Fashion communication

The purpose of this study was to explore if sustainability is a driver for consumer engagement on social media in the case of the Spanish brand Adolfo Dominguez. A mixed methods approach was used in this study. Quantitative analysis was used to analyze and measure the engagement during two communication campaigns about sustainability in 2020. The Fanpage Karma, a social-media monitoring tool, was used to collect the data. Data were analyzed for quantity of Likes, Shares, and Comments (engagement) on Facebook and Instagram. Additionally, a qualitative methodology, deep interview, was used for better understanding the communication strategy in these campaigns. The engagement is mostly higher on the post about sustainability on the social media of the Adolfo Dominguez brand and also has generated a positive impact on the reputation of the brand. This study compares Adolfo Dominguez’s engagement on social media between the post about sustainability and not in the same period of time.

Abstract Graphic Design students learn and practice design theories to articulate their creative ideas through design project management. In doing so they follow design methodology considering current design trends and technology to execute the project which includes; research, strategy, planning and final design. This helps the students to develop design communication and analytical skills for their career in creative and cultural industries. This study focuses on a publication design ‘Thaipatra' - a Catalogue on Traditional Thai Costume. This publication is designed using digital technology, has a functional and cultural meaning. The objectives of the study are; to promote Thai costume and traditions; cultural heritage management and standardization of documents; and to customize information system which meet the administrative requirements. This project is to inspire young Thai generation influenced by globalization to look at Thai costume as a national heritage. It is an interdisciplinary approach to promote fashion of a culture through graphic design.

La preocupación de la ciudadanía por el impacto medioambiental de sus acciones les ha llevado a replantear sus hábitos de consumo hacia unos más sostenibles con su entorno. Las empresas, como entes sociales y tanto por este motivo como por su impacto medioambiental, social y económico, han de replantear su estrategia de negocio hacia una más sostenible y comprometida con estas tres esferas en un paradigma empresarial en la que la correcta gestión de los intangibles, como la Responsabilidad Social Corporativa, puede inferir en una buena reputación. Sobre todo, en el caso de la moda rápida, que se convierte en una de las más contaminantes del mundo. El presente trabajo pretende analizar las comunicaciones sobre RSC que estas empresas comparten en Facebook y si existe una hegemonía o diferencia entre las comunicaciones de este tipo que realizan las organizaciones de moda lenta, con un modelo de producción y confección totalmente sostenible. De esta investigación se concluye que, a pesar de realizar acciones sostenibles como informan en sus páginas corporativas, las empresas de moda rápida no las comunican en su perfil de Facebook, a diferencia de las de moda lenta que las comunican de forma constante.

Touch is central to the embodied experience of material garments. Passive touch sensations convey how dress feels on the skin, and active touch enables the perception and appreciation of its material properties, as the term “fabric hand” aptly implies. In fact, the subjectively perceived tactile at-tributes of materials have been described and categorized into ad-hoc lexicons by means of sensory evaluation research procedures involving both expert and non-expert panellists. These vocabularies provide a semantic framework for the description of garment materials from a consumer perspective. Thus, they can also serve as an interpretative lens for how tactility is communicated to online viewers. However, a pragmatic, qualitative investigation into a representative sample of popular fashion e-commerce websites indicates that references to touch within garment page descriptions are sparse. Given e-commerce’s relevance for fashion brands, improving communication of touch in text presents opportunities.

Being enmeshed in a digital environment, we daily produce internet-mediated texts – encompassing several different semiotic codes – accessible on a global scale. Posts on different networks usually contain hashtags, which can be understood as affordances or behavior opportunities. These affordances allow specific actions both from the part of the writer and the reader. They can also be “behavior triggers,” which invite certain behavior online (e.g., to like, share, comment) or offline (e.g., to buy items of a specific brand). Digital fashion communication experts should take into consideration these affordances to pursue their goals in the activities related to marketing, promoting, creating engagement and communicating either about a brand or a brand item. While there is general research on reasons to hashtag and on the functions they perform, there is a gap in what hashtags “mean” and “do” in the fashion domain. The objectives of this paper are threefold: 1) to give an overview of...

This dissertation aims to investigate the progress of change in Singapore’s fashion industry, particularly, the representations (of race) through the media. As part of it, questioning the current content of what the fashion media in Singapore portrays with comparison to content produced by the generation of the millennial in order to identify change in attitudes and the causes of it.

Through the examination of rightful national representation of the people of Singapore in media, the cyclical relationship of the interdependency between the media and one’s thinking is explored. A brief background of Singapore and it’s population will included to better contextualise the theories and points, with examples from local (Singaporean) media channels through the mediums of online broadcast, to print and digital magazines and campaigns.

Methodologies employed to aid the research of this paper will be visual content analysis and the usage of shared information from interviews and focus group discussions. The content analysis will be of picking information from what is immediately observable through the comparisons between similar content. Singaporean creatives from the fashion industry will be drawn from the millennial generation with participants of various ethnic backgrounds to generate a fairer and more well rounded discussion. The contributors selected for the focus group will have a fair range of people who are already in the industry or are still starting out, with the interview subject being someone of a reputable figure. The discussion and interview both took on a semi structured and relaxed format and was conducted in Singapore.

The study goes through the contents from fashion media in Singapore of the past and recent, evaluating the change in mindsets through the influence of the media.

The COVID-19 outbreak took place end of 2019 in Wuhan city in China, and since then, it has spread across the world. The virus has not only impacted the health of millions of citizens, since, in such a globalized and interconnected system, it has also impacted on human being's daily life and activities. In this context, the volatility of the global economy has led many companies to modify and readapt their communication and marketing strategies and the fashion sector has not been exempted from these changes aimed at further engaging customers and at encouraging sales on e-commerce platforms. The present paper aims to provide an overview of the communication strategies on Instagram by fashion companies during an exogenous crisis, such as the first Covid19 wave, in a period that goes from January until end of May 2020. The research seeks to determine if and when the selected companies reacted on their Instagram accounts to the first wave of the pandemic, and which were the contents and the topics proposed across the considered period. The goal of the research is to present the state of the art of digital fashion contents offered during a period of crisis such as a global pandemic, where many fashion companies have decided to change their marketing and communication strategies to rebalance their usual conversational Instagram "tone of voice" with the needs and feelings of their stakeholders. It also aims to set the ground for further academic discussions on issues related to human computer interaction limits and potentials, when it comes to establishing alternative communication and marketing strategies during crises, such as the Covid19.

Research in the overlapping area between Fashion and Information and Communication Technologies – hereafter referred to as “Digital Fashion” – is growing and attracting the interest of both academics and practitioners. However, due to the richness and heterogeneity of the involved fields, no map is already available of it. A systematic literature review was conducted in July 2019 utilizing the keywords “digital” and “fashion” in five research databases, including academic papers from 1998. This provided 491 relevant items for analysis. Three main categories to which those research papers belong to are identified: (i) Communication and Marketing (C&M); (ii) Design and Production (D&P); and (iii) Culture and Society (C&S). Each category includes two or three subcategories. This study provides an overview of the state of the art of digital fashion studies, with a focus on Communication and Marketing related research.

Based on a series of semi-structured interviews with twenty-six UK based fashion bloggers  the chapter draws on Lazarrato’s notion of immaterial labour to interrogate fashion blogging, and uses the case of fashion blogging to illuminate the nature of immaterial labour. This notion helps to think through the forces bloggers have to negotiate to legitimate as well as to invent their practice. In particular, and after having discussed the idea of the discursive construction of blogging, the chapter looks at the strategies bloggers develop to negotiate the ideals of trust and authenticity central to the logic of blogging. In doing so it also engages with the notion of free labour and elaborates on the issue of bloggers’ relation to brands, as well as on the ideas of commodification and monetization. It argues that blogging must be seen as a continuum between hobbyists and pro-bloggers that muddies the distinction between hobby and work.

Bu makalede seçkin giyim markası Louis Vuitton’un baş tasarımcılığını yapmış Louis Vuitton ve Marc Jacobs’un tasarımlarının Louvre Müzesi’nin Musée des Arts Décoratifs kanadında sergilenmesi konu edilmektedir. Pamela Golbin’in küratörlüğünde ve “Louis Vuitton & Marc Jacobs” adıyla düzenlenen bu sergi üzerinden moda dünyasında sergileme tasarımının günümüzdeki yeri ve çeşitli anlatım biçimleri ele alınmaktadır. Bilindiği gibi sergileme tasarımı günümüzde markaların konumlandırılması ve marka tarihinin etkin bir biçimde izleyiciye aktarılmasında önemli rol oynamaktadır. Bu makalenin başlıca amacı da, sergileme tasarımının modada görülen örneklerinin müze ortamında nasıl vücut bulduğuna örnek olan bu sergiyi inceleyerek, moda sergileme tasarımına dair bir takım niteliğini ortaya çıkartmaktır.

Bugg. J. ‘The Shifting Focus: Culture, Fashion & Identity’ Special lecture and published proceedings ‘Culture, Identity & Fashion’ 24th International Costume Congress: Fashion, Culture and Identity. The Korean Society of Costume, National Museum of Korea in collaboration with Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, 2010, p.23-30.

Abstract
This paper gives an overview of the shifting contexts for fashion design and fashion communication and retail in the UK over the past 10 years, particularly exploring the role of the fashion designer in relation to this. It discusses the impact of social, political and cultural change on the fashion industry and raises questions about how fashion could develop in a Global and local context. It suggests that the identity of designers is in a particular state of flux, highlighting a need for extended context responsive and flexible approaches within fashion.

Fashion exhibitions are a hot trend in art and cultural heritage museums worldwide.  Specialized costume and fashion museums are increasing in a number of countries. Most of the scholarly research and papers dedicated to museum fashion exhibitions and Fashion Museology are tackling the subject from a museological perspective: collecting, archiving, conserving and displaying fashion design on one end, and fashion design as a newly discovered attraction for the museum audiences on the other. This paper focuses on museum fashion exhibitions from the designer's perspective:  the opportunities and the benefits for the authors themselves. Several fashion exhibitions - five visited and one curated, held from 2009 to 2014 in different museums around the world were analyzed for this paper. Museum fashion exhibitions, apart from the gains to museums and their audiences, provide the designers with opportunities to present their artistic explorations and experimentation, their creative processes, interdisciplinary collaborations, complexity and storytelling. It is as a new platform for a multi layered communication with the audience. By being exhibited in a museum, the fashion designer’s work becomes part of a specific cultural experience for the visitors. The designer's benefit, on the other hand, is a deeper relationship with the audience and a critical acclaim for their work, with recognized artistic values.
Keywords: Fashion, Fashion Designer, Fashion Exhibition, Fashion Museology, Fashion Communication, Cultural Experience, Artistic Values.

Since its beginnings in the middle of the 19th century, fashion has been narrated through multiple media, both visual and verbal, and for such different purposes as marketing and advertising, art, costume history, social research and cultural dissemination. In this light, fashion has represented an important piece of material culture in modern industrial urban societies and in postcolonial and non-western contexts. Today, we are witnessing a turn in this imaginary as issues related to social, environmental and cultural sustainability come to predominate in many areas of human activity.
The book addresses this challenge. By facilitating encounters between disciplines and cultures, it explores a multitude of fashion issues, practices and views that feed the contemporary fashion imaginary: local cultures, linguistic codes, TV series, movies, magazines, ads, blogs, bodily practices. The book deals with a paramount issue for fashion studies: how do the production and circulation of fashion imaginary come about in the 21st century?

Purpose-The research objectiveis to analyze the development and evolution of digital tools in luxury fashion companies. Design/methodology/aroach-A search for specific criteria and boolean algorithms is carried out in Web of Science and Scopus on "Marketing digital" [AND] "Fashion", once the results are obtained, a selection of the most cited is made, and critical and analytical reading is carried out. Findings-The relationship between digital marketing and fashion companies is reviewed from a perspective of economic growth and, more specifically, from the industrial sector's communication and marketing described above. However, the review clarifies that using social networks as virtual channels in managing reputation and engagement is not sufficiently addressed. In this sense, in a pandemic environment such as the one currently experienced, luxury fashion companies have assumed and understood the role of digital channels in building image, reputation, and desire to purchase by consumers in an environment that allows them to generate know the trends of stakeholders. Originality/value-Reviewing the evolution of digital tools in luxury fashionto build trendsbecomes essential with the increased use of social networks. There is little research with a targeted aroach to the evolution of digital marketing in luxury fashion. For this reason, the study attempts to compile the theoretical and reflective discussion in this regard, contributing to the understanding of consumer behavior in the digital environment today.

Les communications des marques de mode et de luxe En septembre 2011, Anna Wintour, rédactrice en chef du magazine Vogue (édition américaine) pro-fite de l'écho médiatique de la Fashion Week de Rome pour demander le départ de Silvio Berlusconi. En 2014, elle invite Michelle Obama au bal qu'elle organise au Metropolitan Museum de New York. Entre-temps, des millions d'internautes ont commenté les photos du défilé de Chanel dans un Grand Palais transformé en super-marché, visionné des dizaines de vidéos construites comme des petits films sur YouTube, « liké » leurs marques favorites sur Facebook et reçu en retour des invitations, des jeux, des offres et des bons de réduction. Il s'agit bien là d'événements de nature diverse mais chacun témoigne de la puissance et du caractère protéiforme de la présence des communications issues du monde de la mode dans l'espace public, privé et médiatique. Un foisonnement de communications Devant ce foisonnement, la question qui se pose est celle de savoir comment dégager des lignes de force et une logique d'ensemble de cette masse d'actions et de pratiques qui se déploient sur tous les médias disponibles.

The text follows the task set by this conference to observe “how communication practices impact today upon fashion industry and on societal fashion-related practices and values”.
A product is “anything that can be offered to the market with the objective of satisfying a consumer’s need” and everything s/he receives in an exchange with a retailer. This includes not only physical goods, but also a growing amount of immaterial products, such as experiences, causes, spiritual values and many others (described in this text). The effective offer of the fashion industry shows nevertheless a very low use of these highly requested immaterial goods. This contribution analyses, for some immaterial goods, the areas which are today generating them, especially the products grown from Street Styles, from cultural policies such as City Making and from ethical efforts, such as Eco Fashion. The conclusion shows that change happens, when a re-combination of old traditions and new behaviours, generate new products and communication. The value lies today in the immateriality of the products, powered by the emotional interaction of people. The rise of immaterial products and of a new fashion communication is therefore more that the invention of a new commercial item or advertising campaign. It is an evolution of mentality which documents the existence of ideas, values, ethical concepts, creativity and human dialogue behind the new products

O texto apresenta as discussões primeiras de uma pesquisa sobre as tecnologias móveis e o consumo por meio do Instagram, uma plataforma digital particular que tem se destacado na área da moda. Na esteira do fenômeno dos blogs de moda e da celebrização dos seus autores, parte-se da figura performática dos “it-bloggers” para entender as “web-celebrities” e a gestão de si como marca. Através de um mapeamento de iniciativas das grifes de moda neste aplicativo, busca-se conhecer estratégias publicitárias e de negócios atreladas aos dispositivos móveis e a um novo perfil de celebridades.

O texto discute práticas comunicacionais recentes a partir do uso das mídias sociais, em particular o Instagram, uma plataforma que tem se destacado na área da moda. Na esteira do fenômeno dos blogs de moda e da celebrização dos seus autores, parte-se da figura performática dos “it-bloggers” para estudar os digital influencers. Através de um mapeamento inicial de iniciativas das grifes de moda neste aplicativo, busca-se conhecer estratégias de comunicação de moda atreladas aos dispositivos móveis e a esse perfil recente de celebridades.

This research paper examines the internet as a transnational landscape which enables and inspires micro fashion systems that heavily rely on digital media for their existence and dissemination. By presenting 3 case studies that appropriate or participate in subcultural internet aesthetics, the aim is to draw attention to the ways the internet has enabled players from outside the sociological 'West' to participate in the 'Western' fashion system. The paper will question whether these instances of legitimization in the fashion system are digital mirages, or whether they empower participants and allow them to build beneficial trans-national networks outside of the digital realm. The first case study, Mash-Up, is a Singapore based independent fashion label whose aesthetics, styling and imagery look to internet subcultures such as sea-punk. Through interviews and visual analysis of the design process, digital content and look-book images created, this paper will aim to show how the internet drives and propels their design and enables them to create transnational networks of collaborators and customers without traditional channels such as agents and showrooms. Figure 1: Mash-Up's Seapunk inspired collection shot in Australia (left) Sea-punk graphics and styling from blogging site Tumblr (right) Delving into the personal, the second case study looks at Singaporean model Nadia Rahmat who was scouted on an international Instagram casting campaign for American brand Marc by Marc Jacobs. Chosen as one of six models from over 50,000 entries from around the world, she was flown into New York to be in the Spring 2015 photo campaign photographed by David Sims and styled by Katie Grand. Interviews and close reading of her Instagram page before and after the Marc Jacobs campaign will explore the ways in which both parties benefitted. Rahmat's international success as an ethnic minority sheds light into issues such as race and beauty representation for minority races in Singapore.

Fashion plays a significant role in the global creative industries and in urban social space, and has recently evolved from a peripheral topic to a valued interdisciplinary subject coined as " fashion-ology, " investigating how fashion as an intangible and changeable meaning is systematically produced by and amongst different cultural intermediaries, and how it is cyclically diffused in society. As an exercise in understanding the conflictual notions of fashion in operation under the rubric of production inside a local fashion media organization, this study emphasizes how text and image in fashion representation can be multifarious and are intertwined with the commercial and capitalist logic of the fashion industry. This research supplements related ethnographic studies and discerns how industry practitioners actually negotiate fashion meanings and are constantly torn between encoding desirable (luxury) fashionability, while at the same time anticipating and serving different advertisers' interests. Fieldwork data portray partly conflicting, partly consistent notions of fashion among different workers in the fashion media. The focus was: What shapes the collective interpretation and production of fashionability within a media organizational setting? The responses demonstrate the effect of advertising on fashion editorial pages and its major role in shaping fashionability, in addition to the contradictory rules guiding how media people strive to present a preferred face of luxury fashion in the magazine and why such an attempt was unsuccessful in this case.

In an era where the physical and the digital are conversely intertwined, physical experiences are either enhanced through the repercussions of digital technology or even substituted. With each own institutional website per museum, more are adding a section where visitors may view the digitised collections unique to the museum. Progressively, fashion and dress collections have also been digitised with accumulation more recently – aiding the efficiency of collection management methods. Here, emphasis is placed upon reasons museums present dress collections digitally and the implications of it. Where the largest museum dress collections records are found around Europe and America, the examples provided are mainly Western. Despite the digitisation of collections to provide public access being an on-going and progressive move by cumulative institutions, little have been considered on the repercussions of technology. Consequently, this research aims to explicate the impacts of digitising collections for presenting through the Internet and its effectiveness by testing the enduring benefits against how it will affect the visitors’ experience and future curatorial practices through conducting empirical research.

Namacheko’s AW21 collection emerges from the bunker, undercover, neither shell-shocked nor indifferent, on expectant and reserved bodies. I imagine that their emergence must be somewhat reluctant, since within that place of safety, a hidden and excessive netherworld, there was an underground society that forged
heretofore unknown identities and projected them onto the wall in 16mm film. In darkness there can still be endless dreams of lights and colors, illuminated by the moon and dancing among punkish strands of fabric and hair. Having fled a lurid wasteland, these figures, donning clothing both sinewy and soft, lived peacefully in a melodrama, knowing full well that their uprooting would soon occur, that indeed their polychromatic dreams would collide with so-called truth and propriety. They knew that they would be caught between the desire for a perfectly color coordinated kitchen and the desire to fuck in the back room of a club lit only by neon.

A review of the exhibition – Dress Code: Are You Playing Fashion? – at The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, August 09, 2019–October 14, 2019; Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto, December 08, 2019–February 23, 2020

KEYWORDS: game, communication, audience, social media, Kyoto
Costume Institute

El presente trabajo busca realizar una aproximación a la manifestación de subjetividades en construcción en las sociedades contemporáneas que se expresan y definen a partir de diversos consumos de indumentaria de moda a través de las más recientes tecnologías digitales adoptando la forma de narrativas o discursos de sí. En cada manifestación subjetiva subyacen procesos de subjetivación propios de la actual sociedad post capitalista e hiperconsumista donde impera la performatividad visual poniendo en evidencia que los cambios en los usos de las nuevas tecnologías y en los consumos de moda online se han transformado en múltiples formas de expresar las subjetividades contemporáneas en relación al género, subculturas, grupos y más. Este artículo también analiza dichas prácticas de consumo de moda en medios digitales en relación con las formas de mostrar y performar con el cuerpo donde exhibir una elección refiere a preferencias de marca, género, o subcultura.


The present work intends to explore the manifestation of subjectivities under construction in contemporary societies that are expressed and defined from various types of fashion consumption through the most recent digital media outlets. In each subjective manifestation underlyes subjectivation processes of the current post-capitalist and hyper-consumerist society where visual performativity prevails, showing that changes in the uses of new technologies and online fashion consumption have been transformed into multiple ways of expressing contemporary subjectivities in relation to gender, subcultures, groups and more. This paper also analyzes those consumption practices through digital media in relation to which how the body is shown and performed, wherein displaying one’s elections refers to: brand choices, gender and subculture.

The rise of fashion businesses in mainland China and Hong Kong and the growth in their brands is attracting the attention of international fashion conglomerates. For this article recent case studies of socio-historical, economic and cultural influences in the Greater China region were revisited applying communication, media and cultural studies theories. Observation and interviews were conducted in an attempt to reveal the nuanced process of fashion communication in Hong Kong’s fashion industry.
The primary research data were collected through participant observation at a Hong Kong fashion magazine in 2011 which involved interviews with sixteen senior Asia-Pacific fashion marketers. The interview responses demonstrate the complexity of the interplay with Asian socioeconomic and cultural factors, and confirm that fashion marketing in Hong Kong today involves the appropriation and creolization of cultural meanings through negotiation between global and regional/local fashion marketers. The Hong Kong-based regional fashion marketers now negotiate more often with the brands’ European or American headquarters about how to represent the brands as luxurious and stylish, but also about a more complex creolization of western and Chinese cultures while communicating fashion meanings. This unique ethnographic research provides original insight into the differing impact of globalization across Greater China.

1. Introduction Design is a complex activity, which involves needs of the consumer and the goals of the company, and provides design services. Design is a problem solving process with the use of strategic level management it can elevate the objective innovatively. Teacher's role in Design Education is transferring design knowledge to student, which encourages student to create a new design. The research in the field of Art, Design and Communication includes practice-based education. Graphic Design students learn design processes and methodologies in stages and apply them in theoretical studies in the areas such as cultural studies, art, and design history and media studies etc., and finally provide utilitarian and functional design solution to audience. To understand a design process, Graphic Design students introduced to a range of subjects, which deal with the various aspects of design and intended learning outcome planned through curriculum design. To know about research methods, synthesis and analysis of data collected subject taught is 'Information Collection & Analysis'; for Digital tools and Technology-Digital Design Tools Visual Media and Interactive Multimedia Design; and basic graphic design subjects such as Publication Design, Brand Identity Design, Information System Design, etc. Design Management is the course, which help students in understanding the entire design process right from conceptualization to commercialization, which incorporate knowledge about using design processes and thinking, technology, materials and processes, execution of job and business organization, etc. After learning these basic subjects, student take up a Graphic Design Project in which they go through the entire design process to provide complete design solution to the client. Most design students have limited experience of their ethnic groups as well other. There is a need that Graphic Design students must know the design process to communicate cultural information using different tools and technology. The case study addresses Graphic Design Project on 'Thaipatra' a guide and a reference book for those who want to learn briefly about Thai National Costumes. This bilingual book written in Thai and English dedicated to the beautiful and expressive aspects of various Thai costumes: Thai Ruean Ton, Thai Chit Lada, Thai Amarin, Thai Borom Phiman, Thai Chakkri, Thai Dusit, Thai Chakkraphat and Thai Siwalai. These costumes are unique. However, due to lack of promotion and conservation, young Thai generation has not paid much attention to the same and need assistance in knowing what, when and how to wear their own national attires. This book introduces end user an illustrative and photographic catalogue that enables them to quickly asses the items and services from Thai Students Association in Pune (TSAP). Items selected from this catalogue available at TSAP and borrowed from the person-in-charge of TSAP. This bilingual catalogue describes step-by step the process of the basic Thai style wrapping techniques for anyone who is keen on knowing Thai culture. Though Thai costumes has a very long history to be learned and preserved, this project is exclusively focus upon the Thai attires in Rattanakosin period emphasizing most the dresses in the IX king reign (the current king).

with Teresa Sádaba and Patricia SanMiguel, ISEM, Spain

Fashion blogging has not yet found a definitive position in the field of fashion media nor a precise role in the fashion industry, but the journalistic account has already declared the end of its «golden era»*. Have we entered a new phase in the history of this (relatively) recent social field? If so, which are its features and how do they affect the field of fashion media and the fashion industry? This working paper explores these issues through a comparison between the Italian and Spanish fashion blogosphere, where the rise of bloggers has begun later than in the Anglo-Saxon world. It draws on an empirical research (in progress) based on 80 in- depth interviews and 200 questionnaires administered to bloggers from both countries, by mixing the qualitative and the quantitive approach. The evolution of the national fashion blogospheres is put in relation with the bloggers’ influence on consumers (Influentials 2003; Sádaba and SanMiguel, 2011) and their position of collaboration or antagonism towards both the traditional media and the fashion companies. The analysis of the Italian and Spanish cases aims at providing empirical evidence of the entry of the fashion blogosphere in a new phase, a «silver era» where the bloggers have lost the golden aura typical of any alleged revolutionary phenomenon and have gained a more institutionalized and normalized role in the field of fashion.

* https://nymag.com/thecut/2014/04/golden-era-of-fashion-blogging-is-over.html

Ara Lumiere is a young fashion luxury brand founded by the Indian businesswoman and philanthropist Kulsum Shadab Wahab, combining her passion for fashion with social commitment within the Indian community. The brand produces unique handmade headgears, pins and foulards, all hand crafted by women that have been assaulted in acid attacks. The aim of this short review is to provide through the Ara Lumiere case a framework to better understand which connections and implications can occur among luxury fashion, social commitment, and sustainability and to understand if Social Responsibility can become an integral part of a luxury fashion brand and the formula for its success.

Fashion and dress as a mode of aesthetic discernment have a history of academic analysis, with much sociological examination focused on its capacity to stimulate imitation, emulation, or as a social marker of identity and status within sections of society. However, this article examines the formation of taste at a more personal level, considering the processes that help individuals form attachments to aesthetic goods. The investigation is situated within the contemporary fashion setting, where fashion media, consumption and digital interactivity have converged to generate new circumstances that impact taste formation. This article does not attempt to examine broad themes of transformation in on-line fashion media; rather it considers personal interaction with particular interfaces (specifically search engines and social media) in the digital context as a taste-making activity. The study is concerned with the relational spaces within which taste operates and how the changing dynamics of fashion communications in the twenty-first century have re-shaped this setting.

This article offers data, hitherto unpublished, about the professional life of Cristóbal Balenciaga during the years following the official announcement of his retirement from the world of fashion in May 1968. These are contributions that help understand some of the issues that are reflected, either in the words of the journalist, or in those of the designer himself in the interview he granted to Prudence Glynn of The Times in August 1971, and that the newspaper decided to publish under the surprising heading of “Balenciaga and la vie d’un chien,” taking the same expression used by the designer himself during the interview. This interview has transcended to this very day as a singular chapter in the biography of Balenciaga, since the granting of interviews was quite unusual throughout his life and, taking into account this peculiar headline, which serves as a shocking expression that corresponded to the aura of enigma that hung over Balenciaga. However, and in light of the new data provided, the designer expressed himself in the context of the experience he lived until his retirement, and especially in the context of realities he was suffering precisely during that August of 1971.

The information provided comes from research in Spanish and French archives, in national and international newspapers, as well as interviews with people who belonged to the Balenciaga circle during their final years of his life.

This is my research paper for the course Wearable Art: Introduction to Fashion Studies and Fashion in an Artistic Context. I analyze the  evolution from body adornment to deconstruction of fashion. Then, I explore the  use of fashion as a form of self-expression in this essay.

The use of the internet and of the (mass) media have in some way technically simplified the internationalization processes of companies, reducing the time needed in order to exchange data and information and facilitating the resolution of operational issues. Within this environment, fashion plays a relevant role; in fact, a considerable part of website and e-commerce offers come from this sector. When facing new markets, fashion companies cannot only provide unique and captivating products, but they also need to offer an opportune and personalized communication, able to cross all the cultural and linguistic boundaries that might occur. In order to face this issue a well-designed localization strategy is required. According to Mele et al. [1] localization can be defined as a “cultural translation” and when applied to online contents it consists in the adaptation of different elements such as texts, images, videos, but also units of measure, sizes or calendars. The paper aims, in this sense, to address the lack of literature concerning localization practices in the online fashion environment, providing a first framework on the depiction of the different cultural values on different fashion websites. The present study is an exploratory benchmarking of the field, realized through a comparative research, based on previous studies related to the depiction of Hofstede’s [2] and Hall’s [3] cultural values provided by Singh et al. and Yalcin et al. [4, 5].

Fashion plays a significant role in the global creative industries and in urban social space. In the realms of art, history and cultural studies, however, fashion is often regarded as a peripheral or even unorthodox topic. Hence, this study aimed at remapping the relationships among the interdisciplinary and conflicting notions of fashion, determining which and how fashion theories are applicable to the real fashion industry in a specific place at a particular time, apprehending the nuanced mechanisms involved, and seeking to create a substantial case for the social construction of fashion. The role of the print media in reporting local and worldwide fashion news in Hong Kong was investigated. An array of conflicting theoretical views towards fashion are first discerned. 

The participant observations and responses excerpted from interviews and conversations are presented. Those data portray partly conflicting, partly consistent notions of fashion among those working in the fashion media. They will be discussed with reference to the diverse notions of fashion. The focus of the observations was: What shapes one’s current understanding of fashion? What fashion messages do fashion media intend to communicate? The responses surprisingly demonstrate the contradictory rules guiding how media people determine what is fashionable. Real cases happened tend to echo the critical perspectives, however, the encoding process also involved aesthetic and creative judgment and validated the pluralistic perspectives. In general the media personnel were not very powerful in encoding fashionability, yet it does not mean they could not influence the fashion meanings at all.

Although the origins of ugg boots are distinctly Australian, the ugg story has evolved through a number of different threads that shape our perceptions of the humble sheepskin boot. There is an international media narrative of ugg boots that, although rooted in Australian surf culture, shifts its focus to the world of celebrity culture and more recently, fashion institutions such as Parisian runways. In Australia, the media discourse on the ugg boot follows a very different trajectory; this narrative is concerned with agricultural practices, sporting activities and social etiquette that connect with the Australian landscape and a sense of national identity. This study traces the recent histories of ugg boots to explore the themes and tensions between differing constructions of this object through place, space and time.