Fashion Bloggers

This chapter surveys the recent history of fashion photography and provides an introduction to current scholarship and scholarly debates on the topic. It argues for the centrality of the image to fashion and explores the changing world of the fashion photograph. Drawing on Roland Barthes’ two distinct representations of the garment - image clothing and written clothing the author provides a close analysis of the street style fashion photography blog, The Sartorialist. The unclear status of fashion photography as art is also explored.

The question of what a fashion photograph is – its ontology – is a key concern. Traditionally a commercial image created by professionals in the service of the fashion industry, fashion photography now exists in numerous forms, contexts and functionalities. This has not altered its fundamental nature. Inventing something other, something new and the endless quest to imagine the future while creating desire for a soon-to-be-forgotten present, fashion cannot be understood without fashion photography.

Esattamente 10 anni fa Chiara Ferragni pubblicava il primo post del suo blog *The Blonde Salad*. Inizia così la parabola della digital influencer da oltre 17 milioni di follower su Instagram.

Parafrasando (e capovolgendo) la celebre *Fenomenologia di Mike Bongiorno* di Umberto Eco, Ferragni, intesa come personaggio e non come persona, è la ragazza della porta accanto innalzata a superstar.

In lei si avverte la palese costruzione e finzione scenica del personaggio, confezionato da un'abile macchina del marketing, a dispetto della retorica del blog come diario privato.

La cosa, invece di creare repulsione nei follower, ne determina la devozione, poiché Ferragni è esattamente ciò che loro vorrebbero essere: icona di stile, oggetto di attenzione del circo della moda pur essendovi arrivata dall’esterno.

La «rivoluzione» digitale dei fashion influencer è più retorica che sostanziale. Non ha creato dei media alternativi, capaci di alimentare un immaginario che faccia concorrenza a quello veicolato dai tradizionali mezzi di informazione del settore.

Se non una rivoluzione fallita, certo un'occasione mancata. È questo il limite dell'insalata: anche se venduta in milioni di confezioni, rimane pur sempre un contorno.

[Trovate la full story su Homo Academicus]

https://medium.com/homoacademicus/fenomenologia-di-chiara-ferragni-9a5c15e16e79

This article investigates how fashion companies build their relationships with digital influencers (DIs), a new group of cultural intermediaries who are increasingly central to brand communication strategies. Scholars have mostly studied DIs' role in influencing the market, but largely neglected the process through which they build their work. Through a qualitative inductive research directed at 21 Italian fashion companies, we describe the process through which companies fabricate the authenticity work, while collaborating with DIs. By taking the overlooked perspective of the company brand owner, we identify the underlying dynamics of achieving co-fabricated authenticity, unpacking the mechanisms through which companies select DIs, shape the connections and regulate the reciprocity with them. Our findings highlight how companies and DIs' practices become intertwined, with the commodity of authenticity being constructed at the crossroads between the former's commercial needs and the latter's grassroots narratives and practices. 'Co-fabricated authenticity' ultimately emerges as the result of the work of those actors who are engaged in managing the authenticity or processes of authentication of marketable goods: the intangible and ephemeral value of authenticity is made tangible and co-produced through the collaboration between brands and cultural intermediaries such as DIs.

The essay focuses on the phenomenon of fashion blogging and influencing, and analyses how the work of digital influencers affects the production and circulation of fashion imaginary. The aim of the contribution is twofold. Firstly, to show the institutionalisation of fashion blogging and influencing through a "fight and rule" strategy: trying to maintain, at least rhetorically, the appeal of the outsider voice born from below, bloggers and influencers are now a structural component of the communicative processes that link brands and consumers. Secondly, to identify the contribution of fashion blogging and influencing to the construction/deconstruction of the contemporary fashion imaginary. The article develops a case study, that of the most successful Italian digital influencer: Chiara Ferragni, author of The Blonde Salad, who counts more than 24 million followers on Instagram (September 2021). The initial phase of Ferragni's "career" (2009-2016) is reconstructed. The categories of "fashion imaginary" and "alternative media" are used to understand to what extent the dominant fraction of bloggers, represented by the influencer Ferragni, was (and is) able to feed the contemporary fashion imaginary with alternative narratives.

Τα fashion blogs ανήκουν στα social media και αποτελούν πλέον ένα παγκόσμιο φαινόμενο με ραγδαία ανάπτυξη. Είναι το πιο δημοφιλή μέσο προβολής της μόδας, των νέων προϊόντων και του lifestyle της blogger. Η παρούσα εργασία είναι επικεντρωμένη στις Ελληνίδες fashion bloggers και μελετά πως διάφοροι παράγοντες, όπως τα χαρακτηριστικά του blogger, η ιδιοσυγκρασία του χρήστη, η διαφήμιση ή η διάταξη του blog μπορούν να επηρεάσουν την καταναλωτική συμπεριφορά του Ελληνικού κοινού ως προς τη μόδα.

Citation: Verma, Drishti J. (2019)"Who Influences Fashion: Bloggers, Reality Stars or Social Media"

The world has become a Global Village and with the advent of technology the ways of communication and work has been revolutionized completely. The fashion industry, like most businesses in general, has been heavily impacted in recent years by the introduction of digital media. In the fashion industry; this change has been influencing the consumers in countless ways. Social media use in the fashion industry has enabled average consumers and regular people to have much more interaction with fashion designers and high-end clothing, shoes and accessories firms. Digital media has impacted not only the way in which the public can instantly access runway shows and keep up-to-date with favorite designers and models, but it has also influenced the choice of models and bloggers that are currently being used as well as even providing inspiration to designers for their newest collections. High-end labels and fashion magazines are connecting with audiences online and through social media websites like Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, and Facebook.
Fashion bloggers are fast becoming an influential force within the fashion industry. The ascend of digital technologies has enabled the audience to connect with one another via various social networking sites, and has promoted the consumers to share their feelings and opinions on various products and organisations Fashion bloggers are fast becoming regulars in the front row of fashion shows; a sign that fashion designers are beginning to acknowledge the power that these bloggers wield. Before making any purchase consumers read the blogs so that they can make a decision about whether they want to purchase that product or not?
Reality shows have been found to have a big impact on the audience. Reality TV shows focus on the daily lives of celebrities. These are show like Big Boss, Keeping Up with the Kardashians etc. In these shows celebrities are put on some specific places and are given certain tasks, these “celebreality” shows are often created with the idea of promoting a celebrity product or upcoming project which largely attracts consumers.
The primary objective of this study is to elicit a greater understanding of how various sources of fashion influence their readers. This study is simply based on primary data collection which would be followed by empirical research. The primary research aims to know specific insight about who decides the fashion trends. This data will be collected from various websites, journals, and fashion magazines. Moreover, this research aims at finding an effective source of influencing customer choices.

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?

La aparición de fashion bloggers ha supuesto un cambio en la forma cómo se vive la moda en Lima - Perú. Sus seguidores son influenciados por imitar a estas celebrities de las redes sociales cuya principal  actividad es mostrar su estilo de vida como marca distintiva, seguido por una lista amplia de consejos sobre cómo vestir, cómo maquillarse, dónde comprar, etc.  Las fashion bloggers más populares han optado por dedicarse a tiempo completo a esta actividad y obtener ingresos a partir de sus artículos, videos y fotos colocadas en sus blogs y sus redes sociales. Su principal fuente ingreso es el pago que reciben por publicitar marcas. ¿Cómo eligen las marcas que publicitan? Tres bloggers explican que solo escogen marcas asociadas directamente a su estilo de vida y evitan las marcas en las que no confían Este trabajo relacionó las marcas de accesorios con las bloggers para corroborar si existe la misma variedad de marcas publicitadas entre las distintas bloggers del medio.

Personal Style Blogs: Appearances that Fascinate closely examines the practice of personal style blogging to chart its history and development as a genre of alternative fashion media. It maps style blogging's affective dimensions and the impacts it has had on notions of the private in public, women's writing, who fashion's ideal is, and how we can understand online communication as intimacy enacted at a distance.

In taking a macro look at aspects of style blogging such as writing and readership, the performance of self online, and the criticism bloggers attract from trolls as well as the professional fashion media, this book also traces the transformation of the style blogosphere from an alternative, experimental space to one dominated by the fashion industry. The work touches on notions of individuality, aesthetics and performance on both sides of the digital platform, asking: what can style blogging teach us about women's writing and the digital performance of a private self? And what drives style bloggers to develop a personal space online?

A partir de uma pesquisa de caráter exploratório, buscamos conhecer a opinião do público, leitor ou não de blogs, acerca do fenômeno das blogueiras de moda. Perguntamos, em questionário semiaberto, se a prática das blogueiras poderia ser compreendida como profissão. Os resultados apontam que há um discurso circulante que aceita positivamente a prática remunerada dos blogs de moda, com críticas, no entanto, à qualidade do trabalho desenvolvido pela " classe ".

Secondo episodio della fenomenologia di Chiara Ferragni. Allo scoperta della sua biografia imprenditoriale prima che diventasse la signora Ferragnez.

https://medium.com/homoacademicus/fenomenologia-di-chiara-ferragni-episodio-2-304f35100157

Successo, adv, tragico, autenticità: 4 parole chiave per leggere il fenomeno Ferragni sulla scia della Dialettica dell'Illuminismo di Horkeimer e Adorno.

Se ha ancora senso, oggi, parlare di industria culturale, questa ha il volto di Chiara Ferragni, che con maestria superiore a tutti i suoi colleghi influencer ne ha ridefinito regole, logiche e potenzialità. Horkheimer e Adorno, forse, le avrebbero dedicato qualche pagina della Dialettica.

Este artículo propone una aproximación teórica para explorar las prácticas de los consumidores en espacios digitales, específicamente aquellas relacionadas con los procesos de generación de valor –simbólico y económico— sobre bienes producidos en la industria cultural. La generación de valor simbólico sobre bienes culturales descansa no solo en la dimensión de la producción, sino también en el ámbito del consumo. La masificación de una serie de tecnologías digitales – especialmente los social media-no solo facilitan la circulación de representaciones y valoraciones por parte de los consumidores sobre bienes y servicios. También se convierten en plataformas que determinan y enactan ciertos comportamientos, formas de comunicación y trabajo en los consumidores. Este fenómeno se hace visible en la industria cultural, especialmente en el campo de la moda y la música. Se parte del supuesto que estas prácticas –y el papel que juegan las tecnologías digitales en ellas- hacen que un grupo de consumidores opere como " intermediarios culturales " (Bourdieu 1984) entre el consumo y la producción de bienes y servicios. Al movilizar una serie de valores en torno a esos bienes, así como representaciones del mundo social y económico, estos actores operan como agentes clave en la producción y reproducción de mercados (Callon, et. al 2002).

The paper focuses on fashion bloggers as cultural intermediaries, which taste origins connect different audiences and groups in the fashion industry. Our sample consists of 15 blogs, which were nominated for two major awards for fashion bloggers Bloglovin.com and Stylight.com in 2015. We analyzed 1223 looks they produced for 1 year (brand choices for every look). We created a two-mode network (blogger-brand) and converted it to the one-mode network (brand-brand). The main research question is whether fashion bloggers as cultural intermediates tend to follow professional community and replicate its hierarchies or rebel against it by creating their owns. The analysis consists of 2 steps. First, we look at three dimensions of brand combination (a) mass-market and haute-couture brands (b) brands oriented to male or female audiences (c) global and local brands. Second, we apply the association rules algorithm to extract combinations of brands matching with not only by the quantity of coupling but probabilistically explore brand unions. URL: https://link.springer.com/chapter/

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.

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

The fashion industry embodies unsustainable consumption. Fashion is the temporary adoption of a clothing, to be discarded long before the functional utility of the garment expires. The growth of fast fashion business model has intensified overconsumption behavior and
negative ecological impacts of the industry. In recent years, there has been growing interest in sustainability related to apparel consumption. However, many consumers struggle to change behavior or even know what they can do to make a difference. Therefore, this study investigated
sustainable consumption practices communicated by sustainable fashion bloggers (SFB) – whom may be serving as important opinion leaders and influencers for change. Research objectives include identifying: 1) most common sustainable apparel consumption practices communicated by fashion bloggers; and 2) persuasive messages used to convince others to change their practices and 3) primary reasons fashion bloggers made a change in their fashion consumption
practices. A sample of SFB were selected from 15 published lists of top sustainable fashion blogs. Research methodology employed content analysis technique to extract most relevant themes from blog texts. In order to improve objectivity and reliability of analysis, coding rules
and procedures were established by using non-study blog postings. The two raters systematically evaluated the ten most recent blogs posted by each blogger, as well as background information provided in “About” section of website. Divergent results discussed until agreement reached.
Topic modeling in Python 3.0 was used and results compared with themes identified by raters. Findings suggest SFB had been part of the fashion industry at one time or were keenly interested in fashion but in recent years became concerned about the negative social and environmental impacts of the industry. As they experienced challenges living their new values, they were inspired to share their stories and findings with others on a similar journey.

"Potete finirla adesso di parlare del mio fisico?" E' il titolo che trionfa nella copertina del "Time" e che-­‐ con accanto una foto della bionda più famosa del mondo, un po' ingrassata e con indosso un tubino nero-­‐ annuncia così il cambio della silhouette di Barbie. Dal 1959 Barbie ha avuto forme irreali (95-­‐45-­‐82), insieme a quella che è stata per lei una combinazione vincente (occhi azzurri, pelle chiara e capelli biondi): così è stato prima del 16 Gennaio 2016 e della nuova collezione Barbie: fashionista.

It's the second number of fashion trends published on "La Coquette Italienne": it is a fashion blog, based in France, winner of the Golden Blog Awards in 2014.
Lacoquetteitalienne counts more 121k follower on differents social networks and if you want read more:  http://www.lacoquetteitalienne.com/

More than a decade after their first appearance, fashion blogs have established themselves as a constant feature of the fashion scene. However, in many respects they have not yet achieved a definitive status within the field of fashion media, at least in terms of legitimization. This chapter addresses the following question: is the golden era of fashion blogging over? It does so by comparing two national fields of fashion blogging, those of Italy and Spain. From a theoretical point of view bloggers are investigated as influentials and their work is considered as constitutive of the contemporary field of the fashion media, drawing on a Bourdieusian perspective. The arguments formulated in this chapter are based on quantitative and qualitative research carried out in Italy and Spain. Through desk analysis we investigated the features of the bloggers with the highest levels of visibility and their activity in the social media. A sample of 62 bloggers were interviewed with qualitative techniques to discuss the experience of common fashion bloggers. We conclude that blogs have gained a more institutionalized and normalized role in the field of fashion. Despite the presence of many aspirational bloggers, the field has left its ‘naïve’ stage and has become more professionalized. Players such as companies and journalists, initially not always particularly enthusiastic about bloggers (especially in Italy), recognize and legitimize the role of bloggers as fashion influentials by employing them as marketing tools and contributors to magazines. The role of semi-professionalised bloggers is highlighted. Together with celebrities and common bloggers, they are part of the tripartite hierarchy that characterises the field of fashion blogging.

Special plenary session

“Not just glossy words: The language of fashion in the digital media era”, organized by the research group supervised by Emanuela Mora (Università Cattolica of Milan): an excursus on the recent transformation of the Fashion Media System aiming at stressing the performative role played by the fashion media in providing an aesthetic and practical imaginary for the aestheticization of reality and human experience.

In the last 20 years, there has been a huge growth in fashion coverage. Fashion-related news and information are now picked over and analysed in newspapers, supplements, weeklies, websites and the thousands of fashion blogs: fashion brands and retailers started to publish their own magazines rivalling the most established titles; a rising amount of magazines and platforms grew out of the traditional editorial world of fashion. Within these editorial subjects, fashion is considered under multiple, often even co-existing, perspectives: as a "serious business”, as a feature of more general attention to lifestyles, as a form of contemporary visual arts, etc.
The platforms, magazines, newspapers often consider different target in terms of audience, editorial projects and aims. They focus not only, neither mainly, on the commercial aim for their direct advertising investors. Sometimes they do not even sell traditional advertising spaces; they rather pursue cultural/artistic goals and develop collaborations and projects with brands, organizing events, designing objects or special issues etc. In this way, they promote their titles as performative platforms for PR or communication practices and their professionals as the actors of them. Their audiences, therefore, are not mainly the general public of fashion’s amateurs; rather a hardly recognizable and uniform cohort of people living and working inside or at the boundaries of the fashion world.
The fashion media, therefore, play a performative role in the process at the core of the conference: they provide an esthetical and practical imaginary for the aestheticization of reality and human experience. The new fashion media are both places where the professionals create and enhance practices for the aestheticization of reality and productive realms and resources that suggest tools, meanings, values, visual materials useful for the transition toward the aestheticization of life to the audiences.


The session proposes an excursus on the recent transformation of the Fashion Media System through 4 contributions:

Keynote lecture: #parisienne: Social Media Stratification in Visions of Parisian women
Prof. Agnès Rocamora, LCF, UAL London

A reading of the transformation of fashion Coverage in Italy
Prof. Emanuela Mora, Università Cattolica of Milan

Did you say influencer? On the actual role of digital influencers on the field of fashion
Prof. Marco Pedroni, eCampus University

When grannies go viral: the new image of fashion in the representations of senior bloggers
Dr Ambrogia Cereda, eCampus University / Università Cattolica of Milan

The essay focuses on the phenomenon of fashion blogging and influencing, and analyses how the work of digital influencers affects the production and circulation of fashion imaginary. The aim of the contribution is twofold. Firstly, to show the institutionalisation of fashion blogging and influencing through a "fight and rule" strategy: trying to maintain, at least rhetorically, the appeal of the outsider voice born from below, bloggers and influencers are now a structural component of the communicative processes that link brands and consumers. Secondly, to identify the contribution of fashion blogging and influencing to the construction/deconstruction of the contemporary fashion imaginary. The article develops a case study, that of the most successful Italian digital influencer: Chiara Ferragni, author of The Blonde Salad, who counts more than 24 million followers on Instagram (September 2021). The initial phase of Ferragni's "career" (2009-2016) is reconstru...