Katie Budd
ZARA Spring 2020 Campaign
This project consists of several fashion images featuring a variety articles from ZARA’s 2020 Spring formal collection. Made up of both commercial studio photographs and editorial fashion images, this series seeks to examine the authoritative gaze present within contemporary fashion photography. By presenting images which depict interactions between models dressed in pieces from the collection alongside those only containing the articles themselves, this series seeks to display a contrast between how each of these modes of commercial representations use references to glamour, aesthetics, power and sex to illicit the viewer’s attention, while also representing how the brand sees itself.
The images containing only clothing/accessories are carefully stylized and displayed in a way which visually represents them as fashion objects that promise the wearer something beyond their functional purpose in an abstract manner. On this account, items such as shoes, jewelry, purses and complete outfits attempt to sell themselves based upon their allure in their own right, as well as what they offer as a visual marker of aesthetic sensibility, power, femininity/masculinity, elegance, class, etc. Images which feature models engaged in editorial tableaux and various scenes seeks to do similarly, however they go about it in a different way. These images extend direct suggestions of where/how these items may be worn & how they may serve the viewer with examples.