City-branding is usually a topic that practitioners, official bodies and academic researchers have approached from the marketing perspective, i.e. the deliberate strategy set to better “sell” a city-location to various stakeholders, from tourists to investors. The idea is to shape the city image which, as any location image, is a multidimensional phenomenon involving cognition and emotions. It has been defined as the aggregate of impressions, expectations and thoughts related to a definite place (Kotler et al., 1999; Ulaga et al. 2002). However, some scholars have found that places are “like a blank canvas upon which a series of representation are layered producing a place that is uniquely identifiable” (Staiff, 2014). Such representations include poetry, painting, film, travel writing, postcards, novels, maps, guide books and advertising. They build some imaginary of the place with physical buildings as metonymic characteristics of it, producing in the end some hyperreal meaning of the city, an iconic one (Ellul, 1988; Staiff, 2014). Therefore, studying the successive ways of staging a city in advertising, one should be able to identify the iconic elements of the city, the overall city-image implicitly built (and congruent categories of products) and in the end the culturally-built current visual imagery of the city, i.e. the one being currently promoted by city-branding marketing strategies. Particularly, fashion advertising is, as a creative industry (Howkins, 2002), part of some cultural-expression and cultural-building processes. Regular reuse of a setting would simultaneously shape the imaginary of this setting, while borrowing some of its features and facets. The setting would thus become quite quickly an iconic representation of itself (Greimas, 1966), ultimately becoming hyperreal. We use Venezia as the field of study. Our objective is to show the hyperreal nature of the current city-image, with the disappearance of distinctions between signified and sign (Baudrillard, 1994), thanks to the successive reproduction of preceding reproductions of reality in fashion ads using Venezia as a setting. To do so, we use semiotics, building some analytic grid. Particularly, we study: the general impression/feelings when observing the ad; denotation; iconic semiotic analysis including gestalt elements; lexicographic analysis of the text present on the ad; enunciation and emitter’s position; whether the ad is opaque or transparent; the connotations that derive from all previous; and the ultimate classification of the ad depending on its ideology (Floch, 1990). The final results will be ready by the time of the conference. Some interesting trends already emerge, for instance the regular empowering nature of the city for human beings represented in the ad, or the transparent nature of the ad. Besides from providing interesting conclusion on Venezia and on fashion advertising systematically using some setting, we believe the added value of the research is also in the methodological approach that could be used by official entities to understand how their city is iconically represented and craft consistent city-branding strategies, esp. when the city has some historical linkage with fashion and luxury history. Similarly, fashion marketers and advertisers would benefit from knowing about the processes behind systematic reuse of a setting with insights for all fashion-related or luxury-related cities (Paris, Milan, Florence, New York, etc.).

This study is a theoretical research to investigate a methodological framework for analyzing the representation of women in fashion photography. For this study, this article attempts to develop a conceptual framework of the visual representation system through Lacan’s gaze theory, and analyze the representational aspects of women configured by gendered characteristics in the visual representation system. Structuralizing the visual representation system based on that theory, the gaze, the image/screen, and the subject of representation in the Lacan’s triangle diagram are replaced by the camera as the signifier of gaze, the representational image, and the seeing subject respectively. In the visual representation system, the camera creates a male-oriented visual field and structures a relationship of gendered power between male gaze as the seeing subject and female eye as an object to be seen. Looking into the representational aspects of women in this visual representation system structuralized by male gaze, women are represented in a way that reflects male desire through masquerade to comply with the patriarchal gaze, or differences that emphasizes the uniqueness and autonomy of women released from a patriarchal discourse. This study would be significant in that it provides theoretical basis for an analytic approach to the representation of women in fashion photography which we accept as a fixed one through the ideology of naturalization.

The digital technology that has brought about the information revolution acts as the causes of multi-faceted socio-cultural phenomena. The spread of the digital environment and the popularity of the digital devices accelerate the phenomenon or the fusion of culture and technology, and such a phenomenon is no exception in the fashion design. Namely, the combination of fashion design and digital-based technology draws more and more attention; Not only the technology is simply applied to the fashion design, but also it is used as an emotional tool to enhance consumers' satisfaction, while some designs and marketing cases stimulating consumers' emotion are highlighted importantly. This study was aimed at surveying and analyzing the contemporary fashion using the digital technology and thereupon, assessing the characteristics of the emotional representations of technology as well as their aesthetic values. To this end, the theory of ‘science of emotion and sensibility’ was applied to divide the characteristics of emotional technological expressions in the contemporary fashion into immateriality, non-boundary, multi-media and interaction, while the aesthetic values of the emotional technology immanent in the contemporary fashion were categorized into communication & participation, conceptual configuration, physical expansion and variable movement. This study analyzed uses of technology for human emotion and sensibility shown in not only collections but also communication media and exhibition spaces and thereby, suggested the direction for our fashion industry to fulfill consumers' changing needs and advance further.