The Magic of Fashion ─ Ritual, Commodity, Glamour

Why do women all over the world read fashion magazines like Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, and Marie Claire? How do editorial, art, and advertising staff put together the monthly editions of each title in France, Hong Kong, Japan, the UK, and the U.S.? Based on the author’s two decades of ethnographic fieldwork and content analysis, and drawing on anthropological theories, The Magic of Fashion argues that the fashion industry makes commercial use of practices and rituals commonly found in magical and religious rites to enchant its readers. The book
-argues that fashion magazines make use of professional magicianseditors, art directors, photographers, business executiveswho perform magic-like practices to create the fantasies, glamour, seduction, and transformations characterizing the fashion and beauty industries;
-discusses how such beauty products as hair gels and glossy photos, among many others, are used to captivate and mesmerize readers much as incenses, magical elixirs, and spells enchant worshippers;
-explains how fashion magazines entice readers with an alchemy of refined and powerfully addictive contrasts” designed to be irresistible and seductive;
-suggests that such forms of manipulation derived from shamanism and animism can be found in all forms of cultural production.

Brian Moeran is Professor of Business Anthropology at the Copenhagen Business School. He has conducted decades of research on creative industriesincluding advertising, art marketing, ceramics, fashion, incense, and publishingmainly in Japan. He is founding editor of the Open Access Journal of Business Anthropology and author or editor of 20 books, including A Japanese Advertising Agency (University of Hawai’i Press, 1996), The Business of Ethnography (Berg, 2005); Negotiating Values in the Creative Industries (Cambridge University Press, 2011), and The Business of Creativity: Toward an Anthropology of Worth (Left Coast Press, 2013).