The people who live it – the clothes that scream it – the make-up that makes it’. Yet quite what glamour is frequently remains unclear. When fashion and women magazines from time to time conduct inquiry's into the meaning of glamour, they invariably seek opinions from a range of experts and celebrities, whose views are strikingly contradictory. Confusion arises over the gender connotations of glamour, whether it is an intrinsic (charismatic) phenomenon or a manufactured one, and whether it is permanent or temporary. In addition there is disagreement over its application to age ranges, places and situations. Such is the lack of common ground that it is tempting to agree with lexicographer Eric Partridge who, as long ago as 1947, included glamour in his list of ‘vogue words’ which had gained a momentum of their own whatever the original impulse had been.
For Partridge, glamour was a word without meaning that had been invested with high status and picturesque connotations by authors and journalists. One enduring feature of glamour is its identification with fashion. In a recent analysis of fashion photography, Clive Scott contrasted ‘glamour’ with ‘sophistication’. He found that in the fashion press glamour was: youthful, dynamic, pleasure-seeking, extrovert, voluble, short-term, gregarious, uncultured, volatile, public (and thus downmarket). On the other hand sophistication was seen as: mature, poised, restrained, introvert, taciturn, long-term, solitary, cultured, controlled/severe (and thus upmarket).
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