The article investigates the legacy, in terms of narratives and representations of femininity, of Vogue Italia covers from the 1960s and 1970s on contemporary Italian young women. To do this, we visually and textually analyse two different corpora: 143 Vogue Italia covers, retrieved from the Vogue Italia Archive and published between 1964 (Vogue’s first publication in Italy) and 1974 and between 2020 and 2022; and 46 mock covers of fashion simulated magazines created by female undergraduate fashion students during the academic years 2020/2021 and 2021/2022. Through the first corpus we examine the hegemonic discourse of Vogue Italia, assuming that it expresses the typical Italian way of creating and expressing female fashion while reflecting the shifting ideologies of the Italian feminist movement over the last century; the second corpus reveals the imaginations and narratives of young girls on fashion, disclosing how women’s – and girls’ – identities have been shaped over time and how the standards for femininity, beauty, happiness and health have been transferred and reworked from one generation to the next. In our study the parallel investigation between the longitudinal analysis of the visual apparatus Vogue Italia and the covers produced by students shows, first, elements of continuity and similarity in the communicative and instrumental use of fashion, according to the practice of remixing. Second, it demonstrates that students assimilated successfully the narrative codes typical of traditional fashion communication media but they reinterpret the imagery and representations disseminated, thus bringing into the public discourse issues such as sustainability, gender, diversity, body positivity and stereotypes. Therefore, the study also reveals that girls have always been more than simple passive consumers of fashion magazines and cultural products.

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Digitalization has been changing the methods of production, distribution, and use of written and audiovisual products, according to a process of “platforming”. Most audiovisual content is available via streaming platforms, through a lot of devices (PCs, tablets, smartphones, smart TVs, and videogame consoles), which have empowered the process of media convergence. Based on a theoretical framework related to the impact of the platforms on the ongoing process, we intend to analyse how platforms are changing the identity of the audiovisual industry and how they represent themselves online. In order to analyse the ongoing process, we intend to examine some platforms that could be considered as best practices in the audiovisual field: Netflix, MUBI, and Festival Scope. On the one hand, using these platforms as case studies will enable us to highlight some beneficial aspects of the ongoing process of digitalization and platforming: holding many gazes and points of view; catching market niches; building a peer-to-peer network. On the other hand, we intend to emphasize some risks connected to the intermediation of platforms in the audiovisual field in terms of economic, cultural, and social effects.

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