Agnès Rocamora

Hypertextuality and remediation in the fashion media: the case of fashion blogs

Since their appearance in the early noughties, fashion blogs have established themselves as a central platform for the circulation of fashion-related news and information. Often the creation of fashion outsiders, they have entered the mainstream fashion media, bringing to light the shifting nature of fashion journalism. The paper discusses the rise of the fashion blogosphere and the impact of new technologies on the mediation of fashion. Drawing on the notions of hypertextuality and remediation, it contributes to a recurring question in academic studies of digital culture: how new are new media? The paper looks at the ways fashion blogs define themselves in relation to traditional fashion journalism and the traditional fashion press. Their relation of co-dependence and mutual influence is unpacked to shed light on the contemporary field of the fashion media, and the role of new technologies in the production, circulation and consumption of fashion-related news.

Personal Fashion Blogs: Screens and Mirrors in Digital Self-portraits

Abstract Since their appearance at the beginning of the millennium, fashion blogs have become key players in the field of fashion. One type in particular, personal fashion blogs, where bloggers post pictures of themselves documenting their style, has established itself as a central form of fashion blogging. This is the type of blogs that this article concentrates on. By bringing together various technologies of the self it argues that the blogs represent a significant space of identity construction. Focusing on the idea of gender, it explores the various forces, both empowering and disempowering, at play in the formation and representation of femininity. The computer screen is discussed as a mirror through which womens position as specular objects is both reproduced and challenged, whilst the blogs also constitute a space for the circulation of alternative visions of femininity.

Fields of Fashion Critical insights into Bourdieu’s sociology of culture

Bourdieu’s sociology of culture has been central to studies of consumption. However, although it offers rich insights into his sociology of cultural production and consumption, his work in the field of fashion has been little discussed. This article explores some of Bourdieu’s main ideas, namely the notions of field and subfield, the concept of transsubstantiation, that of symbolic production, and the idea of a dialectic of distinction-pretension. It is argued that Bourdieu does not pay enough attention to the materiality of material culture whose meaningfulness he discusses only as symbolic. He also fails to reflect on the significance of mass fashion - whether symbolic or sensual - and the influence it has had on the field of high fashion, hence ignoring the theoretical implications of such influence. In his work, the discrepancies between empirical reality and his conceptual framework are minimized.

Mediatization and Digital Media in the Field of Fashion

Abstract This article shows the relevance of the concept of “mediatization” for understanding the contemporary field of fashion and its relation to digital media. It first gives an overview of definitions of mediatization. It then shows that the production of fashion, such as the staging of catwalk shows and the design of collections, is being molded by and for the media, as is its retailing. Finally, the article discusses the relation between the wearing of cosmetics and the use of digital cameras in the fashioning of the self to argue that the mediatization of fashion reaches out to ordinary practices of the self, a mediatized self.