Iris Publishers_Journal of Textile Science & Fashion Technology (JTSFT)

Now and Then: The Fascinating Narrative of Fashion and Clothing Advertisements

Introduction

This paper explores the nature of the texts and images associated with advertising throughout the histories, including commercial images, artistic and literary representations, photographs and postcards, the printed word and the visual arts in the fashion and clothing context (Figure 1).

The term newspaper became popular sine the 17th century. Publications that we would consider to be newspaper publications today were appearing as early as the 16th century in Germany [1]. The Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien, printed from 1605 onwards by Johann Carolus in Strasbourg in German language, is regarded as the first printed, dated, appeared at regular and frequent publication intervals newspaper [2].

On 7 November 1665, The London Gazette (at first called The Oxford Gazette) began publication. It is considered to be the newspaper that decisively changed the look of English news printing. In 1731, The Gentleman’s Magazine, the first English language magazine published in London (Figure 2).

The exciting and fascinating narrative of the world press requires clarification as Raymond in his study of the Invention of the Newspapers explained, the initial appearance of newsbooks on 29 November 1641, caused the invention of the newspaper as we know it today. The first notebooks had title-pages and later developed the usage of section headings to indicate the date, and place of origin of letters [3,4]. Through the second half of the seventeenth century, c1665, the newspaper emerged and evolved. In the United Kingdom between 1830-1855, four hundred and fifteen newspapers were published. Between 1855-1861 about four hundred and ninety-two newspapers were published [5]. The power of the press in the nineteenth century and its capability and effectiveness to influence and govern certain aspects of social life is accepted and acceded to by many historians and writers, such as Raymond, Jones, and Cranfield. The contents of these newspapers were extensive. Subject matter including English culture, religious observances, popular amusement, leisure, education and law and crime were regularly depicted.

Review

Newspaper is one of the compensating forces of modern life, helping to draw us all together, tend to make us better, it is helpful, softening humanizing Christian influence, wrote Rev. Brook Herford in 1866 [6]. As Cranfield analyses, the narrative of the press is based on three main themes: intelligence, instruction and entertainment. All have meant different things to different people at different times [7]. Initially, the deficiency of literacy, especially amongst the inferior classes, justified the newspapers as a privileged and prestigious novelty to the elevated classes. As Cranfield described, more and more numbers of the working class were able to read. The appearance of the English (British) newspapers were transformed and adapted according to their novel audience [8].

The press has been, for the most part, the instrument of kings, priests, aristocrats, and imbeciles in carrying out their irrational, ambitious, uncivilized and uncivilising designs. - The Compositors Chronicle, 1842 [9]. For much of the nineteenth century, newspapers remained under the control and surveillance of governments. Nevertheless, the image of the newspaper as a harbinger, or indeed the active agent, of change, exerted a powerful hold over the contemporary imagination [10].

The Victorian advertisement exposes materialistic fantasies. It tells of goods that excited the imagination and of mundane realities of everyday life [11]. Advertising has had a long and vivid history. One of the earliest actual evidences of advertising is an inscription in the form of propaganda found on a 3000BC Egyptian tomb. There were signs customarily hang outside tailors’ shops in the Medieval era (Figure 3).The history was made in 1477 when William Caxton pulled from his hand press the first ad to be printed in the English language. In time, tradesmen such as tailors were ordering printed announcements in the form of bills or cards for exhibition purposes or to handout to the passerby. At first, these ads were straight type designs, later becoming fancier, with Roman script and flowing characters. In 1788, ‘The Times’ published two shipping advertisements, each illustrated with a small line drawing, the first ever illustrated ads.

The illustrations for printed ads had to be rendered in line and reproduced by means of a hand-carved woodblock or metal engraving. The power press, invented in 1818, had replaced the hand operated press.

Advertising could be defined as a means of giving information about goods and services [12]. Of all the classes of media available, the press is regarded as the most potent means of persuasion. Modern newspapers are ranked among the most important means of opinion formation [13]. Magazine and newspaper advertisements developed into inevitable paraphernalia of the ever mutating nineteenth century. Advertising benefited both consumers/readers as well as the publishing industry. Nineteenth-century advertisers increasingly became an essential pre-condition for the survival and growth of the publishing industry [14]. Prior to the 1850s in Britain, advertisements were small, unillustrated and confined to the back pages. By 1880, advertisements were presented with spectacular illustrations (Figure 4).

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