Course Name: FDM 35080 Fashion and the Media
Description: This course aims at understanding the existing liaisons between Media and Fashion as central features of modern societies and significant expressions of the cultures in which we live. In fact, fashion is not only a medium through which we communicate our personal identities and our collective memberships: beyond that it enjoys and exploits the Media of Mass Communication in their extraordinary capacity of promoting, advertising and more generally informing on image(s), style(s) and lifestyle(s). Therefore, fashion business requires accurate and detailed capacities of communication both internal and external, as well as the ability to deal with media, institutions, interest groups and consumers. This course will provide students with the necessary knowledge required to operate successfully as fashion communicators within the ever-changing media field. Both the traditional media (print media, television) and the new ones (social media) will be analyzed in their specificity in relationship with fashion. A minimum set of ‘deal with the media skills’ will be introduced and examined in detail. PR and Media Relations, fashion journalism, fashion blogging, development of communication plan, Advertising and Fashion & Communication Promotion are examples of the issues that will be presented in class also thanks to the contribution of professionals and experts. Finally, we will also try to investigate the representation of fashion in the media, the way popular culture depicts and exploits fashion through media narratives (by discussing some audiovisual materials – documentaries, movies and television shows) and its complex and intricate relations with the wider cultural system.
Credit Hours: 3
Prerequisites: FDM 35900 Florence Orientation and Special Approval