![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
As the fashion scene becomes progressively digitalised, new dynamics emerge between consumers, content, and fashion professionals. Reflecting on forms of online interaction, this article explores contemporary audience engagement in the context of mainstream androgynous fashion. First, I consider the effects of the digitalisation of fashion communication in terms of the particular role played by sentiments and emotions. Due to the brevity, immediacy and informality of online communication, I argue, affect emerges as an increasingly crucial component of the fashion discourse. I then turn to an assessment of both the dangerous implications and the positive potential of such phenomenon. On the one hand, I explore cases where members of the public interact directly with fashion intermediaries on social media and highlight how direct engagement leads audiences to internalise the scrutiny of professionals and make emotional investments in their implicit promises. On the other, I examine Tumblr blogs as an example of forms of indirect audience engagement with fashion. In this context, acquiring a distance from fashion mediation, consumers are able to engage in practices of creativity and semantic alterations of the dominant aesthetics.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my PhD supervisors Bev Skeggs and Beckie Coleman, and the editors of Australian Feminist Studies, Lisa Adkins and Maryanne Dever, for their support. My thanks also go to guest editor Ilya Parkins and the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on the manuscript.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Note on contributor
Rosa Crepax is an Associate Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London in the Department of Sociology, where she also completed her PhD in 2017 with a thesis entitled ‘The Aesthetics of Mainstream Androgyny: A Feminist Analysis of a Fashion Trend’. Her areas of research interest include aesthetics, fashion, cultural mediation, class cultures, feminism, digital cultures and the creative industries.
Notes
1 Deriving from the union of the Ancient Greek words for man (ἀνδρ, anēr, andrós) and woman (γυνη´, gynē, gynaikós), androgyny refers to the combination of feminine and masculine traits in a same object or subject, as well as to an intermediate entity between the feminine and the masculine. Before becoming what I analyse as a distinctive trend in contemporary fashion, androgyny has been a constant in Western culture, travelling in and out of dominant society, finding moments of mainstream appeal, but mostly living at the margins as subculture or counter culture.
A critical foundation for the exploration of androgyny in relation to style and clothing, can be found in Butler’s (Citation1990, Citation1993) theorisation of gender performativity and gender trouble. Thanks to the concept of performativity, which sees sex and gender as created through their reiterated enactment, not only we can question the nature of current gender models, but we can also interrogate the daily practices that bring them into being. These, as Butler acknowledges, are written on the body, to the extent that gender can be defined as a ‘stylization of the body’ (Butler Citation1993, 43), for example, through clothing and adornment.
In his analysis of female masculinity, Halberstam (Citation1998) argues that although masculine clothing is accepted in girls, who are labelled as unthreatening tomboys, gender non-conformity starts being problematised when they enter adulthood. With regard to mainstream culture, moreover, Halberstam (Citation2005) draws attention to the gap that exists between authentic, real-life and potentially unsettling gender identities, and, on the other hand, the watered-down and inoffensive representations fit for the dominant public.
The literature on gender ambiguous dressing underlines thus a critical dynamic not so much between a simple femininity/masculinity dichotomy as between tensions of mainstream normativity versus the radical potential of its opposite.
2 The analysis, conducted between 2013 and 2018, and focusing on contemporary fashion communication from the year 2010 onwards, examined the category of new digital media. The investigation addressed the digital practices of both media producers, spanning from emerging independent intermediaries to established ones, and their audiences. In particular, on the one hand, I looked at a sample of 87 blogs, managed by either independent fashion enthusiasts or professionals (e.g. blogs associated with fashion magazines, brands or PR agencies). On the other hand, I analysed blog content side by side with content found on social media outlets (e.g. their corresponding pages on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter). Finally, after mapping the key themes, terminology and aesthetic patters emerging from the analysis of blogs and social media content, I used them as search parameters on Tumblr, in order to find independent responses to them, which have been later examined through a comparative analysis.
3 The first outfit is a classic black suit, worn oversized and with a masculine cut. It is coupled with a large-fitting white shirt, a simple black tie, and black leather shoes. While the first look is a formal one, the second one consists of an ensemble of baggy sportswear by Adidas. The whole outfit is made of honeycomb mesh fabric in neon colours: a neon yellow jacket worn over a neon orange tank top and neon green, baggy, knee-length shorts. To complete the look, Ora wears white football socks and white flip flops.
4 The picture shows an all-white look worn by Jennifer Lopez, which consists of high-waisted, boot-cut white trousers, white stilettos, a white shirt, a gold clutch bag and an oversized white coat draped over Lopez' shoulders. Both the trousers and the coat are adorned with golden buttons which give them a nautical look.
5 Singer Lily Allen wears a grey tweed suit with a simple white shirt and white crocodile skin stilettos. She also wears a blue neck scarf, a matching blue matelasse leather handbag, three small necklaces and a bracelet.
6 In the picture, Vogue Japan's editor-at-large Anna Dello Russo sports a sleek black suit, with a ballroom white shirt and a black bow tie. The look is accessorised with black stilettos, a transparent Chanel box bag, and an iPhone, also worn as a small bag, thanks to a strap attached to its case.
7 The picture shows singer Rihanna wearing a large-fitting grey hooded tracksuit with grey trainers and a dark baseball cap.
8 Actor Demi Moore wears a long-sleeved denim jumpsuit with the legs rolled up, paired with a simple black handbag, black sunglasses and white ballet flats.
9 ‘Hey sexy, nice tits. Whoa, why are you so upset? It's a compliment. I'm only being nice to you, you stupid bitch. Male Proverb’ and ‘The sign of intelligence is that you are constantly wondering. Idiots are always dead sure about every damn thing they are doing in their life’.
10 The text message reblogged in Wink, Pout, Ask Me Out shows a pictures of a trampoline along with the text ‘Here you go. Since you love jumping to conclusions so much’.
11 The plaque reads ‘Fuck everyone who has ever hurt me’.