Fashion and social media

The fashion landscape in the twenty-first century has been transformed by social media—not only as a platform to disseminate fashion and sell fashion goods but also as a mobile vehicle for communicating technology-mediated representations of self-identity and fashion identities.

In a postmodern age, it could be argued that social media has become more ubiquitous than fashion. The malleable properties of digital fashion images hosted on social media platforms such as Instagram are more characteristic of a means of communication with expressive filters and display features than as a platform for documenting and recording fashion objects. In this context fashion and social media interact in a dynamic virtual space where ostensibly anything is possible.

Fashion designers and students have recognized this potential and tapped into the seemingly limitless possibilities offered by social media through posts, streaming and sharing of images, messages, and stories to communicate visual narratives that are largely centered around ephemeral experiences and streamed performances over more traditional forms of documenting fashion objects and fashion show presentations in a way that was historically the domain of fashion photography.

This emerging area of research and academic discourse encompasses how we continue to define and understand social media as a fashion space, fashion as a performance, object and image analysis, and the permeable boundaries of virtual and material fashion where fashion as communication, and fashion as consumption are reconciled.

Social Media Fashion – Social media has become a ubiquitous feature of the fashion industry. Two guests take selfies during Seoul Fashion Week, South Korea, March 2019.

In the next step, we will explore the role of a subculture in fashion.