Rewinding Art: A Visual Analysis of Pakistani Clothing Brands’ Fashion Campaigns

Abstract

Fashion brands have consistently been instrumental in shaping consumers’ perceptions. Recently, Pakistani fashion brands have increasingly embraced the concept of "rewinding art" in their fashion campaigns. This study aims to analyze the role of rewinding art in the branding strategies of Pakistani fashion campaigns, focusing on how past artistic forms are recontextualized in contemporary contexts. The study explored how visual elements in the campaigns of Pakistani brands evoke cultural identity and customer engagement. This study is qualitative in its nature, and the Pakistani clothing brands, “Hussein Rehar” and “Generations”, have been selected through purposive sampling. Two campaigns of these brands are chosen to analyze the visual elements. The “Bari Eid campaign” of Generations and the “Rehar Nagar Campaign” of Hussein Rehar are selected. The preferences are given to the selected clothing campaigns because of their relevance to the research objectives. The data have been collected from Instagram posts of the clothing brands’ official accounts.  The images are analyzed using Kress and Leeuwen’s theory of social semiotics (2006) through a content analysis approach. The findings reveal that the visual elements in the fashion campaigns of selected brands evoke cultural identity and consumer engagement. The visual components are aesthetically composed to make the posts more engaging and evoke nostalgic feelings, thereby increasing consumer engagement.