Fashion Television: The Invisible Reporter Framing Conversations and Catwalks During the Golden Age of Fashion in Paris

Brash and culturally confident, an exuberant take on fashion, art and architecture, the Canadian-made program Fashion Television broke new ground whilst earning numerous vulgarity complaints to the CRTC. Anachronistic now in terms of inattentiveness to issues of body, of race and class, Fashion Television nonetheless represented a liberatory gateway for many people—breaking down barriers around sexuality, clothing and presentation of self offering inside glimpses of change being worked out in creative spaces at a particular moment. Carton d’invitation is a documentary, and a practice-led research project extended by an interactive media library, that tells the story of my experiences as Fashion Television’s “invisible” reporter in Paris from 1986 until 1998. While foregrounding a record of Canadian cultural accomplishment that might otherwise be lost, maternal subjectivity through the use of home movies is integrated into the film’s narrative. Foucauldian theories of power and surveillance emerge around questions of embodiment in this study.