Photoshop in the Fashion Industry

Ellie Roberto 

ecroberto22@gmail.com 

 

We've all seen horribly funny Photoshop jobs, in which a model's arms are missing or their body proportions aren't quite right. These types of Photoshop fails are easy to spot because they are unrealistic, but what about the ones that go unnoticed? 

Picture source: Cosmopolitan

Photo and video editing technology has become so advanced that the average eye can't tell whether a picture is Photoshop-ed or not. However, when flipping through Vogue, most people are aware of the fact that most of the models they see are edited. 

The first programs for digital manipulation came out in the early 1990s and for art purposes, were intended to create futuristic images like those in special effects movies. At this time, people thought the perfectness of these models was interesting and different. 

“We were trying to create a future fashion. You could do something that looked gritty and real or something that looked like plastic," Art Director Lee Swillingham said. 

Quickly, photos did in fact become plastic and fake, which was not the goal of these original photo manipulators. Now, pimples, stretch marks, big noses - the things that makes us human - are disappearing with a touch of Photoshop. 

Retouching creates an unrealistic expectation for women (and men). It causes young girls to eat unhealthily or self harm in order to look like the retouched goddesses featured in magazines and social media. 

The result of retouching has been a positive movement (from celebrities to makeup and clothing brands) to create a more realistic and ethical image of the human body. 

“Fashion magazines are always about some element of fantasy, but what I’m hearing from readers lately is that in fashion, as in every other part of our lives right now, there is a hunger for authenticity. Artifice, in general, feels very five years ago," editor of Glamour Cindi Leive said. 

This "hunger" is why brands such as Aerie are receiving celebration of their campaign #AerieREAL, which highlights their untouched ad campaigns and website models. Celebrities such as Lena Dunham and Crissy Teigen use their social media to share unfiltered pictures of themselves. 

Picture source: Aerie.com

Unfortunately, seeing untouched images in fashion magazines today is provocative. It should be the normal, but instead it shocks us. Real images are unexpected, yet these pictures are telling us the truth. 

The fashion industry should continue to provoke until our definition of normal in the fashion industry has changed to include realness and authenticity.