Dissertation Defense: Ira Solomatina

Politics and the political in women’s fashion magazines: Perspectives from India, Russia and the USA

27 March 2025, 13:00 hrs. Agnietenkapel. Supervisors: René Boomkens and Christine Delhaye

In the first quarter of the 21st century, fashion media’s coverage of political and social issues, although still largely perceived as novel and unusual, has become ubiquitous. This thesis focuses on the increased visibility of political coverage in fashion media, exploring how politics and the political are expressed in fashion publications, and what change the newly sharpened focus on politics signifies in the genre of the fashion magazine. To address these questions, the research examines how fashion publications’ political coverage relates to locally and globally shifting views on citizenship, activism, and civic duty. The study explores the conflation of spectacle, activism, consumption, and politics that characterises the current moment, alongside the exigencies, limitations, and historically gendered nature of fashion media. The study focuses on the time span between late 2019 and early 2023, and analyses political discourses in fashion media situating them within wider political and cultural contexts. It is based on data from three countries – India, Russia and the USA, and draws on examples from nine mainstream fashion and lifestyle publications for women.