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Beauty has no age anymore: Fashion and youth in Colombia (1970–99)

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Abstract

This article analyses the cultural construction of youth and beauty as socially dominant values through an interrogation of Colombian fashion magazines produced between 1970 and 1999. To this end, the article analyses the role of fashion and the textile industry – including brands, textile companies and designers – within this key period to understand the transformation of male and female values in the process of establishing youth as an imperative standard for appearance and behaviour. The methodology used is discourse analysis applied to visual and textual advertising published by fashion magazines during the aforementioned period, as a means to understand the ideals and values of fashion and its material culture. This article reveals the tensions between the historical construction of youth in Colombia and the textile and fashion industries, the de-differentiation of youth as a value in men and women, and the paradoxical ambiguity between the ephemeral logic of fashion and the eternal aspiration of youth. These issues have not been adequately explored with regard to Colombia yet.
INFS 8 (1) pp. 67–84 Intellect Limited 2021
International Journal of Fashion Studies
Volume 8 Number 1
www.intellectbooks.com 67
© 2021 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. https://doi.org/10.1386/infs_00037_1
Received 12 November 2019; Accepted 25 August 2020
EDWARD SALAZAR
Universidad Santo Tomás
Beauty has no age anymore:
Fashion and youth in
Colombia (1970–99)
ABSTRACT
This article analyses the cultural construction of youth and beauty as socially
dominant values through an interrogation of Colombian fashion magazines
produced between 1970 and 1999. To this end, the article analyses the role of fash-
ion and the textile industry – including brands, textile companies and designers –
within this key period to understand the transformation of male and female values
in the process of establishing youth as an imperative standard for appearance
and behaviour. The methodology used is discourse analysis applied to visual and
textual advertising published by fashion magazines during the aforementioned
period, as a means to understand the ideals and values of fashion and its mate-
rial culture. This article reveals the tensions between the historical construction of
youth in Colombia and the textile and fashion industries, the de-differentiation of
youth as a value in men and women, and the paradoxical ambiguity between the
ephemeral logic of fashion and the eternal aspiration of youth. These issues have
not been adequately explored with regard to Colombia yet.
Queen Grimhilde, Snow White’s stepmother in the fairy tale, lived in the midst
of unimaginable anguish produced by the envy and contempt she suffered
for her putative daughter. These negative emotions had two clearly identifi-
able reasons: Snow White’s beauty and youth. The healthy and vivacious girl
KEYWORDS
fashion
youth
slimness
textiles
advertising
Colombia
Edward Salazar
68 International Journal of Fashion Studies
who lived happily among the flowers surrounded by the protective love of her
father – portrayed in the Disney version with small, deep red lips, a tiny red
ribbon on top of her head, and a fluffy blue and yellow dress – contrasted with
the image of her stepmother: a severe-looking, serious adult dressed in black
and purple. Queen Grimhilde was willing to go the extra mile to steal Snow
White’s care-free attitude and youth.
Although the ages of the stepmother and the stepdaughter are sufficiently
different to reveal the disparities between adolescence and adulthood, youth
and beauty are achievements that both obtain. While Snow White obtains her
beauty from the freshness of her age, Queen Grimhilde preserves it by other
means. However, the narrative of youth and beauty not only speaks of the
means people use to obtain them, but also requires an additional element:
eternity. It is not enough that we are beautiful and young, we need to be beau-
tiful and young forever. This metaphor allows us to examine an element that
cuts across consumption and fashion in the twentieth century: youth. The
historical construction of youth is addressed within this research as a desire
that surpasses age, through fashion. Advertising and editorial contents of the
Colombian weekly magazine Cromos, between 1970 and 1990, were analysed
to this end.
Founded in 1916, Cromos has been widely analysed in Colombia for the
study of social representations, subjectivity and the country’s project of moder-
nity (Pedraza 2012; Castro-Gómez 2009) due to the fact that it has circulated
uninterruptedly, and its contents have undergone transformations. At the
beginning of the twentieth century, the magazine published mixed intellectual,
cultural, leisure and urban lifestyle articles. It later became a women’s maga-
zine dedicated to the cultivation of beauty, lifestyles and the body. Cromos was
not always a magazine exclusively dedicated to fashion, but over time this
would become its main focus. When examining Cromos, scholars have typi-
cally not focused on fashion. Rather, the magazine has been analysed in rela-
tion to urban modernity, defined by Castro-Gómez (2009) as the desire to
belong to a civilized, orderly and progressive urban life, in a country that has
experienced precarious material development.
To this end, approximately 1400 issues of Cromos were reviewed, along
with issues from other magazines dedicated to fashion published in the same
period, in order to increase the historical breadth. Specifically, ten issues from
Revista Semana published in the 1990s, a special collection of eight issues of
Semana Moda and three issues of Revista Moda were analysed. These maga-
zines emerged in the 1990s and were included in the analysis due to Cromos
losing its prominence as the main fashion magazine in this period.
The magazines were approached through discourse analysis. Discourse
is understood as the narrative and possibly the practice of certain ideas and
values on a given and recognizable topic, which form a historical discourse
(Gee 2005) where the discourse about practice is never the same as what is
practiced.
According to Rocamora ‘the fashion press is central to the field of fashion,
to the definition and consecration of its many agents and institutions’ (2009:
XIV). Following Rocamora’s lead in her work related to the discourse of fash-
ion in Paris, I analysed several advertising images and texts, because in the
decades included in this analysis the images were closely linked to texts to
produce meanings about fashion and the textile industry.
Beauty has no age anymore
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It was between the 1970s and 1990s that the ideas of fashion and youth
were becoming intertwined, and the achievement of one could be considered
as the achievement of the other. Initially, this research was focused on the
textile industry and not on youth. However, according to grounded theory,
youth is an emerging category, meaning that my proposed analysis of media
discourse is based on an emerging category. The content of these magazines
allows us to examine the ways in which the style of rendering appearance
and behaviour juvenile has established itself, a process that took advantage
of fashion and other beauty industries as fundamental devices. By means of
superficial artifices, a new type of consumer, young regardless of his or her
age, was shaped not only in Colombia, but in the whole modernized West
(Featherstone 1991).
From 1970 to 1999, these values were crystallized in a carefree atti-
tude towards life and a disposition to dress in new and audacious attires.
Consequently, youth gradually became the intrinsic and fundamental value
of fashion. During this period, the process of urbanization in Colombia was
accelerated and the middle class was gradually spreading in principal urban
centres. In the 1970s, sustitución de importaciones (import substitution), a
protectionist model for the textile industry launched at the beginning of the
twentieth century and consolidated in the 1960s, was dismantled. The national
industry now had to compete with imported foreign goods. Although several
textile firms were threatened, some national fashion brands that still lead the
domestic textile and clothing supply chain began to position themselves in
the market.
The nefarious phenomenon of drug trafficking, increasing in the 1980s and
1990s, resulted in unprecedented illicit enrichment of citizens and the under-
mining of political institutions. The drug trade became one of the most rele-
vant social, cultural and economic issues in Colombia. Despite several cruel
episodes of violence produced by the internal armed conflict between state
and non-state actors, fashion and variety magazines distanced themselves
from these discussions and focused on promoting a hedonistic lifestyle, as a
celebration of consumption, beauty and, of course, youth.
In this discourse, youth evolved into a timeless ideal: regardless of one’s
biological age, youth could be obtained with some interventions on the body
and mind. Being young is a task pertaining to the body as a material unit
subject to aesthetic interventions (clothing, makeup, hairstyle, exercise and
diet) and a task related to personal attitude and disposition. It is a way of
facing life in accordance with change and freedom of movement:
‘Youth’ is not a natural condition but a historical construction that is
articulated through material and symbolic resources. The social distribu-
tion of these resources is asymmetric. One is differently young depend-
ing upon the social differentiation of parameters such as money, work,
education, neighbourhood and free time. The condition of ‘youth’ is not
given in the same way to all the members of the statistical category
‘young people’.
(Margulis and Urresti 1995: 109)
In the magazines, this process, achieved through fashion and beauty, results
from the progressive homogenization of the concept of youth in different
types of subjects and ages. Several authors have studied the role of fashion as
the generator of a new transience-oriented subject, that is, a subject that must
Edward Salazar
70 International Journal of Fashion Studies
1. Pérez (2017) made a
historiographic balance
of consumption in
Latin America.
2. For example, the United
Nations (UN) declared
1985 as the ‘World
Year of Youth’ and
defined youth as being
between 15 and 24. Law
375 of 4 July 1997, in
Colombia, establishes
the range of youth
for those over 14 and
under 26 years of age.
Law 1622 of 29 April
2013, also in Colombia,
defines young people
as those between 14
and 28.
renew itself and find a recognizable identity in discontinuity (see e.g. Barreiro
1998; Entwistle 2015; Lipovetsky 1987). This consumer of standardized fashion
gradually developed in western society during the first part of the twentieth
century and was consolidated in the second half. Yet, fashion and consumption
in Colombia during the same period have not been extensively documented.1
However, the magazines of that time display a quest and acceptance of the
principles of fashion: its ambiguity of being at once liberating and oppres-
sive, its changing nature which relates to modernity. Despite these unceasing
changes, the desire for fashion and youth remains the underlying value.
The material and symbolic qualities of fabrics capable to channel youth
were highlighted in advertisement photographs and texts. The importance of
fashion for the professional success of men and women and for their ability
to remain both current and modern was emphasized. The country’s economic
role was also highlighted, along with a development of the idea that Colombia
was a country of fashion due to its textile production. Values changed, but
not only at a discursive level. The shapes of fashion objects were also altered:
silhouettes, sizes, fabrics and types of clothing were modified during this
period in favour of a younger-looking appearance.
FASHION, YOUTH AND AGE
Age, as a number, can be read in several ways and contains many different
implications for populations according to their historical and geographical
context. Coming of age, school age, average age, age of consent, age of adult-
hood or old age are some examples of categories – which change through
each period of history – based on a person’s age. These categories have been
used by governments to establish policies for their citizens, by parents in a
cultural sense to understand the stages of their children’s upbringing, and by
marketing experts to segment their target audiences. By all definitions, social,
political and cultural implications of age change according to the period being
studied.2 Such categorization by age is related to certain roles and behaviours
in terms of education levels, family situations, expectations regarding love and
friends, tastes and incorporation into the workforce, among other areas.
International academic studies have examined the relationship between
consumption and youth, focusing mainly on patterns of consumption adopted
by young people or concentrating on the discursive relationship between fash-
ion, body and youth (Dunas 2001; Hodkinson and Deicke 2007; McCracken
2014). These studies recognize youth as a pivotal element in the emergence
of new urban subjectivities and experiences, especially in the second half of
the twentieth century. In some cases, contemporary fashion and clothing were
studied as typical aesthetic expressions of young people or as a general process
of juvenilizing appearances, ranging from global to local references (Miller
2004). Bolin (2004) points out that the cultural dimension of youth has been
described as a desirable value obtained through consumption. Featherstone
(1991, 2010) also considers the emergence of the young body as the dominant
value of contemporary consumption, within a social framework in which the
aesthetic experience of life is privileged.
Youth has also been widely studied in Latin America, but more along the
lines of historiography, which lies outside the parameters of this research.
Mario Margulis’ (Margulis and Urresti 1995) work on the social and cultural
dimensions of youth and the relationship between youth and fashion is
important in this field. In Colombia, fashion and its association with youth
Beauty has no age anymore
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have not been extensively studied. Pedraza (2012), Castro-Gómez (2009)
and Zambrano (2002) have tangentially approached fashion to explain the
features of modernity and the modern subject in this country. During the first
half of the twentieth century, the discourse of advertising promoted a young,
white, slim body and its desire and consumption as narratives of progress,
health, sensuality, beauty and success, amidst conservative social structures
that prescribed proper urban behaviour. In the second half of the century, an
almost seamless relationship between youth and beauty was progressively
established by fashion. Cromos called that relationship la moda de los jóvenes
(‘young people’s fashion’), defining it according to a certain age, tastes, social
class and the quest to problematize what it means to be an adult. Clothing
was one of the catalysts for young people’s fashion, helping to define the age
at which a body was considered young.
From a stage of social transition – one in which teenagers are allowed
to display a series of transitive, rebellious and anti-establishment behaviours
before they achieve their adult life – fashion turned youth into an outward look
achievable at almost any age. Youth was no longer the embodiment of political
and cultural changes and ruptures with previous generations. Rather, it became
an aspirational source of beauty and a desirable, exploitable and extendable
personal image. Analysis of the magazines reveals ways in which youth in
Colombia, little by little, stopped signifying behaviours related to a certain age
and became a quality in itself: a certain attitude, a way of living and of experi-
encing life. Youth was materialized by fashion through clothes, styles and open
stances, while normalized by hegemonic ideas of beautiful bodies.
The use of the term ‘generation’ helps understanding the change by which
members of a community aim to differentiate themselves from older members
– the parents – to innovate their ideas, strength and drive (Margulis 2001).
The important differentiation of these young subcultures is based on ascrib-
ing identity to smaller communities or groups through aesthetics and style
(Feixa 1999). Fashion helped define the distinguishing aesthetics of youth
through its logic of constant renewal. It also paved the way to generalizing
behaviours related to youth, allowing people to embrace an attitude related to
the aesthetics of youth at any age: ‘[i]n today’s society, the condition of age no
longer allows the containing of the complexity of meanings linked to youth.
Classifying by age does not translate into consistent and predictable compe-
tencies and attributions’ (Margulis 2001: 41). In this sense, the cultural project
of youth has become a series of ideas – and ideals – that individuals continu-
ally display in their adult lives (Bennet 2007).
The practices of the fashion industry, portrayed in a magazine aimed at
the aspirational upper-middle and White-mestizo class, emphasized the
importance of physical appearance, health and beauty to achieve youth. In
Colombia, the material and immaterial references to youth were produced
by fashion itself, within its close and problematic relationship with the textile
industry.
YOUTH: BETWEEN TEXTILES AND FASHION
In the mid-1970s, Cromos contained a section named Modas (‘fashions’). This
was in the plural, given that more than one fashion were considered to exist.
Although a series of trends emerged from different countries and fashion
houses, a hegemonic fashion prevailed: legitimized designs, designers and
well-known brands. The national clothing – or textile – industry was seen
Edward Salazar
72 International Journal of Fashion Studies
merely as a producer of materials to emulate imported designs, and maga-
zines served to educate female consumers on world fashion.
The idea of renewing styles was not a central concern in the early days
of the Colombian textile industry. Rather, the textile business and its outlets
mostly sold fabrics, so that clothing was conceived as an instrument to
promote textile sales. Advertising of the ‘national fashion’ during the 1970s
and part of the 1980s was related to the quality of textiles and the value of
the garments derived from it. In 1973, this industry defended the significant
role of fabrics within the value chain of fashion, promoting relaxation of the
body through something they called informalismo del vestido (‘informality of
garments’), understood to be related to textile attributes and quality rather
than styles or designs: ‘[t]he specific value of informal fashion relies on the
materials and not on the époque […] Corduroy-Seda supports informality’
(Cromos 1973: n.pag.).
Fabrics channelled the values of informality, promoting a modern spirit
full of charm and youthful grace (Cubillos 2014: 222). Light and futuristic
materials were key in the quest to stay up-to-date. At the beginning of the
1970s, the company Pantex (Textiles Panamericanos) named its textile novel-
ties ‘futurized fabrics’. Similarly, in 1971, Coltejer promoted outfits produced
with its Coltepunto line of fabrics with the name ‘cybernetic fashion’. The
magazines included information related to super-knit fabrics made with
100 per cent textured Fortrel, a new material popular among young people.
Colteroy was also used (a 100 per cent cotton material) and a special varia-
tion of Fortrel made by Celanese is mentioned. The innovation of the Tycron
press by Coltejer, which was based on Primel (an older but renewed fabric), is
also described in several advertisements from the early 1970s and a mixture of
Terlenka and cotton that produced a type of fabric called Dobby was launched
as the novelty of youth. The language of textiles reveals the amount of knowl-
edge and information that was advertised to support the national industry
and portray its modernity. In this model, textile properties conferred youth,
not design. In other words, the industry needed highly informed consumers,
who knew about materials but not necessarily about fashion. An advertise-
ment read:
Some of our competitors add expensive and fantastic labels on their
shirts, full of tufted family coats of arms and exotic phrases to highlight
the benefits of their product.
Our labels are simple, since they have nothing to do, at any time, with
the excellent quality of our shirts. With the VIP label you get the guar-
antee of ultramodern designs, perfect cuts and tailoring and the extraor-
dinary quality of Fabricato fabrics, Dobby fabrics, bright prints or fabrics
with pre-dyed yarns…! […] Only for important men! Based on Terlenka
with Approved Quality.
(Cromos 1972a: n.pag.)
Within the complex relationship between material and design, denim is a well-
known fabric recognized as the ‘material of youth’. It has been perceived as an
egalitarian and modern garment in terms of gender and class (Solomon 1986;
Davis 1989; Steele 1997). Denim marked a route to democratizing appear-
ances and gender – based on youth and comfort – that started in the 1950s,
when it became popular as a sign of rebellion. Its use spread throughout the
middle-class in the 1960s (Miller and Woodward 2012).
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3. Academia Arturo
Tejada Cano was the
first technical school
dedicated to teaching
pattern making, dress
making and fashion. In
Colombia, it is one of
the pioneer schools in
this field.
In Colombia, the use of denim, despite having been recorded since the
1960s, only began to expand in the 1970s. Denim, or jeans, embodied the
values of a ‘new youth’, which was dynamic regardless of seasonal fashion.
The student revolt of the end of the 1960s, the hippy movement of the 1970s,
electropop of the 1980s and the first technological wave of the 1990s were
all movements dressed in jeans, as the magazines reported. During the last
three decades of the twentieth century, denim was positioned as the quintes-
sential garment of youth. All previous doubts related to its lack of femininity
for women, or its lack of credibility, seriousness and elegance for men were
abandoned. Denim proved to be a forceful device to homogenize experiences
of gender, class and age, since the discourse that advertised it both as material
and as spirit of renewal penetrated the imagination and clothing practices of
Colombian people.
In 1970, Caribú jeans were promoted in Cromos as youthful and trendy.
In 1974 the brand turned the spelling of the word ‘jean’ into yin or jin and
described it as a ‘vibrant style’, a vocabulary and an adjective that highlighted
the possibility of going beyond seriousness through the appropriation of the
garment. Several of its advertising pieces played with the spelling of the word
‘jean’ to emphasize that it broke rules and was informal. Between 1984 and
1985, the Fabricato advertising campaigns invited women to wear denim – as
a garment and as a material – using the slogan: ‘Now it’s time to wear jeans!’.
Young, thin women modelled them, suggesting that existing outside of this
trend was not possible and that a last call was being made for women to wear
them. The silhouette of jeans at the time was widely uniform for men and
women (high-rise, tapered legs). This feature allowed for greater homogeneity
in terms of gender since, again, its main value was that of youth and noncha-
lance, in accordance with the new times.
Textiles began losing their importance in the mid-1980s, when the
trends of the 1990s were gradually emerging. The link of fashion with
design advanced slowly: design became part of the creation of value as an
idea associated with modernity (Peña 2009). Although in the 1960s the first
higher education programmes focused on fashion design were created,3 and
programmes in graphic and industrial design were established in the 1970s,
it was not until the 1990s that design became a central element in industrial
production chains. That is why there was an evident disconnection between
academic design and industrial requirements (Fernández 2008). Confirmation
of this detachment can be found in the late creation of the Institute for Exports
and Fashion (Inexmoda) in 1987. Only at this time were some changes intro-
duced in the production of clothes and textiles, as design was added to value
chains and the marketing process was aestheticized. Such changes were not
fully mobilized by the new institution, but were gradually organized by it.
There were some attempts to introduce design into textiles – or create an
organized fashion industry – before Inexmoda. A key figure was Toby Setton
(1936–2000), the first fashion designer in Colombia, who created and posi-
tioned his own brand called Jackson Fashion during the 1970s. Subsequently,
other local designers or creators focused on selling fashion instead of fabrics,
implying that image was preferred over materials. Jackson Fashion and other
brands created during the 1970s, such as El Paraguas Rojo, proposed ways to
market fashion beyond textiles with modern and colourful advertising, devel-
oping conceptual campaigns that restricted the amount of text and popular-
ized slogans. They emulated the American and European experiences that
Edward Salazar
74 International Journal of Fashion Studies
4. Some brands remained,
such as Leonisa, Studio
Faride (Studio F from
1994) or Arturo Calle,
as they switched to
campaigns based on
fashion and image.
Some designers also
gradually positioned
themselves, such
as Amelia Toro or
Hernando Trujillo, but,
as brands, it was only
in the 1990s that they
widely recognized the
discourse of fashion
over fabrics.
promoted brand and fashion over fabric. Although fashion and the idea of
youthful change became central in their discourse, the effort to organize the
industry was too little, too late and these brands disappeared.4 A group of
recognized Colombian designers was not consolidated and a catwalk calen-
dar was not defined to face the discursive rivalry against the textile compa-
nies, mainly from the region of Antioquia. Toby Setton went into crisis in the
1980s, his pioneering voice did not resonate with others and tensions within
the fashion system remained unresolved by the time his company closed in
the 1990s. However, his experience reflects the supreme value of turning fash-
ion and design into vehicles of an aestheticized youth. To this end, design also
became the vehicle for a youthful experience.
GOOD AGE
As with the case of jeans, the advertising discourse for other garments worn
by Colombians gradually adapted their language in reference to youth. ‘Good
age’ is praised by Arrow, a brand of shirts, as a transmutation between a
person’s age and the appearance of their garment, since good clothing must
represent good age. For this and other brands, ‘good’ becomes a synonym of
young: ‘shirts of the good age: youth. Stay 20 or 25 years old, ‘the age I know
without saying’. Arrow will help you. Arrow shirts are worn as an age: youth-
ful, expressive, attractive. Arrow is cutting-edge’ (Cromos 1972b: n.pag.)
‘Good age’ favours men of any age – the male figure in the ad appears to
be over 40 – as long as they are willing to dress to reduce physical ageing. Age
should be hidden by fashion, therefore journalists praise those who manage to
appear younger. Colours, cuts, silhouettes and materials that conform to the
idea of youth – understood as versatility, ease and simplicity – are proposed
by fashion to counteract age. Heavy dresses, overly structured suits and shirts
made with fabrics that do not favour movement were gradually abandoned,
as had been the case for cloth and wool, which fell by the wayside between
the 1980s and 1990s. Through its advertising, in an attempt to strengthen its
position as a textile brand, Paños Vicuña stressed that innovation had to come
from the design, not the fabrics. With the same attitude, designer Gloria Trejos
‘ditches folklore’ as she considers it old, and sees design as targeting youth: ‘I
dress 45-year-old young men’ (Cromos 1984b: 91). She emphasizes slim and
athletic bodies because, despite their age, her clothes allow men to exude
youth.
Over the years, the threshold of youth is lowered: first it was possible to
be a young 45-year-old woman who dressed to reduce her age. Then, being 35
years old seemed too old:
The vain consumerist world does nothing but talk about wrinkle creams,
memory pills, gymnastics for slimming the waist, books to cure depres-
sion, etc. Because of all these, but especially thanks to an enriched
personal life, turning 35 is no longer an agony for women. Loving
intensely, being productive, and exploiting feminine charms is no longer
something unique to fifteen-year-old girls. Women in today’s world can
seize their femininity without fearing the passage of time.
(Cromos 1994b: 112)
Paradoxically, although anyone can reduce their perceived age whenever they
wish, the age and limit of youthfulness have also been significantly lowered.
The bodies and faces appearing in advertising are increasingly of younger
Beauty has no age anymore
www.intellectbooks.com 75
5. Santiago Castro-Gomez
(2009) analyses the
Bogotá of the 1920s
in Cromos and points
out that most of the
body procedures to
preserve thinness and
youth were aimed at
women. Advertising
related to the
desirable body begins
a process of gender
homogenization in
the face of the ideal
of youth. However, it
contained different
consumer experiences
for men and women.
models. Over the decades, brands have constantly reduced the age of the
figures they have promoted, going from men over 40 and women over 30 to
models between 18 and 30. Beauty companies – as part of the fashion system
– have also produced treatments to help people remain young. Youth is, there-
fore, both a state of mind and bodily evidence that is obtained from fashion,
and translates into a repertoire of seduction. Desirable bodies look young and
that fact, subsequently, translates into a profession: entertainment in televi-
sion, and later, modelling in fashion.
Celebrity models of the 1990s looked radically younger than the non-
professional models of previous decades, particularly men. A report in Cromos
from 1994 included interviews with several men – all over 30 – from national
show business, who were asked about their use of jeans and their relation-
ship to success within the creative industries (music, television, radio, etc.).
The questions were:
Why do you wear jeans? Why do you feel comfortable with them? How
long have you been wearing them? Have you suffered an unpleasant
experience due to your insistence on wearing them? What image do you
want to project by wearing them, or what is the image you think you
project? In your case, is wearing them a matter of rebellion, comfort, or a
desire to feel young? How many jeans do you own?
(Cromos 1994a: 114, emphasis added)
Through the questions we observe a longing for youth at any age, but
above all, these questions reveal an understanding of youth equating profes-
sional success. This represented a drastic change from what a successful man
was considered to be: no longer someone traditional wearing a tie, but a
young and fashionable man.
Cromos is discursively aimed to establish a similar ‘passion for youth’ as a
desirable value for the general public. The paradox revealed here is based on
the fact that youth is achievable at any age but investments in it must be made
as rapidly as possible. In simpler terms: youth may be eternal, but it ends
quickly. Additionally, although most of the academic literature about body and
beauty claims that women aspired to look young, there is evidence that men
were also subjected to the discourse of youth. While news of social events
in the 1970s featured men wearing ties and women dressed in formal attires
getting married before the age of 25, at a later time fashion turned into ‘feel-
ing good’, as advertised by the brand Giorgio Capriani throughout the 1980s.
By the 1990s, the role in those celebrations was played by youth extended well
beyond that age:
Many of them do not know what maturity is, they have not crossed its
threshold. They strut with those thirty-something years on their backs,
almost always wearing jeans that fit like their own skin.
(Cromos 1994b: 112).
The idea of fitting like one’s own skin reflects the comfort of being 30 with-
out having achieved the maturity that was previously expected from that age,
thanks to the new uniformity of age and gender produced by the democrati-
zation of the fashion experience.5 ‘Young people’, as advertised by the brand
North Star, are the main consumers of fashion and the ones who assess its
value. Whoever wanted to be young had to distance themselves from the
stability of adult values – work, family and savings – to focus on the quest
Edward Salazar
76 International Journal of Fashion Studies
for immediate pleasures (Bauman 2007). In that sense, it became necessary to
define features of the attitude young people had to adopt: movement, change
and a lack of the responsibilities that force adults into quietness. The apparent
autonomy of youth sustains one’s identity and, thus, turns fashion from being
a complement into a whole project personified in the bodies of young people:
As an entity, this body is legitimized by dominant aesthetics as the
desirable paradigm for all ages. Its main characteristics are slenderness,
whiteness, athletic skills and beauty in terms of the predominant white
and European values. Yet, this idealized aesthetic of youth involves other
aspects: decision, audacity, romance, eroticism, and innovation.
(Margulis 2001: 51)
In the media, young thin bodies abounded in the 1990s and, although white
thinness was not the only body ideal available, it was positioned as the main
homogenizing value that responded to the global cultural canons of the twen-
tieth century, in the representation of thinness as a figure of rebellion and
asceticism (Wallerstein and Mansour 1999). Wallerstein and Mansour stud-
ied thinness in fashion advertising in the 1990s, when Kate Moss became a
fashion icon at the age of 15. She and other models appeared in the adver-
tisements of brands such as Calvin Klein, Hugo Boss or Miu Miu, posing as
women-girls or men-boys, acting distantly, impassively and uninterestedly.
As such, they emulated certain rebellious attitudes that were seen as cultural
values of youth. In Colombia, Margarita Rosa de Francisco – who had been
working in fashion for some years – was 19 years old when she was chosen by
Cromos as ‘model of the year’ in 1984. She embodied the beauty and elegance
of a woman-girl, with a slim body laden with the makeup of an adult woman,
combined with a cheerful and rebellious attitude. She had built one of the most
respected modelling and acting careers in the country (Cromos 1984a: 62). That
same year she participated in the Reinado Nacional de la Belleza (National
Beauty Contest), a highly hegemonic institution in terms of its understand-
ing of women’s beauty. For the contest Margarita wore her hair very short
(above her shoulders), displaying an attitude of youthful rebellion against the
norm. In this regard, she embodied the paradox pointed out by Wallerstein
and Mansour (1999) related to thinness and youth equally symbolic of subor-
dination and a defiant body, in a close relationship to the spectacle of fashion.
In the mid-1980s, the Colombian brand Pinel played with this visual idea
of youth. The brand featured models who appeared alone, leaning against
walls or in the countryside, exhibiting an attitude of seclusion and medita-
tion. They were performing the loneliness and lack of understanding of youth,
only as a matter of style without the defiant expression. In Colombia, thin-
ness was not seen as transgression or rebellion, but was mainly regarded as a
thoughtless appropriation of the desire to be thin. This explains why advertis-
ing images in Colombian magazines – composed of warm or bright colours
like yellow, red, orange, or green – portrayed less slim models than fashion
magazines in Europe or the United States. The images in black and white, or
aimed at exhibiting black garments, presented smiling models with strong,
toned bodies in situations of success at work or in erotic sensuality. Voluptuous
youth in Colombia was a characteristic of modernity, translating into values
such as joy, vibrancy, euphoria and uproar. Advertising was more colourful
with neon colours included in campaigns aimed at young people.
Beauty has no age anymore
www.intellectbooks.com 77
The Colombian brand Pronto, which literally translates as ‘soon’, origi-
nated in the 1990s. As it was one of the first brands exclusively aimed at
promoting youth, Pronto embodied the ideals of a young consumer who lacks
clarity as to whether s/he is actually performing an act of rebellion or merely
following global cultural trends. The name of the brand invites consumers
to an immediate and ephemeral experience, suggesting clothes made to be
discarded quickly after they have been bought. No wonder its slogan since the
1990s has been ‘Whatever you want, do it soon’.
Pronto turned to models around 18 years old, who looked significantly
younger and more childish than those in ads of previous decades. Even in
advertisements that included family photographs, the clothing worn by
‘parents’ resembled that of their youthful and informal children. In this case,
youth was not represented by bodies performing rebellious attitudes, but had
become the hegemonic, general value of fashion. Consequently, after the body
was aestheticized to personify youth during the 1980s and 1990s, men aban-
doned their beards, moustaches and body hair, turning to the appearance of
adolescent bodies of uncertain adulthood.
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS
Designers and modelling agencies used to complain that the height of
Colombian models was an obstacle for them to enter international catwalks.
It was no different for the general population, who were not fit to respond to
these international ideals either. That is true for Leonisa, a brand of under-
wear designed to fit the special standards of Latin women, who had larger
breasts than their European counterparts and demanded bra cups to make
them more voluptuous. ‘Leonisa is a Latin woman’ was the slogan developed
by the company to conjure up those differences in corporality. The specificity
of the Colombian body – sturdier men, more voluptuous women and a shorter
population compared to European standards – based the corporal dimension
of beauty on the premise of ‘work with what you have’.
The object positioned to achieve features of youth – accomplished through
spreading creams and potions – was the silhouette. The ad from a product
made to that end reads: ‘White, brunette, olive-skinned, pale or black. Don’t
lose your glamor by ditching your silhouette. Remember that a stylized body
is the appeal of every modern woman. Use “Linecrem”. It is not a drug. It is
a cream that imparts glamor’ (Cromos 1970: n.pag.). The role of race is mini-
mized in order to give prominence to the desirability of stylized, modern and
glamorous White-mestizo women. In that way, minor body technologies were
also at the service of fashion, which is not only a discourse of clothing, but of
beauty in general.
Even the smallest details from the garments contributed to features of
bodily beauty, accentuating or hiding one of its parts without affecting comfort.
The idea of having a relaxed yet flattering silhouette became so popular, and
became so entangled with fashion, that they seemed to serve a single purpose.
Women were trying to achieve a ‘chic, feminine and sensual silhouette’, wear-
ing garments that portrayed their bodies as elongated (tall) and slim. Fashion
made it possible for people to discursively achieve an idea of modernity
through simple garments – made with straight cuts and uniform types and
patterns of fabrics – in which sophistication was based on hidden details such
as seams, drapes or fabrics (Cromos 1986: 74). The kind of consumer involved
in this had to be increasingly proficient in the language of fashion.
Edward Salazar
78 International Journal of Fashion Studies
6. In women, the size of
the waist had been
positioned decades
before. The history of
the corset accounts for
this process.
The allure of youthful clothing was aimed at offering customers the privi-
lege of wearing garments that did not restrict their movement. This was one of
the features that a Colombian designer accomplished:
Magician or designer? Nelly Villegas Gómez becomes both […] a creator
of clothing that serves all types of women: tall, short, chubby or skinny.
Nelly has attained what seems like a feat making loose clothes with
light fabrics (cotton, denim, and wool), wide and long skirts, blouses
and jackets, that hide the lack of waist or emphasise its presence as the
case may be.
(Cromos 1987: 60)
The magazine emphasizes the importance in today’s fashion – in which
everything is possible – of a correct understanding of proportion, shape,
length and proper selection of the ‘best style’ for each body.
Fashion and underwear advertising for men revealed a new, less defined
feature of the body: sensuality. Tight boxer shorts now worn by men displayed
the attributes of their sexed masculinity, emphasizing their slimmer silhou-
ettes. In this case sensuality is not meant to question virility. The height of
trousers at the waist was lowered and men began wearing them at the hips,
uncovering the navel. Erotic exploration was now approved for people making
male clothing, allowing them to play with figures and proportions.
Reducing their waist size – in trousers, skirts and underwear – became
one of the priorities for men and women.6 Men shunned the hitherto toler-
ated belly and waists became fundamental elements of the youthful appear-
ance and beacons of youth and sensuality. This new clothing trend brought
an unprecedented and progressive de-differentiation of men and women,
as clothing relaxed and new modern values of comfort were promoted. Men
started to fulfil the requirement of being slim and young, and their bodies
were released: shirts no longer had to be buttoned up to the neck and their
skin was bared (Barthes 1985).
During the 1970s and 1980s, it was possible to be an adult man and also
a fashionable one by wearing dissimilar garments: a suit fitted to the body
or with wide legs and shoulders; high- or low-rise trousers with large varia-
tions in waist size; tight-fitting or very loose shirts and t-shirts. None of those
styles clashed with the other because a clear standard for the male figure had
not been defined or accepted, as it clearly had been for women. Younger men
enjoyed greater freedom: t-shirts were fitted to the arms in the 1980s, or in the
1990s the width of the trouser boot was reduced.
Exercising and playing sports persistently appeared in the magazines
as masculine themes, with good health and physical beautification being
expected from their practice. Controlling one’s weight and having visible,
strong ‘abs’ were major concerns. In the 1990s, the silhouette of male clothes
was much tighter to the skin and the effect of sensuality, previously reserved
for women, was emphasized. The treatment Ultratone, which was advertised
in the magazines as a surgical procedure for women, but for men ambiguously
as a surgical or dietary treatment (Semana 1996: n.pag.), emphasized that men
needed to continue with their lives at work while caring for their body image.
In this sense, the campaigns used ambiguous discourses on body care and
vanity in order not to make fashion at odds with traditional masculinity, and
to promote a more active participation of men in fashion.
Beauty has no age anymore
www.intellectbooks.com 79
7. Appadurai (1986)
points out that in
the study of material
culture is important
to avoid the so called
‘methodological
fetishism’, which
is the tendency to
disregard that objects
consist mainly in their
materiality and not
only in their meanings.
Denim trousers for men made by the brand El Roble were sold with a
singular element on the back: five meandering grommets in a row that served
to store pens and acted as a sort of pencil case. The ads directed the eye straight
to that differentiating and novel component on the buttocks. In 1977, El Roble
tried to differentiate itself from competitors through this detail, which raises
many questions about the material used: does one feel those grommets when
sitting down? How comfortable is it to carry pens on the back? Is it possible to
walk or sit down naturally and forget they are there? Do those trousers repre-
sent fashionable workwear? These questions may seem trivial but inquiring
after the trousers’ materiality7 may allow us to understand the way in which
fashion in Colombia was shaped as innovative in design, as opposed to the
more standardized understanding of international fashion design. In any case,
the value promoted was novelty rather than functionality, with novelty seen as
a way of being young.
Those details were also present in ties, shoes, bags, wallets, scarves, in the
seams of trousers and shirts, buttons, prints, even in the type of buckle on a
strap. In Semana Moda it was announced that: ‘To achieve exclusivity, the design
and manufacture of suits must go hand in hand with details. Of buttons, ties,
belts, shirts. Of everything that a suit is made of, which in turn will result in a
stunning image’ (Semana Moda 1996: 131). That is to say, the consumer must
be devoted to details and must be able to recognize them. Educating consum-
ers in fashion, then, was no longer the role of advertising but the responsibil-
ity of fashion. Style specialists and consumers themselves had to take on this
task: ‘the role of advertising changed from delivering product news bulletins to
building an image around a particular brand-name version of a product’ (Klein
1999: 6). The process of turning a brand into a ‘personality’, which implied
being able to position and validate them in a hierarchical system, became
essential for the capitalist fashion economy. That is why the ads of Levi’s in
Colombia used slogans such as Si usted ama las imitaciones no venga a nuestros
almacenes (‘If you love knockoffs, don’t come into our shops’).
Ads in the magazines demonstrate that Colombian brands – Manhattan,
Jackson Fashion, Puppy Fashion or El Paraguas Rojo – had been solidly devel-
oped in the 1970s and 1980s, but very few of them survived. In Colombia,
the production of brand meanings was weak and generally overshadowed
by international brands, whose graphic production was better built on the
hegemony of youth and thinness.
FOREVER 21: CONCLUSIONS ABOUT THE IDEAL SUBJECT
After those three decades, the process of juvenilizing appearance was finally
consolidated, peaking during the 1990s. Fashion was one of the devices that
best promoted the idea of youth, beyond biological age, even becoming a
synonym for youth. Being young became the aesthetic rule: ‘the elderly, to obey
the prevailing mandates, must look young. Youth is at the same time subject
and predicate, category of consumption and fashionable object’ (Margulis and
Urresti 1995: 116).
This notion is highly publicized in the magazines’ editorials and graphic
content. The latter shifted its focus from the hegemony of the text to the
hegemony of the image, a particularly youthful transformation. Cromos stated
‘No to tradition. Tradition is boring’, whereas fashion is ‘easy-going, free,
happy, and versatile’ (Cromos 1990: 60–61). A drastic and fundamental change
was therefore established for the textile industry in Colombia. The initial
Edward Salazar
80 International Journal of Fashion Studies
discourse of the textile industry – focused on fabrics as a conduit for fashion
and as a ‘desire for fashion’ – structured during the first half of the twentieth
century and revealed by the textile boom (Cruz 2019) eventually disappeared
in favour of fashion as an aesthetic system of brands. This transformation can
be summarized from the evidence in magazines and their ads in the follow-
ing way: the process began in the avant-garde of the textile industry in the
1970s, before textiles were sidelined and the textile companies and clothing
manufacturers were barely mentioned in the 1980s. Finally, in the 1990s, the
textile reference to privilege fashion and brands was eliminated. The transition
was characterized by considerable tensions between the role of design and the
textile material, and between the role of the textile brand and fashion brand.
In the end, the discourse of fashion prevailed and confirmed its traditional
definition as a system based on appearances. The breach with tradition and a
new understanding of the concept of youth are exemplified in a different way
here not only in the body, but beyond it. Brands and fashion are projects of
youth themselves.
Key is the spread of long-term cultural values: versatility, youth and
renewal, in constant pursuit of beauty. Fashion, as materiality, allows the
return or renewal of styles and textiles: cloths, terlenka, corduroy, denim, silk
and velvet come and go; coats, prints and jackets are back. This fluctuation
gradually adjusted to a unique body shape: slim and beautiful. Youth and
beauty are achieved according to the knowledge of one’s own body and the
resources available to adapt it, by means of relatively simple interventions such
as applying creams, playing with body proportions, wearing youthful materi-
als or ‘vibrant’ colours, etc. Youth is, then, a symbolic feature revealed through
‘[c]omfort, freshness, and nonchalance’ (Cromos 1994b: 112), achieved materi-
ally by means of fashion and its auxiliary industries, such as the beauty indus-
try, which in turn is an industry of youth. At this point a paradox is revealed:
the quest for eternal youth is made through ephemeral fashion. Eternity meets
decay.
Beauty and youth are articulated with the demands of masculinity and
femininity through clothing, since fashion pre-codes the ways in which one
is a man or a woman by standardizing the experience of young people. To
this extent, there is room for political criticism of fashion for its role in the
development of a hegemonic international ideal of beauty that is far from
matching Colombian culture and corporeality and which established a moral
judgment of those people who did not reach modernity by means of fash-
ion and its overwhelmingly white advertising. In Colombia, this process of
reaching modernity took a little longer than in the United States and Europe,
and involved different imaginaries, as well as national and global branding
systems. The cultural history of fashion is constructed through reading trans-
national relationships in the production of economic systems and shared
hegemonic aesthetic values.
Analysing fashion in Colombia, including its textile history and cultural
history of beauty, enables us to make more complex observations of this field
of power and material and symbolic production of meaning. At the same
time, we can offer cultural explanations for the problems experienced by the
textile industry at a time when it was unable to adapt to the novel discourse
of appearances, and consequently did not understand the requirements and
needs of new consumers who demanded styles rather than textiles. Fashion
is a breeding ground in which political, economic, social and cultural vari-
ables intersect, depending on the historical and geographical context from
Beauty has no age anymore
www.intellectbooks.com 81
which it is viewed, but which in any case produces and reproduces a type of
subject which is transnational, white, beautiful, mouldable, informed, young
and timeless. Success in terms of fashion depends on the body’s ability to
understand fashion’s new values.
It is worth concluding this article with an allegorical anecdote. The final
part of the 1990s was marked by the emergence of the most famous soap
opera in Colombia, Yo soy Betty, la fea (‘I’m Ugly Betty’), first broadcast on
25 October 1999. The show featured a woman who had obtained academic
merit and aspired to land the position as a secretary in a fashion company. She
arrived at her interview in Ecomoda – the quintessential company of glamor –
to compete with a group of slim, beautiful, young women. Betty did not dress
well, she did not understand fashion, but she did understand finances. She did
not add a photo to her résumé because she knew that a single glance at her
appearance would cause her evaluators to dismiss her. The industry, of course,
preferred tall, slim, young women to succeed in the world of fashion. In the
end, Betty would be given the opportunity to enter the industry to find herself
transformed into a young and desirable body. This would be the final secret to
her happiness.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This article was derived from my master’s thesis in cultural studies from
Universidad de los Andes. The article presents a complemented and in-depth
review of the topics addressed, as part of my research project about the
development of Fashion Studies in Colombia. This study was funded by the
Universidad Santo Tomás (Colombia) in 2020.
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SUGGESTED CITATION
Salazar, Edward (2021), ‘Beauty has no age anymore: Fashion and youth in
Colombia (1970–99)’, International Journal of Fashion Studies, 8:1, pp. 67–84,
doi: https://doi.org/10.1386/infs_00037_1
CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Edward Salazar is a sociologist (Universidad Nacional de Colombia) and has a
master’s degree in cultural studies (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia). He
is a professor and researcher at Santo Tomás University, specialized in fashion
studies, visual culture, social class and research methodologies. He is the crea-
tor and host of ‘Nación Moda’, one of the most recognized podcasts about
fashion and culture in Colombia, author of the book Nostalgias y Aspiraciones
(Universidad Santo Tomás, Universidad Javeriana and Universidad del Rosario,
2021) about aesthetic and middle class in Colombia, and editor and writer in
the first Colombian critical fashion studies reader (in edition). Salazar is also
a writer and consultant in national and international cultural media in arts,
fashion and visual culture. He has been awarded with several national recog-
nitions for his work, such as best sociological bachelor degree (Universidad
Nacional de Colombia), scholarship in photography research (Ministry of
Culture) and second place at National Novel Prize – Bogotá City.
Edward Salazar
84 International Journal of Fashion Studies
Contact: Universidad Santo Tomás, Carrera 9 #51-11, Bogotá 110231426,
Colombia.
E-mail: edwardsalazar@usantotomas.edu.co
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5456-9962
Edward Salazar has asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that
was submitted to Intellect Ltd.
... Lo que se encontró fue una representación de la mujer entrelazada con el régimen visual de apariencia confiada, lo que evidencia una nueva exhibición de género, que no elimina las diferencias de género o su estructura de poder, sino que las concentra en retratos de mujeres asertivas (Panarese, 2023). Este código vestimentario también plantea enmarcar la aparición de la mujer dentro de los estándares de juventud dados en nuestro contexto: Se puede ser madre, pero desde un estilo juvenil; asunto que fue analizado en su momento por Salazar (2021), cuando argumenta que en los medios de comunicación colombianos, desde la década de los 90, hay una construcción cultural de la juventud y la belleza como valores socialmente dominantes, donde la publicidad le ha apostado a una transformación de los valores masculinos y femeninos en el proceso de establecer la juventud como un estándar imperativo de apariencia y comportamiento. ...
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