Role of Vogue Magazine in the Transformation of Screen Characters into Style Icons

Abstract

This article focuses on the role of Vogue magazine in the creation of style icons, which are primarily movie characters. Based on the theories of iconicity and conditions of truly iconic, it has been researched, how Vogue magazine transforms a celebrity and its screen character into a style icon through the cover images, profile stories and their correlation to the screen character portrayed in a movie. In the meantime boundaries between the on-screen and off-screen images of the actresses/icons get vague, with an emphasis on the fashion legacy of the characters in general visual culture. Main examples of this article are Carrie Bradshaw, played by Sarah Jessica Parker in TV-show and feature film Sex and the City (1998-2008), Satine (performed by Nicole Kidman) of Moulin Rouge (2001) and Marie Antoinette (portrayed by Kirsten Dunst) from Marie Antoinette (2006). With time the actresses and/or their heroines get established as style icons due to the features related to the style iconicity, such as embodiments of cultural myths and narratives through fashion; ambiguities; wide circulation and immediacy of recognition, as well as involvement with dense web of products and encouraging consumption. In this paper style icons demonstrate the process of transformation of actresses and their on-screen characters through fashion, visible in their embodiment of the cultural myths, indeterminacies and narratives of transformation and self-improvement.

Keywords

• Vogue magazine
• Style icons
• fashion and film
• Carrie Bradshaw
• Moulin Rouge
• Marie Antoinette