(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
interpretations about the fashion magazines.
Literature review
Development of fashion magazines in a global context
The first women magazine in Taiwan originated in 1960s, named ‘Women’. This
magazine is nothing about fashion, but its targets are women in general. Its main
content is to inculcate about the women virtue and the anti-communist ideas. Based
on historically complicated entanglement, the relations across Taiwan straits is a
sensitive issue to both Taiwanese and Chinese. ‘Women’ is responsible for moral and
educational assignment to women. In 1970s, there are some leisure magazines for
female are published, as ‘Sisters’ and ‘New Sisters’, there are some news about pop
idols and romantic stories in the text. By opening to foreign investment policy, there
is more foreign culture infused in women magazines in 1980s, especially the concepts
of fashion and taste. Fashion magazines originally published in America and France
numerous translated into Chinese language and come into the market of Taiwan.
‘BAZZAR’, launched in 1990, is the first international English version fashion
magazine in Taiwan, the second is ‘Cosmopolitan’, launched in 1992, the third is
ELLE which belongs to Marie Claire, launched in 1993, and the last is ‘VOGUE’
which launched in 1996 (Lu, 2005). After 2000s, Japanese fashion magazines were
also appearance in the bookstore and comic house in Taiwan. There are over 30
various cultural fashion magazines in the market.
There are different emphases between those magazines from different countries. In
general, Western magazines provide more human subjects as a spiritual mentor, the
content include lifestyle, art, and sex topic. Japanese fashion magazines carry plenty
product information and outfit tips, besides professional models images, there are also
the general public’s images on some units. Taiwanese fashion magazines are more
like Japanese fashion magazines but introduce more local brand products. Western
usually choose different ethnic models to present various beauty styles, but models in
Japanese and Taiwan fashion magazines are usually more homogeneous. Morimoto
and Chang (2009) find that native models are most often appearance in the images,
among the Western models, Caucasian are the most favorite, Hispanic and multiracial
at least there.
In a global context, there are many researchers concern about the influence of fashion
magazines, especially those images of ads. One of the issues is women’s new image.
Lowy (2007) points that women go through a process of modernization, and it radical
changed women’s self-identify. Lowy indicates that the Meiji period (1868-1912) is
172