The entertainment industry and the fashion world have been interlinked for hundreds, if not thousands of years. However, what probably started as getting dressed up for the theater has evolved into intertwined fortunes in which entertainment drives fashion, and fashion drives entertainment. Television shows, cinema and music aren’t just outlets for creativity anymore, they have become outlets for fashion to such an extent that fashion, in some cases, has become the driving force behind the “creativity” of entertainment.
Obviously, one of the big stepping-stones in the evolution of this semi-symbiotic relationship was the advent of the star. Stepping out on the red carpet at award ceremonies, theater opening nights and film premiers in the latest couture dresses and tailor made designer suits meant that stars from all areas of the entertainment industry have become conduits for the delivery of the latest fashions to the mass media.
It would be a significant oversight to assume that this implies that stars and their latter day less than saints, celebrities, are merely manikins and models for the highest bidding design house, although this is partly the case. The reality is that the relationship is much more complex than this, depending on the star’s or celebrity’s relative worth. A-list stars and free-spirited celebrities might be in a position to choose their own fashion, directly influencing what is popular in high street stores and fashion catwalks.
Now, more so than ever before, stars and celebrities from the entertainment world are even going so far as to design their own clothing ranges, having an even more direct influence on fashion. Singers and actresses alike have their own clothing ranges, but less obvious areas like rap and rock music have also succumbed to the temptation of fashion design. Both 50 Cent and Liam Gallagher have clothing collections for sale at the moments and while they may not necessarily be all that good, they are obviously having some influence on the clothing choices of consumers.
However, fashion and entertainment have gone even further than talent interconnection, they have moved increasingly towards content interaction. America’s Next Top Model, for example, is pretty much a direct collaboration between the television and fashion worlds to deliver entertainment-based content. The program makes would be fashion models stars and celebrities and the process of modeling into entertainment.
Another type of example of content interaction can be seen in Sex and the City, in which the characters’ love, devotion and work for the fashion industry is one of the main focal points for the series and film plots. The stars of the show and now movies have become synonymous with the fashion world, promoting their own particular fashion tastes as well as acting as endorsements for interest in the fashion world in general. Plenty of other shows and films have followed suit with this interconnection, including Ugly Betty and The Devil Wears Prada, which was originally a book.
Even the lives of famous figures from the fashion industry are being used as inspiration for creative content like films, books and television shows. The life of Coco Chanel, for example, has now been transformed into a number of major motion pictures, including two starring Amélie’s Audrey Tautou.
While the entertainment world and the fashion industry remain two separate entities in themselves, with many spreading disciplines, they have definitely become more and more aligned, interconnected and interdependent. How this relationship will evolve over time is hard to tell with such a huge interrelation already in place, but one thing is for sure, they are forever bound to each other through ties of fortune, mutual respect and shared interest.
