Fashion collections have long served as essential platforms for communicating a brand’s identity and philosophy, traditionally centred around fashion shows. However, advancements in digital technology and evolving consumer culture have diversified p...
Fashion collections have long served as essential platforms for communicating a brand’s identity and philosophy, traditionally centred around fashion shows. However, advancements in digital technology and evolving consumer culture have diversified presentation formats to include lookbooks, fashion films, and exhibition-style presentations. These emerging formats have gained renewed significance as strategic tools that deliver brand messages through richer, more immersive sensory experiences.
Today, fashion presentations increasingly aim to craft multi-layered and immersive audience experiences through advanced methods such as audience-free shows, live streaming, real-time social media sharing, and virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR). While fashion shows remain significant symbolic platforms, they are now frequently integrated with various alternative presentation modes. Yet, previous research has primarily focused on fashion shows as vehicles for brand identity communication, resulting in a relative lack of systematic analysis of digital or alternative formats such as lookbooks.
Thus, there is a clear need to explore the evolution of presentation formats and identify newly emerging expressive characteristics. Addressing this gap can provide crucial academic and practical foundations for shaping future strategies in fashion collection presentations.
This study begins from this awareness, aiming to investigate how presentation formats and their expressive characteristics have historically evolved within their socio-cultural contexts and to identify new expressive traits through an analysis of contemporary fashion collections.
Specifically, the study poses two primary research questions:
(1) How have fashion collection presentation formats and their expressive characteristics evolved historically?
(2) What expressive characteristics have recently emerged in contemporary fashion collection presentations?
To systematically explore both the commonalities and specific strategies across diverse presentation formats, this research proposes an analytical framework comprising three key dimensions: garment expression, model direction, and audience experience. These dimensions are fundamental for concretising and delivering the message of a collection, and they provide an effective basis for comparison, allowing for a nuanced understanding of the shared and unique characteristics among different presentation formats.
Guided by this framework, the study employs literature review and case study methodologies. The literature review examines historical developments from the mid-eighteenth century to 2024, analysing how socio-cultural, technological, and media contexts have influenced the evolution of presentation formats. It reveals that presentation formats have not emerged as singular entities, but have consistently developed through coexistence and hybridisation.
The historical analysis identifies five distinct developmental phases.
First, the stage of indirect transmission prior to the era of Charles Frederick Worth. Second, the introduction and formalisation of the fashion show as a presentation format. Third, the emergence of controlled and exclusive presentations, often limited to invited audiences. Fourth, the stage of mass media-driven popularisation, expanding the reach of collections through print and broadcast. Finally, the contemporary phase of digital dissemination, characterised by interactivity and immediacy.
The case study examines 53 fashion collections presented within the past five years that demonstrate significant innovations or expansions beyond conventional formats. The three-dimensional analytical framework reveals several key findings: Garment expression increasingly emphasises making the production process visible and stimulating sensory imagination; model direction incorporates diverse narrative strategies such as fragmentation and duplication of identity, objectification, and symbolism; and audience experience prominently features personalised immersion, participatory online community engagement, and performative involvement, highlighting an increased emphasis on active audience participation. These trends illustrate how advancements in digital technologies and platforms continue to diversify and hybridise presentation formats, reinforcing strategies to convey brand messages in increasingly immersive and sensorial ways.
The significance of this study lies in its holistic approach to fashion presentations, moving beyond simple categorisation or isolated case analyses towards an integrated perspective that systematically examines historical and contemporary developments. The analytical framework of garment expression, model direction, and audience experience provides a coherent interpretative lens, enabling a comprehensive understanding of the similarities and distinctions across various presentation formats. Ultimately, this study offers valuable academic and practical insights to guide future brand presentation strategies and the effective design of sensorial communication.