CSP The Gentlewoman- Language, Audience, Industry & Representation

Genre: woman's magazine conventions

Identify key genre features from examples given.

• Main figure displaying highly luxurious clothing & jewelry.
• Bright colours
• Considerable makeup amount- especially eyes & lips.
• Close up/head shot of model, not full body/shoulder up from GQ.
• Main figure- focus.
• Background- simplistic & blurred.

Central characteristics common for mainstream magazines?

• Clear logo above/behind main characters.
• Women- heavy makeup either matching/standing out of outfit.
• Small anchorage based articles- not main.

How's Gentlewomen stretching genre?

• Bi-annual publication released 18 issues & worldwide circulation of almost 10,000 copies. Doesn't have mass magazine's circulation, but makes differences in women's fashion representations.
• Older women as cover characters subverts conventional representations (young, thin, tall & white). Represents professional women ("doing stuff", old "pretty, passive, ****, conventionally attractive" concepts get invalidated/assosiated with "lower" culture).

Industrial context

Magazine's target audience

Most likely women in the socioeconomic categories ABC1. Likely middle-aged, slightly less (25-41). Likely white, heteorsexual. May include women of colour/ of disability (both featured). Focused on women who want to be conventionally attractive & passed youth. Luxurious & high end.

How the magazine establishes identity 

Features shopping section selling their merchandise, magazines themself, subscription packages, postcards, main books, cocktail needle, blankets & minature magazines. Also features celebrity, famous people, conventially attractive itemed collections. Every magazine's featured online as well as celebrities.

How they engage with readerships?

Promotes clubs engaged with (company), some as recent as October 2023, starting January 2014. All feature small info on what events were & includes pictures. Sell merchandise for audiences to buy. Section where audiences sign up to newsletters to stay up-to-date. Also do celebrity & audience Q&As.

'Gentlewoman' concept's not just a niche fashion category, but important signifer shifts in fashion & women in fashion's representation.

Uses & Gratifications

- Design Aesthetic

- Ethical Values

- Environmental issues

- Independeny & niche identity

- Feminist principles.

Why might women avoid typical 'fashion' assosiations?

• Concerned about representation- "fake", frivolous, idealised & trivialised. Fears over looking "stylized"- wearing makeup & borrowed clothes from recent collections. Inautheticity.
• What approaches get used representing women without "emptying" her? How many manipulations made to represent women as "authentic" without "image" reduction?

Mediakit- target audience

• 85% female readers.
• 15% male readers.
• Median age- 32 (61%- 28-46).
• AB- top earners (£87,000 yearly).
• Liberal

Gentlewoman? Woman? Lady? Girl?

• The last decade's women's fashion representations gain naturalness & "authenticity". Older's concepts ("prettyness" & conventional attractiveness) get invalidated.
• Niche title constructs images of modern, honest, independent, interesting, hard-working…