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1/12
Weiss
Staab.
J.
(19901 Nochrichlem',emheorie. FOmUlie SlT7Jhur I/nd empirischer Geho . Frei
burg
Weiss. H. eT
al.
(1995)
Ge
all on Rechls
-
(J:jein Femsehlhemll: Z r Femsehberichl-
erslammg iiher Rech15e.nremisml/s. AlIslnder IInd An-l in Dell1schland .
Opladen.
8
Communications 22 1997) 1
Dimit ri Monelmans
Visual Representation o Luxury
An Analysis o Print
Advertisements for Jewelry
Abs
tract
U/lle research has focused on /he meaning of luxury. Nevenheless, luxury
goods play an impor/an/ role wi/hin society. This arliele employs a semio/ic
approach /0 grasp /he meaning of jewels as luxury produc/s. s symbolic
re-
presen/alion wi/hin prinl adver/isemell/s gives a dear view of h e wa)' adverli-
sers c reale
.
a luxury aura around malerial arlijacls.
luming
Ih em ill/o highi)'
s)'mbolic represenlalions
of
Slalus
and
wea llh. Slarting from a semiolie frame-
\Vork. Ihe research combines a qualilative and quanli/a/ive melhodolog)' la
analyze
Ihe
media conlenl of magazine advertisemenls for jewelry.
Introduction
Pove rty is relative . Depending on the instrument used, hi
gher
or lowe r de
grees of pove ny can be measured. The same goes for luxury; it is as relative
as poveny. The speedboat
cenain
peo ple con
si
der a luxurious product can be
the lifeboat secured to the mega-yacht
of
others . As
aresuIt,
sociologists have
tended
to
avo id the concept. There has been little researc h on luxury products,
as they are not considered a wonhwhiJe research topic. Nevenheless, consid
eration
of
luxury produets
seems
to
ope
n a wide area
of
stratification issues.
Depending on the distinctive
character
luxury pr
odue ts
have, the clarification
of
the functionality of wh at people consider as their luxuries can throw light
on stratification processes. This anicle argues that the first step in better un
derstanding the sociological contours
of
luxury and the ways
in
which luxury
produets work
in
society can be the investigation of the depiction
of
luxury in
advertisements. Al though printed adveni sements are fixed and well-choreo
graphed scenes, they can be very helpful in reconstructing the referent system
advertisers use.
We will use a soc ia l semiotic approach to illustrate the sy mbolic represen
tations of luxury as found in advenisements. Semiotics and the assoc iated
structuralism have fallen from grace in sociological theory. They were not
found convincing, as a general theoretic al framewo rk, because
of
inadequacies
in
explaining less abst ract aspects
of
soc ial life
li
ke
economie
and political be
havior (Giddens, 1995 : 7 15). The failure
of
a grand theory
of
sig ns should
not, however, lead to the comp lete abo lishment
of
the conceptual framework
Communica ons 22 1997) 1
9
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Mortelmans
semiotics
is
offering. In analyzing advenisements, and culture
in
general, it
has demonstrate its value. In visual and cultural sociology there is still a
place for analyzing a whole variety
of phenomena
as sign systems . In
th
is ani-
cle we first look at the basic features of this theoretical approach: the intemal
structure of signs and the cultural information embedded in them .
Advenise-
ments can be treated as texts, as aggregates of signs. Special anention will be
given to the significance of sociological and cultural concepts in analyzing
signs. Goffman s (1979:
25) argument
that "advenisements never depict social
life as it really
is"
is
imponant
in
th is
context.
Advenisers
use a hyper-ritua
lized imagery about the way people think their surrounding environment looks
or should look. Advenisements are symbolic anifacts of social life, promoting
a cenain social sign value instead
of
selling a material use value. A second
step will be the application of this framework towards the analysis of visual
representations of luxury products. How does advenising for luxury goods
make
people
use these products as markers for
cenain
social relationships?
What son of social relations are referred to as imponant? As a case study, we
will use a sample of advenisements for
jewelry
.
Signs in advertisements
Although print advenisements
could
be analyzed as stand-alone signs with
cenain
features, they have proven to be much
richer
when we consider them
as texts. It sounds odd to speak
of
texts in a sociological environment , though
semioticians tend to use this term when they are
dealing
with
complex
signs
consisting of other signs . Print advenisements are th us choreographed scenes
of different signs put together to form an advenisement tex!. In opposition to
linguistic analyses
of
texts, we are not refeffing here to verbaI text. Textual
analysis of print advenisements uses semiotic
concepts
in
order
to find out
what social meanings are involved in an ad.
Drawing
on Judith Williamson's
( 1978: 29) analysis of print
advenisements,
we are in fact looking for social
or
cultural sign
systems
which are used in ads to
create
meaning by
means
of
Juxtaposition .
Take the advenisement for Wolfers in Figure I. t represents a large room
with bright light (sunlight?) shining through draped
cunains
.
The center
of the
page shows a sheet-covered sofa with a woman holding a flute. In front of her
are two cups. The left side of the phorograph is filled with a large cactus,
while the
opposite
end depicts an open door. The Dutch slogan states, "With
Wolfers begins the day." The bOllom pan of the ad has a white, separate box
shaped
pan showing
a necklace (the
advenised
product)
and the brand name.
Under Wolfers, we find a reference to the company 's expenise:
Jeweler
since
1812. The lion-cruwn sign with the underscore 'Royal Warrant Holder' refers
to an official emblem, exclusively preserved to purveyors of the Belgian Roy
al Family.
The
advenisement we have just described
is
c1early a
complex
sign, a text.
After a brief description
of
the manifest content
of
the imagery, the next ana
70
Communications 22 (1997) 1
Visual Representation of Luxury
in
\.
~ \ : .
i'f
I . I> ,'
r
f
1F [ \\C )LFERSDE I A
j
TH;
0 \
/
',
J
-
Ar
.. .:.
-
-
' .
.. /
I
i
_1
o rs
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ..
.
.
; ; : ~
-
._
,
- ; .
'
Figure 1: Wolfers
Communications 22 (1997) 1
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Mortelmans
Iytical step to retrace the socio -semiotic meaning
of
the ad is to divide the
image into its
cO
stitutive
pans
and to look at the paradi g mati c
choices
that
were made and the syntagmatic combinations the advertisers used to crea
te
the selling argument. Before we start , however, with th is second anal ysis, we
should keep an important
premi
se in
mind
. In
Images in
d
ve rrising: he
need f or a theory
of
visual rhetoric , Scot criticized convincingly the com-
mon analyses of advertising images . She attacked the false underlying as
sumption of the ana lysis
of
visual
ima
g
eries
:
pictures
are not
merely
analo
gues tO visual perceptions but symbolic artifacts constructed from the
conventions
of
a panicular culture " (Scon, 1994: 252 . In
order
to analyze ad
vert isem ent Images, we should, according to Scott, not merely look at
what
they show us but al so at how they show it and from where the se sy mbo lic
forms and arrangements come . However, we are not interested here in the
constructi on
of
the selling argument itself. We do nor look for a rhetori c theo
ry of visual represenrations. In stead, we think Scott's argument is useful in
ov ercoming the classic semiotic sta tement that pi ctures ger their meaning be
cause
of
a resemblance to a referent.
All cultural settings consist (among other things) of sign-systems, each
co mprising a whole hierarchy
of
other sub- sys tem s of signs. They are wh at
Berger and Luckmann
(1966:
63 ) called "the stoc k
of knowiedge
"
of
a certain
culture; an intersubjective sed imenrat ion
of
practi ces and shared experiences
that bec ome objectified. In these sign sy stem s, se mioticians disee m regulari
ties and structuring
mechani
sms.
Main
stream
Saussurean
se miotics
co
nsiders
the intemal logic of a sign system as a jo int process
of
two in teracti ng axes.
A set of sig ns is a combinarion
of
different signs (the so-called syn tag matic
ax is) ,
ea
ch
of
which is
particularly
chosen from a
'category
'
of
signs (
th
e
paradigmatic axis
)2
The regulation
of
household interiors, for example , ca n
he looked upon as a structured whole of sig ns (a text) which is the re sult of a
comhination
of several
signs
(e. g., chairs,
cupboards, painting
s). Each
of
these
comb
ined signs is the result of
aselection
process. Signs tend to belong
toge ther in categories, the so-called paradigms, from which a sign utterance is
chosen . A certain hou sehold interi or co uld have a Kandinsky painting han ging
on the wall.
The
choice
of
this painting is the re sult
of
a paradigmatic se
Je
c
tion from the 'painting '
ca
te
go
ry which could also have ended up as
aR e
no ir.
Besides sig n sys tems act ive in re al world situation s, we can also disee m
vi
rtual sig n systems such as print advertis
ement
s or te lev ision program s. In
the Wo lfers advertisement, for example, we
fll1d
a set
of
sig ns
jo
ined together,
ro llowi ng the syntagmatic rules
of
a visual ad system and resul ting from a
paradigmatic choice from
visual
par
adigms . In the Wolfers ad, the advertisers
have chosen a cacIJ s be si de the chair, instead
of
a fem . They took plain cur
tains instead of striped ones , a straigh t font instead of a hand-written one. All
these choices were combined, following some sort of ad vertising desig n rules
in
o
rder
to create the Wolfers ad tex .
Syntagma tic combinations and paradigmatic choices are both culturally
72
Communicallons 22 1997) 1
Visual Representation
o
uxury
determined
.
The syntagm
atic
rules
gov
eming
a
ce
rtain sig n sys tem
are
not
free-f1oating unive rses . Culture se ts out the rules for combining signs into a
tex . An advertiser needs to take into account ce rt ain rules to create an ad
image.
f
he does not follow these rules
he
will not be able to create an
image
which people decode as an ad vertisemen . There are, however, two important
considera
ti
ons to make here . First , syntagmatic combination rules are never
fixed. Because rul
es
are the resulr
of
sedimented
shared
experiences, they are
constantly chan ging as new interactions become sed imented and legitimized.
Second
, advertisers are not strictly
bound
to the synt
ag
matic rule s
of one
par
ticular period. Within ce rtain boundaries they ca n
pl
ay with these combination
rules. Pre sently. little is known about visual combination ru les (e . g., the theo
ry
of visua
l rhetoric for w hich Scott
was arguing)
. O nly
two rhetorica
l figure s
seemed to have widespread use .
The
met aphor, o n one hand, which compares
two sig ns, and the metonymy, on the other hand , associates one sign with an
other sign (a Jeaf. f
or
example, could be s ignifying a whole tree) . But there
are many other ways in whi ch signs can be combined, especially in images.
Also , paradigmatic choices are social se ttings. In choo sing the elements
for an ad, adverti se rs know very weil the deno tated
3
meanings
of
the element s
of
a certain 'si gn cate go ry' . The y can pJay with these signs to alter their ' it
era\'
meanings or to co nstruct new meanings .
Retumin g to the Wolfers ad. in describing the adverti sement , we have al
ready
divided
the text into pan s , into included signs . Man y s igns on the
page
are
drawn
fro m interi
or
design paradig ms: the
draped curtains
in front
of
high window s, the ope n door with small glass windows, the sheet-covered
sofa and
th e
wr
oug ht-iron balcony.
The
visuaJ
joi
ning
of
these sign s,
sugges
ts
a large ro om with a rather cl ass ic interior de sig
n.
A second range
of
signs
sug
ge
sts a ce
rt
ai n time moment ('dawn'). Th e most important suggestion here
comes from the headline
('
tow ards the
day'). Thi
s
ve
rbal s
tatement
is sup
ported by several visual signs. The bright light shining through the curtains
evokes the picture of the sun rising early in the moming.
The
cups refer to the
traditional
mornin
g ritual
of drinking
tea (or coffee) to start the day. AIso, the
cJothing
of
rhe woman (a striped shirt) s
ugge
sts the early moment
of
the
scene.
The
last important sign we discern in rhe ima ge is the flute the
woman
is
holding
. Take n as show n.
without interpretation
, it
is
not very c lear
whether
or not the woman is a professional f1ute-pla yer. As we will see la ter, th is is
probably not very important , since the f1ute as such , is a powerful sig n.
We tum
our attention , then,
to
the box in th e lowe r
ri
ght side
of
the ad v
er
tisement. We find three i
mportant
signs there. Firs
t
there is the advertised
product itse lf: the pictur e of the necklace . Further, there is the verba I srate
ment
of
the brand say ing it is a
jeweler
working since 181 2 and the selling ad
dress is an exq ui
si
te Brussel s s
hopping
streel.
Finally
, there is the
reference
to
the Royal Family alld the warrant-holding sig n.
If we take the text as a whoie, what meanin g is generated? We ca n discem
Communicallons 22
1997
1
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Mortelmans
two general meanings included
in
the Wolfers ad: tirst,
an
elucidation
of
the
quality and superiority
of
the
jeweler
itself, and second , a reference to the tar
get audience. The 'quality meaning of the necklace is constructed in the
white box. Next to the advertised product and the brand name, the addressed
viewer gets to know the long experience
of
the Wolfers
compan
y and its man
date to deliver
jewels
to the Belgian Royal House. Although the Belgian Roy
al House has almost no political power in Belgium, its symbolic function
in
the COUntry is enormous . Being able to use this symbol for a commercial ad
vertisement in a conspicuous sector as the jewelry class, is
astrong
weapon.
Combining this symbol, moreover, with a tradition
of
more than hundred
years, gives the 'quality mes
sage
an imp ac t that the advertiser
doe
s not need
more than a little surface of the image to construct this meaning. The mere ac
cumulation
of
these signs is enough to create the message that Wolfers is not
a norrnal
jeweler
but a well-established company.
Besides the 'quality message there is a more important addressing mes
sage: Wolfers jewelry is not intended for everyone. The clientele they are
looking for are higher-eaming groups in society. How can we discern this
message from the
photograph
Wolfers is using? First, we have the interior
signs: the height
of
the house suggests that the room we are looking into is
part
of
a very large house. The balcony and the open door with glass sugges ts
that we are dealing with a mansion
or
a manor, maybe even with a sort
of
cas
tie .
So
the interior design of the room we see, submits a meaning which
shows an upper class room.
Next , the moment : why should advertisers choose to conjure up the idea
of
an ea rly moment?
t
seems as if it were not important. But, in fact, it is
quite important to use
momings,
instead
of
a roman ic evening scene. The
model
in
the picture is not dressed to go to work, she does not even show any
intentions
of
going to work. This seems to suggest that she wiJl not go any
where. In stead
of
a business woman rushing to work , she seems to have a full
day ahead
of
her, without even thinking
of
work. Moreover, she starts her day
playing the flute.
The
flute helps to suggest the upper class environment
in
two ways. First, playing a flute belongs to the so-called higher arts. Second,
the woman s
eems
to have time to play the flute the whole day . This is very re
miniscent
of
what Thorstein Veblen said more than a century ago:
So, for instance, in our time there is the knowledge of the dead lan
guages and the occult sciences . . .
of
the
va
rious form s of
dome
stic music
and other household art In all the se branches
of
knowledge the initial
motive fro m which their acqui
si
tion proceeded al the outset, and through
which they first came into vogue, may have been
something
quite differ
ent from wish to show that
one s
time had not been spent in indus
trial employment; but unless these accomplishments had approved them
selves as serviceable evidence
of
an unproductive expenditure
of
time,
they would not have survived. (Veblen,
1965: 45)
Someone
playing a flute in the moming, suggests they belong to the 'Iei
74
Communications 1997) 1
Visual Representation
of
Luxury
sure class' . Although the leisure class as Veblen
saw
it no longer exists and
conspicuous consumption today has taken a completely different form, there
remains a sort of picture of an upper class able of excluding themselves from
any productive work, at lea st for women as suggested in the Wolfers adver
tisemenl.
The
layout of the photo strengthens this observation.
The door 10
the
room is open, while the woman is looking in th
at
direction as if her partner
has
just
left for work.
A methodological
framework
for
visual analysis
As the preceding ana lysis has suggested, the construction of the Wolfers ad
was a result
of
using seve ral sign systems in order to
create
two main mes
sages. By tracing back the different signs that were used, we are able to get a
look at the use advertisers
make of
cultural information in order to create a
commercial se lling argument.
The
flute, for
example
, exemplities that the dif
ferentiating function
of jewelry
is strengthened by
th
e use
of
a sig n system
with the same purpose. The semiotic method of ana lyzing advertisements,
however, has always been critiqued for its arbitranness.
Because of
its stress
on individual readings
of
the advertisements it is hard to base interpretations
on large samples of advertisements. And if large samples were used , as by
Williamson and Goffman
,4
there were nearly always criticisms that the sam
pling
of
ads was not performed in a scientitic manner. SemiOlic analysis relies
too
of
ten on the individual capacities
of
the analyst to tind hidden myths'
or
deeper layers in adverti sements (Leiss
l
al.
1986:
165
- 166 )
In
order to overcome this criticism, we developed a combination of a qual
itative - i. e., socio-semiotic - interpretation of the data with a quantitative
base . Our researc h aimed at an explorative study of cultural sign systems ad
vertisers use to create visual representations of luxury item s. In order
10
find a
sociolog ical definition of the luxury concept, we first trace the relevant sign
systems society hands out to give luxury items their significance in contem
porary con sumer culture. In using the constructed world
of
advertisers, we try
to make contact with the underlying sign sys tem s society uses to create a lux
ury cachet around certain consumer durables.
We propose a three- step analysis of visual and verbal information
of
ad
vertisements drawing on both quantitative
and
interpretati ve techniques.
The
first step consists
of
the co nstruction
of
a random sample
of
advertisements.
We drew a sam ple
of
1,372 different advertisements. The
elements came
from
s
ix
Dutch magazines and
comprised
twelve product items .
The
selected maga
zine arti cles spanned a penod from
197
8 to 1994. For this article, we used
onl y the ads for jewelry: this resulted in a sub-sample
of 69
entities.
The
second step
in
the analysis procedure was to split up the image into
constitutive parts. We decided to code the advertisements using tive main ca
tegories: the advertised product, persons, supporting objects (in the fore
ground), the background setting and the text
6
For each
of
the categories its
.oarance was not ed.
This
is the so-called manifest
inf
ormation that can be
Communicalions 1997) I
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Mortelmans
discemed in advertisements:
color of
hair, place
of
the product
on
the image,
style
of
background. In fact, we are making an inventory of the denotated
meanings of the signs
in
the advertisements. The denotated mean ing of a
flure, for example, is a music instnlJnent. Looking quantitatively at this infor
mation, we obtain a general picture
of
the different sign systems advertisers
used to sell jewelry.
This
sort
of analy
sis,
however
,
would
leave a
great
deal
of
information
concealed.
As e1aborated earlier, the flute in the Wolfers ad
has a different meaning than its denotative 'instrumentness'.
In a third step we take the quantitative figures as a basis for a re-interpre
tation of the data Depending on the
purpose of
the researcher, one can con
ceive this interpretative
phase
in
two
ways. The first possibility is to stress the
syntagmatic combinations
used in the advertisements. In
doing
so, we are,
in
fact, constructing a base for a rhetorical
analysis
of the
advertisements.
Jac
ques Durand used this kind
of coding in
his r hetorica I theory
of
advertise
ments. He developed a coding scheme based on two different axe
s:
the rheto
rical operation and the relation
between
the
constituted
signs Durand,
1987: 295). He started with a simple proposition on which four different op
erations
could
be
perforrned: a sign can
be
added to the
simple
proposition;
a
nd
a sign can
be
suppressed,
substituted or exchanged
for
another
sign.
The
second axis
of
coding consisted
of
the relation between the signs involved .
Durand
1987: 295) found four different relations: identity, similarity, differ
ence and opposition. Using these two axes enabled the construction of a two
dimensional grid in
which
all classic rhetorica I figure s fitted.
Durand
suc
ceeded
in finding visual
equivalents
for
every
rhetorical figure in his frame
work. Although his analysis dates from the early 1970s and surpasses the
scope of this article, we strongly believe he reached a firrn base for further in
vestigation of rhetorica I fig ures in advertisements. In fact, following this
method
would enable a researcher
10
trace all different scenes into syntag
matie rhetorica
combinations. Ir is
important, however, to realize that adver
tisements often have several rhetorical operations included. Coders should be
attentive to thi s and take into account the multiple possibilities of using rheto
rical figures.
In this article we do not concentrate on the syntagmatic combinations of
the
advertising
text, but we tend to focus on the
second
possible direction in
the interpretative phase: what are the paradi gmatic choices advertisers have
made?
The
quantitative
analysis
left us with several clu sters of inforrnation:
categories of objects being
used , styles
of background, clothing style
and vi
su
al
expressions of persons on the advertisements. Starting with th at inforrna
tion, we
could
al
e?
direct the interpretative analysis towards the
selection of
the most striking use of paradigms in the advertisement for certain products
and use the classic
impressionistic semiotic
method
7
in order to confirrn or to
adjust the findings. f we find , for example, a 20 use of mansion in the
hackgrounds , an in-depth socio-semiotic analysis of these backgrounds can
enrich
these findings. This
second paradigmatic analysis should
focus more
76
Communications 22 1997) 1
Visual epresentation o uxury
on the latent
meanin
gs
behind
the used
signs of the
text.
Rather
than looking
at denotated meanings of these signs, we are looking for areasonabie interpre
tation
of
the signs, a
reasonable
set
of possible connotations.
This kind of analysis can go even further by looking for myths and sym
bol s implemented in the advertisement. Culture builds myths, not as a con
stnlction of
false ideas, but as tools
designed
to
understand aspects of
the sur
rounding reality. Myths deal with many subjects. Lvi-Strauss did substantial
research on the role
of myths
in primitive societies,
while
Barthes
wrote about
myths in
industrialized capitalist environments
8
Myths comprise stories
about
gender, family,
governmental legitimacy
and
so
on.
Symbolism
is
another
way in
which denotated meanings
can
be
eroded.
While myths still make use of denotated meanings of signs, which acquire a
different connotated meaning by
putting
them in acultural narrative, symbo
Iism creates new meanings by using a third sedimentation and conventionali
zation of a denotated meaning. Take the escutcheon on the Wolfers ad. While
looking at the meaning of this sign one
COmes
up with the drawing of a lion
with a crown on top of it and some arrnoristic decorations . This denotated
meaning
is,
of course
, not the actual
meaning
in the Wolfers ad.
One of
the
other possible connotations of this sign is that the sign is a royal emblem or it
is a quality indicator for
specific
brands.
But
above these
possible
con nota
tions and the
denotated meaning,
it is
obvious
that the lion-sign
has
a
sym
bolic value . As a symbol this sign is able to represent another complex text,
i. e., the Royal Family.
Due
to
conventionalizations,
this sign
was eventually
able to stand in the place of all possible connotations of the Royal House
9
To conclude this methodological framework, here is a summary
of
the dif
ferent steps.
The analysis could
be viewed as a return to the
creation of
the
advertisement. McCracken described the creation of an advertisement as a
succession of
four steps to be taken by a director. First, a
director
has to iden
tify the properties with which he wants the advertised good to be invested.
Next, the se
properties
are
looked
for in the surrounding culture and translated
into a range
of
different
choices
to
be made
.
The
third
step
involves a deci
sion about the way in which these cultural qualities are portrayed in the adver
tisement.
The
last question is the place the
advertised product
will
take
in this
whole setting (McCracken, 1986: 75).
Our
methodology is
designed
to
uncover
each
of
these creative steps, and
focuses especially on the cultural meanings which slipped into the advertise
ment.
The quantitative
part
looks
for the general choices that were made in
McCracken 's
third step: how can
certain
cultural
phenomena be
represented
in a visual or verbal manner?
The
interpretative part of the research tries to
look further at the cultural
meanings themselves
. The possibility
of looking
at
the rhetorical way of presenting the paradigmatic choices belongs to the third
decision
to
which McCracken
referred.
We turn
our
attent on now to the
analysis of
the
sample of jewelry
where
we looked for cultural meanings advertisers used
10
create selling arguments.
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ResuJts: Advertisements of
jewelry
JeweJry as device o socio
I
display
Do c10thes speak?" asks Fred Davis (1992 : 3) in the first chapter of Fashion
culture and identiry.
Answering this question affirmalively is
al
most stating
the obvious, it has become a clich, he says. People do, indeed, use material
culture to communicate with each other, to convey statements about them
selves, their 'self' and their lifestyle. The use
of
c10thes and the role
of
fash
ion has been widely studied since the beginning of this decade. In this anicle,
however, we are not interested in the social use
of
c othes as
'self
' construct
ing lOols. We want, rather, to look at the advertised depiction of this world .
The
world
of
fashion, in our case the world
of
fashion accessories, is itself
a sign system in which people use signs in order to create texts. We dress our
bodies with different sets (texts) of signs every time we step into a new cultu
rally-defined sphere: a suit or overalls to work, nightwear to sleep, evening
dress to go ou . Culture defines the contexts in which we choose our clothes
te
xts. Culture helps us by supplying codes which suggest the appropriate para
digms to pick out
'suitable'
c othes and accessories.
Jewelry always takes a supplemental role in the c othing system (or per
haps we should say 'Fashion
System'
as Banhes (1983) did). Jewelry has, as
c10thing accessory, two essential qualilies : its subordinateness and its non
instrumenta ity. The first aspect
of
jewe lry comes from the hierarchical orga
nization
of
the c othes system itself. Western cultural settings define the ge
n-
eral outline
of
a clothing text as a three-way hierarchy: underwear, upper gar
ments 1 and accessories. Underwear and upper garments are both essentials in
a c10thing tex . One can technically do without them, but ce rtainly not so
cially. Both are sub-systems within the clothing system with their own syntag
matic rules and paradigmatic choices. The accessory system is subordinated
to Ihese two in the sense that it is
of
ten a redundant sub-system. A mechanic
wearing overalls
at
work does not need any accessories. We could define the
accessory as a sign having a primary decorating functionalily . It is nOl de
manded to create the general
meaning
one wishes to create with the c10lhing
lext, bul il has a closing effect, Ihe ' finishing touch ' . Besides the subordinate
ness of the accessory, there is also the suppression of it s instrumentality. Jew
elry, such as neckJaces, do not have aspecific functionality towards the cloth
ing tex . Even when we can discem a trace of instrumentality,
I it
is always
suppressed in favor
of
the decoration princip le. We could say that an acces
sory has a minimal amount of use-va lue incorporated and rests almost com
pletely on its sign value (Baudrillard,
1981 : 65 - 69).
But c c e s s o r i ~ s in general and jewelry in particular are not without func
tionality. They do carry their own meaning and they effectively play a role in
the creation
of
a clothing ensemble. Accessories fulfill three main functions: a
monadic, a dyadic and a multirelational one . First of all, accessories perform
an ego-directed functionality. In combining c10thes and accessories one can
experience an individualistic pleasure as a reflection
of
inner emotional states .
78
Communlcations 22 (1997) 1
Visual
Representation
of
Luxury
One chooses accessories according to a mood or because
of
an aesthetical
pleasure (Roach Eicher.
1979: 8)
It is, however, difficult to recognize th is
function , because every mood one expresses with clothes is definitely part of
an expression towards others.
Next to psychological realm of personal emotions, c10thing has a pri
mary social functionality. Individuals use c10thes and accessories as meaning
devices towards others.
This
social direcmess, however, has two different
faces : one in which jewelry gets its specific meaning
in
the display towards
an undefined audience. i. e. , a multiple target group and another meaning in
which the
jewelry
plays aspecific role in a dyadic face-lO-face relation.
Jewelry has aspecific role as accessory. lt s primary goa l in social cate
gories is distinction. N
ec
klaces , earrings and brace ets have denotated mean
ings, which show the difference between the wearer and non-wearer. Very of
ten there is a ge nder-related aspect connected to the wearing
of
jewelry.
Although men do
have their own jewelry, the concept normally relates to
clOlhing accessories wom by women. At least that is the overall cultural deno
tation given to
jewelry
. The re are ,
of
course, men wearing necklaces
or
a bra
celet, or women wearing cuff links, but we tend to situate these practices in
particular subcultures .
The last function jewelry has is its role in a dyadi social relation. Jewelry
has a special role in face-to-face relationships. The most obvious example is,
of
course , the
exchange
of wedding rings between partners. In this case the
primary function is not the distinctive character
of
the wearer towards the
non-wearer but the materiaJizing
of
the whole existing relationship in an ob
ject. The wedding ring is a unique object, symbol of the relationship of the
coupie ... Fashio n plays as negligible a role at the strictly sy mbolic level as at
the level of pure instrumentality" (Baudrillard, 1981: 66). For this reason al
moS no advertising is expected to appear for wedding rings in magazines.
But dyadic relationships take more forms than wedding
ceremonies
. Jewelry
also plays an important role as exchange currency between people. People ex
change jewelry of ten as a gift expressing the state
of
their relationship at that
moment, without investing too much symbolic power in it. Even this ex
change
process tends t have
aculturally
defined
asymmetry
. Culture expects
men
o
give and
wo
men to receive
jewelry
in the gift-givin g proces
s.
Absence
of
persons
The prelimInary step in our analysis of jewelry is the quantitative analysis of
some aspects
conceming
this three-fold funclionality . Special attention is gi
ven
10
the social dimensions because they will more Iikely be used
in
visual
advertising material. The first striking trend concerned the use of persons in
our sample. Only one-third contained one or more persons. This is surprising
since the sign system to which jewelry belongs is directed lOwards the body.
As expected, the gender ratio favors women (79%
of
28 depicted persons) .
Mosl women appeared alone. This could point to two possible explanations:
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Mortelmans
on one hand, the advertisements
could
be directed
at
men , urging them
tO
buy
the jewelry for the woman the y see
l2
in the picture. On the other hand, adver
ti se
rs
could be usi ng the reverse message, directing the advertisements
10
warus wOlllcn and contriouting to effort 10 discriminate themselves from
others.
In a few cases a male model entered the scene
or
several women were pic
lUred in a group. Nearly all models were classified as adults. Out of the 69 ad
vertisements, we found onl y two advertisements with children, and only one
advertisement with
elde
rl
y people.
There
is a clear trend to use single,
fe-
male persons (if persons are involved at all .
Also, ba
ckgro
und settings are
quite
stereotypical: 77% do not really have
an imaginative background, but merely a single color. Thi s sort of background
is
used to focus attent on
onto
the advertised product. Using a single color
back
gro
und increases the
importance of
the colors used since th
at is
the only
signification conveyed with the sign. Frequently used background co lors are
black or white and grey. Use of figurative backg rounds depends on the use of
per sons in the jewelry ads. When persons are used, the backgrounds differ
significantly. Person s are more likely to be portrayed in interiors or in lei sure
related environments.
All
of
the advertisements did show the advertised jewelry.
This
is not very
surprising since jewelry has no standard look as, for example, a can of Coca
Cola. Advertisers need to drawattention towards the aesthetic qualities
of
the
jewelry
before they can begin to add additional va lue
s.
The artisan and artistic
features of the product are, in the case of jewelry, best shown by presenting
pictures o f the
jewels.
The advertised
pr
oduct is usually supported with
some
well-chosen objects
or visual effects. These objects are often indicators to the preferred reading of
the ad.
There
is not
one
particular category of frequently used objects in our
sample. Although the quantitative an
al
ys
is
nf nojects
dnes
nnt suggcst a gcn
~ a l
trend in the use
of
meaning indicators, funher analysis of the sample
could show
some
particular uses not
immediately
apparent.
Qualitative
interpretation
We
will not delve
much deeper
into the analysis of the manifest
meaning
of the
sample.
There
are
many
sophisticated techniques helpful in analysis at thi s le
vel, but we prefer
10
draw attent ion
10
the latent
meaning
of jewelry advertise
ments. Starting from the quantitative trends
observed earl
ier,
we
will look for
ways
in which the observed trends are to be interpreted. In the presentat ion
of
our results, we e1 ploy the depictive method used by Goffman and Williamson.
This
means
that
the observed
trends
are
interpreted in a verbal way, while illus
trating the
phenomenon
with
examples
drawn from the sample. Because the
sa
mple
was
drawn
from Dutch
magazines
, there
could
be s
ome
language pro
hlems
conceming texts and headlines. As far as they are crucial to the under
standing
of the illustration, they will be translated in
endnotes
.
80 Communications 22 t997) 1
Visual Representation of Luxury
The
qualitative analysis reveal ed five types of advertisements for jewelry.
We
constructed
the types based on the late nt
meaning
in the advertisements or
the typical struclUre of the ad. The main criterion for the initial division re
sulted from trends found
in
the quantitative analysis as outlined earl ier. We
looked especially for the reasons behind the low frequencies of pi clUred mod
els and the
connection
between the presence
of
these
models
and those of fi g
urative and non-figurative backgrounds.
Jewelers instead
of
jewelry
The first category in the sample co nsists of jeweler-directed advertisements.
Thi s type of ad vertisement has a quite stereotypical layout serving only one
goal:
drawing
attent i
on
to a particular jewelry store. The
advertisements
make
no explicit allusion to a certain addressee- [n fa ct the overall construction
does not attempt 10 be creative or rhetorical at all: the y rather present the pro
duct
in
a dry and professional way.
The advertisements are Iike
pictures
from an an-catalog. The
look of
this type is nearly identi ca l in the whole sample : a rectangular in the mid
die of the
page presents one
or more jewels from a ce rtain collection. Ju st
above
or
ju
st beneath the rectang le is the name of the
collection
or
th
e
name of the jeweler. At the bottom
of
the page , the ad vertisements present
a
phone
number or
addresses where
the panicular jeweler can be found
Sometimes
the
cen
trality of the rectangular is abandoned by
framing
the
whole page and pre senting the name
of
the jeweler
somewhere
near the
pictured jewels.
The catalog type vei ls i
tself
in a low profile format. The absence of all
headlines, figurative backgrounds and supponing objects, leaves the receiver
alone wilh the product itself. The mere presentation of the product focuses on
.
';.
. .
~
t .
< ~
'e .
- ,
.
Figure 2: Gaspard
Figure 3: Van Essen
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Mortelmans
5Au7 wooDw
f
j
\
J
ij' \j
~
~ ~ : : _ ~ ~
. . f::=
Figure
4:
Dali
its qualities .
The
framing
of
the product intensi fies this process: as real works
of
art, these
jewels
are framed and
catalogued.
It
is, therefore, not accidental
that the pictured jewels are particula
rl
y detailed. Manifestly, the
ca
talog type
presents
a picture
of
a
jewel,
but latently , thi s picture is the exaltation
of
the
jeweler
's competence.
It
unifies jeweler and
jewe
l in a m useum-like way: the
work
of
art is framed
and
be ars the
autograph
of
the
creator
, the artist.
Fi
gure
4 leaves the work
of
art layo ut but names its
collection af
ter the
fa
mou s
Spanish
painter
Salvador
Dali .
Also
, this ad presents
it
s
jewels
as pieces
of
fine art,
derived
from the arti san capacities
of
its creator, as if it were Salva
dor
D a
li
himself.
Unlike
the low level type
of advertis
ing, there
is
still a lat
ent
level. The
t:atalog type pla ys an aesthetic game. Similar to the liking process
of
works of
art, professional skilIs are ascribed to the artist
af
ter a sort
of
aesthetic ap
proval has aroused. By stre ss ing the detailed handwork included
in
these jew
els, the ad asks its
audience t
recognize
th em
as little works
of
art which are
automatica
ll
y linked to the ass umed qualities
of
the artist, the jeweler.
Broadening the jewelers' area
Comparable to the catalog type, the second gro up
of
jewelry advertisements
are al
so
deprived
of hum
an presence. The y are , however, not
of
the
same
low
profile type as
described
earlier. Jewels
presented
in this second type are sup
ported by diffe: kind
of
signs:
backgrounds,
objects, he
adlines
and texts.
Unlike the catalog type , there was no standa rd la
y-o
ut in the second type . Vi
sually, there
is
not
one
parti c
ul
ar outlook: all kinds
of
positionings are used.
Only one
co mmon
characteristic deserves
special
mention
: the absen
ce of pe r-
sons stil l
causes
the
jewels
to be pict ured in a detailed way and in a ce ntr al
position on the page.
14
82
Communications 22 (1997) 1
Visual
Representation
of Luxury
; ; : : ~ ;
'
1 1111 r
' ~
.
,
. .
. .
Figure 5: Schroeder is
Figure 6: Cartier
l6
The big
difference
with the catalog type is the explicitness
of
the ads. In
stead o f
assuming
the
receiver
to
connect
the
jewels with the outsrandingness
of
its creator, the
textual
fragments or the accompanying objects and back
grounds
help the
receiver
to
decode
the
advertisement. Take
Figure 5, for ex
ample . Comparable to the Wolfers ad in Fig ure
I ,
Schroeder
comb
ines severa l
signs: the pict ure
of
Luxembourg,
the
sym
bol
of
the Ro ya l H
ouse,
the
symbol
of
Luxembourg itse lf and the explanatory text
of
the '
hi story' of
the company.
On the manifest level , the co mbination
of
these signs see ms to deliver objec
tive
information
about Mr.
Schroeder
and the l
ocatio
n
of
hi
s
jewelry
store in
Lu x
emb
ourg. But the mere com bination
of
the se signs in an advertisement
leXI
turns the
so-ca
lled
objective information
into a seco nd
layer
, a latent
meaning . All
of
the se signs work together to create an atmosphere
of
tradition
and experience. Again, the brilliance of the creator is illuminated.
The Cartier ad in Fi gure 6 is more ambiguous. Who is u n q u Certainl
y,
Cartier as a
jewe
ler. But the headline makes a second allusion : the unique
ness
of
the creator
can
be transferred to the consumer. Cart ier works in thi s
advertisement in two directions: stating
it
s own qu aliti es as a fine artist and
re
fe
rring to the
socia
l status play in which
people
search for
uniqueness
in
order to distinguish themselves from others. Although Cartier uses a broader
range
of
sig ns to
co
nstruc t the
advertisement
, there is sti ll
an apparent
si mi
larity to the catalog-type: a central positioned rectangular wi th the jeweler
name as a signature beneath its 'art-work . A concluding remark here is the
connection under
the
photo
gra ph
of
the
jeweler with
a
geographical
place.
Although th e promoted
jewelry
stores
of
Cartier are located in Belgian ci
ties, the
advertisement makes
notice
of
some famous
cities
in the
lu
xury
world. It is a phenomenon we found in several advertisements: the local bou
tique
is promoted
wit h the aid
of
fam
ous
foreign cities or countries. Mani-
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Mortelmans
festly, one could assume that
Canier
is giving information where consumers
can also buy their jewelry.
But
that is not the intended connotation of men
tioning Geneva
or
New York. Because
of
its world-wide differe ntiation , Car
tier - just as other luxury companies - have to guard the exclusiveness
of
their product. Simply stating Belgian selling addresses might confuse the tar
get public that Cmier
jewels
are sold everywhere, as if it were ordinary. By
connecting these Belgian cities to
other
metropoles, Canier gives the impres
sion that people are still
shopping
in huge luxury cites, instead
of
at the
shop next door. It
is
a strategy designed
10
convey their presence throughout
the world.
This second group
of
jewelry
advenisements is much richer in its visual
and verbal originality. Instead
of
simply presenting the product as the result
of
a brilliant jeweler, more paradigm s are being used: figurative backgrounds
and te)(ts give an extra
dimension
10 the advenised product.
Nevenheles
s, all
advertisements
promote
the jeweler's ski lIs and exclusiveness. In doing so.
Ihey indirectly pass these qualities to the consumer who will buy the
jewels
.
Neither
of
the first two types constructs, however, a direct consumer addres
see .
They
never direct the advertisement to the target public .
This
changes in
advenisements
where mode
Is are used.
Jewelry as inter gender socialization
The
construction of the
jewelry
ad
changes dramatically
with the entry of
llan. As has already been demonstrated, models are not used as often as was
expected.
Only
one-third of the
sample contained
modeis. Since jewelry is a
clothing-related accessory, the use
of
models is important because
of
its pre
sumed
socializing
aspects. By using people advenisers might want to set an
example on the use of the product, the appropriate social situation or the kind
of target group the product is intended for. In general these aspect., can be ap
rlied to other products as weil.
In the case of jewelry, we are especially interested in the gender-related
aspects of the sample. The quantitative analysis showed an over-represenla
lion
of
women in cases where model s were used . Moreover, when women
were shown, they were not put in a social relation with other people (males or
females), but tended to be
ponrayed
alone. That result suggested two comple
mentary hypotheses:
either
the addressee
gender
was
male
which could mean
that men were addressed in order to buy jewelry for women, or women them
selves were addressed in order
10
inspire them to be narcissistic.
Analyzing advertisements
with mod els did not fully
confinn our
hypoth
eses . Out of 22 a( venisements containing a female model, only two
advenise
ments were founa with a female addressee.
The
second construction is used
llore frequently:
12 advenisements
could be coded as presenting themselves
lowards a male. All of them were directly
connected
to the idea of gifl-giving,
10 which
we
will come back later. But these tumed OUI not to be the only pos
sibilitie
s.
Some advenisemenls contained a model wilhout explicitly construcl
84
CommunJcalions 22 19
97
1
Visual Representation
o Luxury
ing a gender-related addressee. They are very much
li
ke the types described
above . Most oflen, a large piclure is accompanied by the name of a colleclion
or a panicular jeweler, in combination wilh a selling address.
Although Ihe
jewelry sample contained only
a few male-directed
or
fe
male-direcled advenisemenls both cases
deserve
to be examined more close
Iy.
We wish 101race some indicalive traits about the gender-relaled uses in
jewelry advertisements. First, we
examine
brief1y two
advenisements
directed
at women. Both ads use lextual phrases to sel up the female
addressee
.
They
show Ihe picture
of
women
in
combination
wilh a headline in the firsl person
and a body text in the second person (see Figures 8 and 9). Surprisingly,
bOlh
ads were from the same jeweler (Bigor).
They
address
women
wilh the mes
sage
Ihat in order 10 be beautiful and irresistible , they should buy jewelry. t
seems very much like a clich : produclS are sold with the promise
of
beauty
and allractiveness. is an idea al ready mentioned by Williamson (1978:51),
and we will return
10
it
later in the male-directed
jewelry advenisements.
There is nothing new under Ihe sun
one could
say,
excepl
for one lillie detail.
Both jewelry ads refer
10
the price
of
Ihe jewels , stating Ihal Bigor are afford
abJe, even inexpensive jewels . Without Jinking both together,
il
is quile sur
rrising Ihal Ihe two jeweJry advertisements which are directly addressed 10
wards women mention inexpensiveness . As a result, we did not find a single
advenisemenl addressed 10 women mentioning very expensive jewelry. As
said earl ier, we cannot conclude th at real advenisers fall back on a deeply de
notaled idea that luxury
jewe
ls are not to be
boughl
by
women
themseJves
OUI
of
SOme
son of narcissis tic fashion.
It
still
remains
, however, a curious phe
nomenon that expensive, exclusive jewelers never adv en ise with a female
constructed addressee.
l
Figure : Bigor 1)17
Figure
8:
Bigor
(2)18
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Mortelmans
Figure 9: Slaets
l9
Figure 10: Gibson
20
Male-directed advertisements, on the
other
hand, all use the gift-giving
idea. Men are urged to buy jewelry for women, never for themselves. The
non-instrumentality of
jewelry makes
it very sensi ti ve to symbolic exchanges.
Jewelry
can easily
be emptied of extern al meaning and 'filled' with personal,
symbolic meanings (McCracken, 1986. A close analysis reveals, however, a
two-fold incentive for males to buy jewelry.
Primarily, advertisers urge men to
bu
y
jewelry
as a present. In doing so,
they are in fact
changing
the sign status of the product. Instead of selling
clOlhing accessories, the sign value changes to a
symbolic
meaning transmit
ter. The commodity, whatever it may be, is tumed into a sign deprived of all
instrumentality,
taking
on the
symbolic
value of the relationship between the
giver and the receiver. The symbolic value is usuall y the greatest at the mo
ment
of
exchange itself. After that , the commodity can take on other mean
ing
s,
sometimes real instrumental
ones
(i. e. in the case of
exchanging
kitchen
tools).
Because
of its
extreme
low
degree
of instrumentality, jewelry easily
takes
on symbolic
values which results in an
easy
transformation into a gift.
Gift-giving, however, is a difficult process requiring several skilIs. One eas
ily
makes mistake
s by
choosing
the wrong present. Especially when intimate
relations are concemed,
people
are very alert in
their
selection process. Re
garding
Christmas
presents,
Theod
ore
Caplow
presented th ree general rules
that people should keep in mind in
order
to pick an appropriate presen
t:
A
Christmas
gift should (a) demonstrate the giver s fam iliarity with the recei
ver's preferences; (b) surpri se the receiver. .. (c) be sca led in economic value
to the emolional value
of
lhe relationship (Caplow, 1984: 1313). Jewelry ad
vertisemenls see m to make use of Caplow s last selection rule. As ec onomic
value is a standard
on
which
one can
read the
importan
ce of a relationship,
then the opposite will be lrue as weil: advertisers teil men that the more ex
86
Communicatlons 1997) 1
Visual Representation of Luxury
pen sive their gift, the better
their
relationship with their wife.
Symbolic
mean
ing invested in a present becomes substituted for a pecuniary inves tment in
objects . Thi s is perfectly illustrated with the base
line
many
jewelry
advertise
ments have : 'A
diamond
is forever ' . Not surprisingly, we only found this base
line in advertise ments using the 'gift- givi ng idea.
On
a manifes
t,
denolated
level,
one could
argue that a diamond is forever, or at least will last longer
than the
owner
will live. When a man gives such a diamond to a woman, he
is in fact
symboli
ca lly exchanging the
etemity
of their relation. At least , that
is the
symbolic meaning
invested in the accessory at the
moment
of
exchange.
This is, however, not the
only
male-directed sort of
message
found in
jew
elr)' advertisements.
Men
are not only urged to express their emotional feel
ings through jewelry, advertisements also teil them to
decOI ate their wives in
an
impudent
Yeblian way. In
hi
s description
of
the leisure class at the end
of
the nineteenth century, Yeblen (1965) argued thaI
women
served perfectly
tO
show a man s pecuniary success. For the leisure class, a woman was lhe cere
monial consumer of .the
goods her
husband produced. The headline of Figure
10 (When a man s success means
th
e happiness of a woman) show s thaI
some
of
these ideas have nO disappeared in our modem times
2 1
The Gibson ad
show s a second tactic advertisers use in male-directed advertisements: female
decoration as proof of financial or industrial success. Wome n are thus viewed
in a subsidiary role, as
persons
to be made
happ
y by
decorating
them. Just as
women-directed
advertisements, this sort of male superiority seldom appears
in advertisement
s.
Nevertheless, the mere existence
of
th is sort
of mes
sag e in
dicates a target publi c.
Conclusion
What does this anal ysis adds to the
comprehension
of luxury? As argued ear
lier, the main intent was to determine which cultural sig n systems advertisers
used
tO
promote jewelry. Jewelry
can
by no mean s give complete insight into
the realm
of
luxury, but these preliminary results do suggest som e indication
of the overall picture.
The most
apparent
observat ion is the effort adverli sers take to turn the
jew eler into an artist. Being a jewe ler is not presented as a sort
of
artisan
trade. This would be perfectly possible since artisan products are also scarce
and expensive, of ten with a luxurious
connotation.
Connecting jewelry tO
works of art, however, inserls the product into the sphere
of
hi gh culture.
Many
sociologists have done research on the phenomenon.
One
of the impor
tant ideas in
Bourdieu
's (1994)
D
istinction
for
exam
ple is the distinctive fea
tures of works of art. In
hi
s discussion about the aesthetization of every day
life, Featherstone (1992: 25) argues that tendencies towards such an aestheti
zat ion relate
tO
the distinction between high culture and mass culture. Con
necting
jewelry
wit h legitimate art , means at the same time an insertion of
high status connotations.
Besides
the denotative
meaning
of a c10thing acces
sory, jewelry beco mes a status tooI in its
capacity
as art work. FUrlher, adver-
Communications 22 1997 1
87
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Mortelmans
tisers draw heavily on culturally denotated luxury signs. The use of metro
poles
of
luxurysuchas Paris andMilan
in
thepromotion of regional stores
in-
dicatesthis.
The visual analysis
of
magazine advertisements for luxury products can
be seen as theproduction side of luxury. How does the economic sector pro
mote commodiries as luxury?The visual analysis of prinr advertisemems has
suggested that companies refer to several culrurally established sign systems
whichare used to conveydistinctive meaning. But referring to status-bound
sign systems does not equal sellingcommodities as distinclive luxury. In or
der to complement this abstract (sender) analysis we need insight inro the
actual use
of
luxury products
as
prestige-driven social markers. Future re-
search could examine the decoding process
of
luxury signs: which connec
tions work
IOward
promotinga luxury objectandwhich fail ?And,more
im
portantly, which so-called luxury items playa role in distinclion processes?
People do not takeadvertising
as
the onlysource for constructinga lifestyle .
Peer pressuresandimitationbehaviorare probablymore important in this
re-
specl.
We
have shown
in
this article that magazine advertisemems acquire their
ultimate meanings from thecultural context in whichtheyarecreated. Luxury
is embedded
in
our collective consciousness.
In
combining quantitative
re
search with qualitative techniques
we
have tried
10
make the semiOlic frame
work applicable
to
explore this cultural connection
in
alargesample. Using
several research techniqueswas essenrial to overcomesamplingprobiems on
the one hand and superficial interpretations
on
theother. Future applications
couldconcentrate
on
otherproductcategories outside luxury goods.
Ir
could
alsocomprisemore advancedtechniques (e.g., latent class analysis)forana
Iyzing the quanritative phase,making the inrerpretative aspect more accessi
bie.Such extended workmay conrributeto the analysis
of
visual information
in amore complete andreliable manner.
otes
The author gratefully acknowledges the fmancial suppon provided forthis project by
The Belgian National Fund for Sc ientificRe search.
I . In 'The PhotographicMessage', Roland Banhes, for example, refers tothe photo
graphic representation as areduction (of proponion. perspectiveand color)of the
sce ne
it
self , the literal reality. Although Banhes recognizes additional messages
above this literalone,a lot of advenisement research stays
at
thebasic'representa
lion-axiom
2. The
se 'ca tegories' arealsoculturallyoriginated clusters
of
meaning.
3.Den otation ani' connotation are another pair
of
sem iotic jargon stress ing the sedi
mentation itself of a sign's meaning. Roughly one can see denotationas the Iiteral
meaning of a sig n. It
is
themost common meaning
of
asign,
of
ten tobefound
in
dictionarie
s.
4.Goffman didnotuse a semioticapproach
10
analyzeadvenisementsbuthedidhowever
aqualitative, individualreadingof alargesampleof advenisement s.(Goffman, 1979).
88
Communications 22
1
997) 1
Visual Representation o Luxury
'i.Alluding onasoc io-sem iotic work fromYardaLeymore ( 1975): ' Hidden m ylh' .
6.Several other categorizations would havebeen possible. Wehave chosentospl
it
up
the advenisements s ign in these sign co mponents because theyallowforaresea rch
towards cultural constructions within the advenisement. Techni ca lclass ifications
(camera angle.shot. etc.)are less useful since they concentrate on the forma
I
as
pects of the imageratherthanthecontent layer.
7.Wecallthis method 'impressionistic' because
of
ten, as
in
the research
of
Banhes or
Williamso
n,
few attent on goes
10
sampling methods and methodological questions.
Authors concentrate ona single image, tryingto unravel the coded message
in
an
advenisement. Although
few
of
these
exercises
can be
called
representative, the
method gives surprising information aboutthe cultural
coding of
signs.
e. g.
maga
zine advenisements. We implement this method as a third phase in a research in
stead
of
using
it
asa t
oo
iinitself.
8.See :Banhes( 1957); Levi-Strau ss
(196
7).
9.Again, the speciflc co ntext andthe working codes
\ViII
suggest the meaning of lhe
symboL f one isagainsttheRoyalHouse. the lion-signwill symbolize all thenega
live qualities of the Royal Family,while for a 'royalist' thes ign will sym bolize posi
tive things.
10
.By ' upper garments' , wemean all cJothing pans that are accepted
in
theWestern
culturalcontextastobewom publicly.
11
.
Cuff
links, for example, have a functionality in the sense that theydo effective ly
close the cuffs of a s
hin
. Neve nheless, theyare not wom so le ly toclose the cuffs
because anormalbutton \Vould besufficiemto obtain thisgoal.
12.
We are dealing
in
this case witha
son
of substi rution process. The malemagazine
reader is expectedto substilUte him self intothe addressed personin the
adveni
se
ment. Judith Williamson dealt thoroughl y
wi
th these
advenisement
mechanisms:
Another type of
absence
isthat of aspectator,and this is usuall y connectedwith
sex .(.. . ads invi te you 10 constitute yourse lf in coincidence withanabsent person.
and in relationto cenain given
objects
- o
ne
of whichmay bea member of theop
posite
sex
(
William so
n, 1978: 80-81).
IJ An addressee is not the receiver of a message.
It
is rathertheinternal creation of a
receiverinsidea sig n or a text. InadvenisementSsuch as those pre sentedhere ,we
can assume that the addressee is aconsumer.Thi s anicie. however, proves thatthe
rece iverof the adve ni sement is different from the original intended addressee. The
same relation ship canbe distinguished atthe sender
si
de between asender andan
addresser.
14 .There was only one adveni sement in this class where the advenised product was
completely omitted .
l'i Tran
sL:
Clancing Ihmugh Ihe hook
of
jewelry
of
Schroeder is like rediscovering Ih e
hi
slory
of
jewelry in Luxembourg. Afler his ,raining in I
he Uniled
SlO/es, LamberT
Schroeder m
oved
1
Lux
embourg in 1877. In 1890 he senl a caralogue
of
jewels in-
lel1ded a.wedding
gl fl. Afew years laler,
he became
'Royal Warranr Ho/de
r
a /il/e
we
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Mortelmans
18.
TransJ. : Headline: !nesislible. IhO/'s
how
wonl/O beo Bod)' lexl:
ani
) Big or makes
you really beaUliful and
irresislible. Change )'our jewel s as oflen as yOI/ wanl. II is
cen ainl
) nOl
Ih e price Ihal will Slap )'ou. Bigor hos Ihe newesl eolleclion
of
irresisli
bie jewels. now la be
found
in beller perfumeries
and
special')' s/Ores in Ihe counTry.
19. TransJ.: Headline : Do nOl promise
her
heaven. give
.
Body text :
Every qualiTy diamond
of
one caralor more is ftre , brilliance ond beauTy
in ils pureSI farm. Crealed b)' nalure ilself and never equaled b)' any olher malerial.
Diamol1o is unique. like every wamen con nOl be eompared. Four characlerislics
mnke a diamond s qualiTy and va lue; Ihe)' are called
Ih
e
4
C's:
CUi.
color, c1ariTy
and
caral-weighl. The)' also are imporlanT la delermine Ihe jewe 's beauTy. The ring
SIaeIs
jeweler
is presenling is a heaven for her. A rillg
of
)'ellow gold and palaline
wilh a diamond
of
107 coral. This jewel is on unforgel1able gift IhalleTs Ihe unsur
passed qualiTy
of
Ihe diamond spark ie.
A
diomond is forever.
20. Trans!.: Headlin
e:
OlJe
caralor more. WhelJ a man's success means Ihe happiness
of
a woman
Body text:
A beauliful diamond
of
one coral or more. Every diall10nd is scarce.
BUI
OU
of
all diamands Ihal are discovered each
) eaT,
ani)' one in a million will become
a slone
of
ane
caralar
more.
JUSI
as love. ils value
lViII
increase wilh Ihe )'ears.
A
wonder Oul of Ihousand
s.
Bom from earlh
/0
li ve
wiTh
a "'Ol1an. The eXlraordinary
solilOr)
diamond
Show Ih e world 117 1 nO/hing was possible .vilhoul her.
A
diamond
is forever. De Beers.
2I.
The Gibson advenisemenr shown in Figure 10 appeared in a magazine in 1982.
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9