Fashion on the Red Carpet

The Academy Awards’ red-carpet is the most prominent fashion show in media culture. Fashion on the Red Carpet investigates the historical liaison between Hollywood and fashion institutions, to describe how public relations campaigns and the media articulate fashion discourses around the Oscars. The power-shift towards television, the emergence of celebrity culture, the post-war reactivation of transatlantic trade, the growth of fashion journalism, and the increasing circulation of designer names in the media, are converging factors leading to the institutionalisation of the red-carpet as a fashion event in its own right. Departing from archival sources, and tracing discourses of fashion, stardom, and celebrity surrounding Hollywood and the Oscars, this fascinating book explains how the red-carpet became a marquee for the endorsement of high-end fashion brands.