Les médias audiovisuels, l’autre vitrine de la création et des créateurs de mode

Abstract

The history and the economy of fashion are both closely linked to those of the media that it is difficult not to take those into consideration when drawing up an inventory of fashion heritage. The collections of the French national audiovisual institute (Institut national de l’audiovisuel: INA), in particular, constitute an original and underexploited resource, even if leading fashion houses now resort to them in order to root their communication in their history. If fashion, to begin with, is identified in the 1950s as a favourite subject for ‘women’s magazines’, limiting women to their role as housewives and to their household chores, some audacious women producers soon began to defend the idea that fashion could, on the contrary, lend itself to formal inventiveness and an offbeat tone. This gave rise, notably, to Daisy de Galard’s famous programme entitled Dim Dam Dom (1965-1971). The 1990s represent another chapter in this story of the meeting between fashion and the TV screen, although they are certainly not as marked by the search for formal experimentation. But with the diversification of TV channels, there was a host of new programmes devoted to the subject. New figures of women commentators and new programmes helped construct the identity of new channels, such as Mademoiselle Agnès or Daphné Bürki on Canal +, or Paris Modes on Paris Première. So, this article sets out to show what audiovisual archives can contribute to fashion history, underlining the interactions between creativity in clothes and on television.

Keywords

• archives
• arts
• avant-garde
• television
• craftsmanship
• fashion