Fauna-inspired fashion through the English language glass
Abstract
The article deals with representation of animal-inspired fashion highlights in the English fashion discourse with the focus on evolution of naming systems, categorization, multimodality, advertising and marketing strategies valid for online commerce. Animalistic motifs are considered on the basis of language-naming practices for clothes, footwear, accessories, jewelry and make-up. Fashion has become an important field of communication in modern world. Now it generates multimodal fashion discourse and refined fashion narrative with countless articles and innumerable posts on social media, Instagrammable looks of celebrities and influeuncers imitated by thousands of fashion fans. Glamorous fashion events are prominent social gatherings, which entail extensive international media coverage making a noticeable domain of online landscape. In the 21st century, radical changes in fashion were triggered by ecology movement and animal advocacy movement. Wild and domestic animals were used for clothes making for centuries but in the 21st century due to animal personhood movement and vegan fashion animals are likely to turn into a mere source of inspiration for designers. The shift in world vision and values triggers changes in customers' mentality and promotes creativity of fashion designers. Animal-inspired prints, gowns, footwear, accessories become means of self-expression and personification. Modern designers reinterpret the iconic images of the past bringing fashion to a new level what results into new word coinages in English, new distribution of fashion lexemes. Ergonyms – names of fashion items – contain indexical signs and might get associative meaning and emotional meaning being connected with famous people and celebrities. The list of animalistic fashion terms with indexal names is getting longer in the wake of the attempts to introduce new prints into fashion industry. Online business dictates advertising and marketing strategies with catchy names, slogans and detailed linguistic description of goods. Naming conventions are being changed as animal-prints get connotations, associations; lexical units acquire occasional intensifiers and determiners. Playfulness of animal-inspired fashion items is conveyed via humorous names and naming components. Zoomorphic accessories give rise to new portmanteau words. Modern fashion discourse proves linguistic practices and naming conventions are becoming more sophisticated and intricate.
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