Fashioning: Women and gender in film and fashion

Abstract

This article introduces the interviews featured in this issue of the journal with filmmaker Alina Marazzi and creative director of the Maison Christian Dior Maria Grazia Chiuri. In 2020, Maria Grazia Chiuri commissioned Alina Marazzi to make a short film about the work of Lucia Marcucci, a feminist visual poet and artist, active in the 1960s and 1970s who combined the language of mass media and advertising, and addressed themes such as the changing values of family, domesticity and the role of women. Focusing on the work of Alina Marazzi and Maria Grazia Chiuri, this article provides a framework to explore the long history of fashion and film, as well as the collaboration between Chiuri and female artists. In addition to discussing the digital genre of the ‘fashion film’, the essay contextualizes the emergence and development of the field of fashion studies and its relationship with feminism, women, the media and the history of women and fashion.