“Stumbling on the Heels of My Blog”: Career, Forms of Capital, and Strategies in the (Sub)Field of Fashion Blogging

Abstract

In this study I examine fashion blogging as a subfield of the field of fashion media by using a Bourdieusian theoretical framework. After identifying the steps of the “career” of bloggers, my aim is to highlight the cultural, economic, and social resources (forms of capital) that bloggers use to access the field, and the strategies they mobilize to shape their relations with other agents within it. The empirical terrain which is investigated to answer these questions is the Italian fashion blogosphere; thirty-four in-depth interviews with (mainly female) fashion bloggers and six with key informants (fashion journalists and website editors) were collected between 2011 and 2014.

Moreover, a more general aim is to question common-sense interpretations (blogs as a revolutionary tool in fashion communication and as a new fashion marketing frontier) to give a normalized picture of fashion blogging as a progressively autonomous social field, governed by its own laws. Through an in-depth analysis of the Italian case this article seeks to stimulate an international discussion over other national fields of blog production.

KEYWORDS:

• fashion blogging
• fashion journalism
• forms of capital
• social field
• fashion media
• Pierre Bourdieu