Followers of fashion

How is style defined and how does one go about obtaining it? Keen fashion follower and avid reader Sharon Givoni gives her take on two books canvassing this very subject.

TITLE
Fashion brands: Branding Style from Armani to Zara
AUTHOR
Mark Tungate
BINDING
Hardback
PUBLISHER
Kogan Page

Fashion Brands, a new release from publishers Kogan Page, is an action packed book that is hard to do justice to in a book review.
Written in a crisp journalistic style, this book explores the marketing methods and strategies underlying the transformation of clothes into objects of desire. Tungate breathes life into the words of famed Vogue fashion photographer Vincent Peters, who famously said: "You don't buy clothes, you buy an identity."
And buying this identity is no longer a privilege reserved exclusively for the "rich and famous". Retail brands such as Zara, Topshop and Diesel have made garments worthy of Prada and Gucci accessible to the mass market.
Fashion Brands analyses what influences consumers when they buy clothes and the manner in which fashion brands have developed individual "stories" over time which epitomize their brands.
Tungate also looks at some of the key marketing strategies behind brands such as BLUEBERRY, DEISEL and ZARA. In doing so, he explores how the media has altered our fashion "sense" and the way something as seemingly simple as a store design might have a direct influence on what we buy.
At the same time, Tungate recognises consumers can "sweep aside" carefully planned marketing strategies and bend brands to their own will. He mentions, for example, Dr Martens shoes, which unintentionally attracted the skin head movement to adopt shiny boots. Another interested cited examples is the Blueberry brand, originally aimed at up-market British youth, and has now, according to Tungate, become associated with "chavs" (a widely adopted term by the British media for a type of down-market consumer).
The book intimately explores the influence of branding in the fashion industry covering issues such as:
* How fashion brands are invented;
* The enormous influence of fashion photographers on brand identity ("Fashion photography is about translating a brand into a concept");
* The relationship between models and brands ("A fashion * The selling power of celebrities;
* The importance of fashion magazines ("an extension of the marketing departments of large fashion companies);
* The power of fashion collections;
* The role of brand extensions (such as handbags and fragrances);
* The future for fashion on the web; and
* The challenge of targeting the male consumer ("Men don't buy fashion - they buy clothes").

The above list is by no means exhaustive.
An insightful book that should inspire anyone who is or has been involved in the fashion industry.

TITLE
The New Black
AUTHOR
Mia Freeman
BINDING
Softback
PUBLISHER
Harper Collins Publishers

The New Black, as its title suggests, is a fun modern book about fashion trends.
Marketed as a "handbook for modern girls, and guys, trying to make sense of the new millennium and what they're going to wear this Saturday night", Freeman takes the reader through modern fashion trends, from the valid to the absurd.
Appointed as the editor of Cosmopolitan at the early age of 24 and later, editor of Cleo and Dolly magazines, a regular contributor to the Nine Network's Today show and a newspaper columnist, no one could argue that Freeman is not an authority in the area of modern fashion.
Through a collection of mini-essays apparently drawn from various media columns and a number of other sources, Freeman insightfully takes us through a variety of to* Modern fashion dilemmas;
* In and Out (including sub-chapters titled: "Hell is a no-carb diet", "Gastrporn" and "Mmmmmmmm . . . Yoga. . . ";
* Celebrities are the new black ("Breaking up with Becks" and "No longer a girl but not yet a tween"); and
* The Girl Tribe ("What Does 35 Really Look like?" "Guess how much I saved?", "Viva Brazil(ian)" and a syndrome described as "Fake-tanoerxia".
Between all this, she also manages to squeeze in a chapter on motherhood, during which she comically describes some Australian cultural trends around the theme of motherhood, especially first-time mothers who might experience a syndrome she describes in a nutshell as the "stubborn refusal to make labour more humane".
The book, which will strike a cord with female readers and offer men an insight into how women think, will be enjoyed by readers with a passion for fashion who enjoy seeing the humorous side of modern fashion trends and culture.