feel to them. Caprice,
as a contemporary embodiment of glamour, seems more like a reminder of
American television shows like Dynasty and Baywatch (which themselves
were influenced by classical Hollywood cinema) than an original. There are
several reasons for this. One is related to the sheer quantity of glamorous
images that have been produced over the last century. Today we live in a
complex, highly visual culture in which the iconic images of the past have,
through repetition, acquired more resonance than everyday reality. Thus