Introduction. Fashion and Celebrity Culture: Body Spectacle and the Enlarged Sphere of Show Business

Fashion was born when couture inhabited restricted, private, and aristocratic conclaves.In the new millennium, expertise about clothing, style and image creation has entered the sphere of spectacle and entertainment. Contemporary celebrity shares with fashion an ambivalent status, halfway between materiality and insubstantiality, where narration plays a pivotal role. The general public’s enjoyment, contempt, and denigration of celebrities is based on personal narratives. This journal issue, devoted to the convergence between celebrity culture and fashion culture, investigates the modes of verbal and visual narrations revolving around attractive personalities. How does this narrative factor, which supports the celebrity system, operate within and influence the world of fashion, and how have the stories about fashion (films, biographies, but also publicity, gossip, events, spaces, architecture) influenced the world of show business?