So far there have been trendy or fashionable comics, but not really comics about fashion if we exclude experiments done with marketing purposes in mind such as Milo Manara’s drawings of Shalom Harlow for the catalogue of Chanel’s beauty line Précision Beauté Initiale or the "Hogan" comic designed by J. Scott Campbell for the Italian shoes brand owned by Diego della Valle, a spy story featuring three heroines who dress up in Hogan accessories, a publication given as a present to the audience of the brand's Spring/Summer 08 catwalk.
If this is the situation when it comes to fashion comics, then Spain is truly ahead since it has just launched “Eva, a la caza de la tendencia”, written by Violeta Herrero with drawings by fashion illustrator Iván Soldo. The story is basic: Eva is a fashion journalist living in a glamorous world, yet, soon, what is an unreachable lifestyle for many ordinary people out there, turns for her into a job like any other. The world of fashion is indeed made of famous and chic characters such as designers and models, but Eva also has to fight against nasty editors and neurotic starlets.
In yesterday’s episode – “Milán me mata” (Milan kills me), the first of the series to go online on the Spanish independent information site Soitu – Eva travelled to Italy's financial capital to follow the local Fashion Week. Though surrounded by trendy people, Eva can’t stop feeling bored.
The story is filtered through Soldo’s style and reminds at times of the illustrations he has done for fashion magazines such as Vogue, GQ, Glamour, Cosmopolitan and Yo Dona, though a little pop art and punky edge is injected in the virtual pages of the comic through its black and white drawings.
Though the illustrator was actually the perfect choice for such a venture as he is a genuine fashion insider, Soldo also did a personal research taking the inspiration to create his drawings from two main sources: the images created for the editorials of fashion magazines and the pictures taken by the paparazzi and published on weekly magazines. This trick allows him to take the readers behind the scenes of particular situations and give them the impression they are spying upon Eva while also visiting glamorous sets and living bizarre situations. In the comic fiction is fused with real stories, to create a hybrid genre that can offer people genuine insights into the world of fashion from a new and intriguing point of view. In Spain they came up with a word to define this new genre, “ilustraperiodismo”, a perfect blend of real and fictional events.
What strikes you about this new fashion comic though is not only its theme, but the way it’s distributed. Though I would love to see the comic featured in weekly magazines à la Grazia, distributing it through the Internet and via a blog-like format that allows readers to follow the new developments in Eva's story every day, is a bold and clever choice. For the time being the comic is available only in Spanish, so if you know the language, but have neglected it too much in the last few months (like I did…), then it will provide you a great occasion to brush up your Spanish skills a bit. All the non-Spanish speakers will instead have to hope that there will be a translation soon. Who knows, maybe the “ilustraperiodismo” will soon become the next big thing.
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