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Abstract
Fashion as a phenomenon cannot be understood independently of the visual images and designed presentations that convey the content and forms of fashion. With the breakthrough of the digital media in the 2000s we were introduced to new ways of communicating and staging fashion where the blog in particular has established a new media culture for the distribution and exchange of potential fashion-based self-presentation forms and resulted in new design strategies. In this article, the fashion blog is presented as a specific genre that is characterised by remediating existing genre forms and combining them into new formats, where amateur bricolage approaches are combined with the reproduction of familiar features from the established fashion media. The article presents four types of fashion blogs, each representing a specific design strategy for presenting and interacting with fashion content. In closing, it is argued that the fashion blog as a phenomenon, on the one hand, has placed the ordinary fashion consumer centre stage as a producer of fashion content while also, on the other hand, helping to consolidate established hierarchical and communicative structures in the fashion system.
Notes
1 The first free blogging tool, blogger.com, was launched in 1990, and from then on the blogging phenomenon saw rapid growth with regard to the possibilities offered by the tools and the number of users (see, for example, Thompson Citation2006; Rosenberg Citation2009). Most of the research into the blog phenomenon so far has occurred within the fields of media studies (e.g. Keren Citation2006; Tremayne Citation2006), sociology (e.g. Walker Rettberg Citation2008), literature studies (Sørensen 2008) and marketing studies (Zarella Citation2010; Singh, Veron-Jackson, and Cullinane Citation2008; Scott Citation2011); however, it has not been the focus of attention in a design context.
2 Examples of webzines include style.com, vogue.co.uk, vogue.fr, harpersbazaar.com, instyle.com, glamourmagazine.co.uk, nylonmag. com, i-donline.com and selfservicemagazine.com.
3 There are also online versions of professional fashion magazines and purely web-based professional fashion magazines that have not absorbed blog elements into their content. However, our focus in the category ‘The Professionals’ solely includes the professional fashion webzines that have absorbed content elements and conventions from the blogosphere in their design and content strategy.
4 There are various types of fashion blogs based entirely on borrowed visuals that are related to the category Fashiondustrias, i.e. fashion blogs centered on celebrity style or specific objects like handbags.
5 The bubble-up theory, sometimes called trickle-up theory, is a fashion diffusion theory used to explain occurrences of style that emerge from lower classes or subcultural tribes and subsequently gets introduced into luxury fashion design and adopted by the higher strata of society (Polhemus, Citation2007). The blue jeans and the biker leather jacket are two widely used examples. The bubble-up theory can in some respect be seen as the reverse trickle-down theory; the latter being associated with early theories of fashion, e.g. Georg Simmel and Thorstein Veblen, who recognised fashion as class differentiation; a way for elite classes to differentiate themselves through new styles of fashion and/or conspicuous consumption. However, the trickle-down and bubble-up diffusion have the same internal logic: one group of people invent or use a style to set them self apart from other groups; when the style over time is adapted by a larger segment of the population, the first group must invent a new style in order to be different again.
6 In 2009, Penguin published Scott Schuman's big city documentary portraits in the book entitled The Sartorialist, which had sold over 100,000 copies. Schuman's success with The Sartorialist also led to a period of cooperation with Condé Nast's webzine, style.com. According to The Business of Fashion newsletter, The Sartorialist had approximately 13 million page views for the month of September 2011 (Amed Citation2011).
7 In this sense, the personal fashion blog does not distinguish itself significantly from other private and special interest blogs which also perpetuate traditional genre forms such as the personal diary and the performative self-narrative. See also Sørensen (2008, 9). However, on another level, the fashion blog is radically different to other types of personal blogs: The fashion blog is strongly interconnected with the seduction and desire of the fashion world, global images of desire, and commercial luxury objects of desire. Perhaps most important, the fashion blog, and particularly the Narcissus blog, offers endless possibilities to assert and produce potential female erotic capital, at least for the author but possibly equally for the viewers, as they engage with the blog as a mirror for personal adornment and beautification. For erotic capital, see Hakim (Citation2010).
8 On blogs as performative self-accounts, see also Sørensen (2008, 42.)
9 according to WWD November 2011, 1.4 million page views, see Rachel Strugatz (Citation2011).
10 A special male gay fashion aestheticisation, where objects of clothing associated with the feminine are consciously used as means of ‘appearance’ by men. The fashion industry has long been a magnet for various male homosexuals, e.g. fashion journalists, stylists, hairdressers, make-up artists. Many of the well-known male chief designers are also declared homosexuals, among them Karl Lagerfeld, Alexander McQueen, Yves Saint Laurent and Tom Ford. Bryan repeats several of the rituals known from the fashion industry's male homosexual, flamboyant male attire, with feminine markers such as ladies handbags and special mannered postures.
11 For example, the Swedish fashion blogger Elin Kling, who made a co-design project with H&M in February 2011.
12 Theoretically, we view these fashion tunnels as related to the metaphors of ‘scapes’ developed by sociologists such as John Urry (Citation2000) and Manuel Castels (Citation2000) and the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai (Citation1996). On ‘fashionscapes’, see Erik Hansen-Hansen (Citation2008, 222–224).
13 For ‘preferential attachment’ and network theory, see, for example, Albert-László Barabási (Citation2002, 86–91).
14 The rich-gets-richer phenomenon with clustering can be observed within many types of networks, both in natural and in human systems. Cf. Mark Buchanan (Citation2002,117).
15 See for example Broder et al. (Citation2000, 309–320).
16 This only applies for the type of fashion bloggers who try to cover high fashion professional events. There exist numerous of bloggers who are engaged in critique of the established commercial fashion world and the various prestigious high fashion objects. But they should perhaps rather be defined as anti-fashion or alternative fashion bloggers.
Additional information
Ida Engholm has an MA in Danish Literature and Art History and a PhD in Digital Design. She is Associate Professor and Head of Education at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation.
Erik Hansen-Hansen has an MSc in Information Technology and a PhD in Fashion Design. He is Research Assistant Professor and course leader for the Master of Design programme at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation.
