Make love not war: imperial democracy and the gendered soldiered body in fashion

In recognizing the symbolic potential of the body, fashion photography is a logical but critically underexplored area for the study of militarism in popular culture. Using the conception of imperial democracy as a theoretical framework, a semiotic analysis of Steven Meisel's editorial "Make Love Not War" published in "Vogue Italia" identifies how gender and uniform are used to replicate imperialist narratives in a luxury fashion context. These visuals uphold the tenets of new militarism by fetishizing military aesthetics.