This study qualitatively examines the “non-boundaries of style” represented in fashion on a social media platform. The term “non-boundary” refers to a nonlinear boundary or distinction based on the more flexible time and space in the digital era, rather than a space at a certain time. Based on a theoretical review of media ecology, that is, how the media environment transforms human experience and affects society and culture, the spatial and temporal aspects of digital platforms were characterized as transcendental, open social, realistic virtual, and aesthetic spaces in everyday lives. The fashion-related images from the Instagram account of global fashion influencer Susanna Lau (@susiebubble), uploaded from May 2012–June 2019, were then analyzed, including their titles, caption content, hashtags, and followers’ commentary. Analysis showed that the images represent a digital lifestyle and trace the non-boundaries of style across the binaries of work–leisure, public–private, real–virtual, and geography–culture.
This study qualitatively analyzes the phenomenon of fashion everydayness as a cultural revolution in the digital space as everyday life continues to expand into digital platforms. The analysis proceeded in four perspectives based on Lefebvre’s theoretical framework: the festivalization of everyday life, the artification of everyday life, the holistic stylization of everyday life, and cultural revolution as a daily practice. Instagram, the case for this study and the most popular image-centric social network, leads the digital aesthetics paradigm through creative acts that weave fashion into the daily life of the individual. The study focuses on three fashion mega-influencers whose successful careers began with blogs documenting their daily lives. The analysis showed that Instagram, as a social platform, is a creative space for sharing everyday life with its appropriation of time and space. In there, fashion visualizes the look of the everyday beyond the boundaries of time and space. In practice, it suggests a digital cultural revolution: a composite lifestyle expressive of various tastes and styles—a vital medium to inspire and sustain fashion everydayness. This has implications that the information and communication technology of the digital age created a new cultural space and that daily visualization through fashion will eventually produce sustainable cultural contents.
This study recognizes the importance of the social network platform as a new fashion media, and analyzes the significance of various digital fashion images, based on the 'Aura' theory of Walter Benjamin. The concept of "Disappearance of Artistic Aura" can be summarized into three discussions: 1) the change in the way of artistic perception, which is changes in value from worship to exhibition. 2) the change in the way of artistic acceptance, from personal to mass. 3) the emergence of new artistic concepts such as camera and film. By reviewing characteristics of the 21 st digital replication era, the study tried to discover and evaluate the expanded significance of the 'Aura' represented on digital fashion images, which are infinitely generated, modified, reproduced, transmitted, and shared in social network environments. The 'Burberry Instagram' was chosen as the subject of the study. The study reviewed around 2,500 images, which were uploaded from February 2011 to July 2016, and selected 200 images deemed the most representative of Burberry, and categorized and analyzed by the extended concept of 'Aura'. The study results as follows: First, the 'Aura' in digital fashion image appearing on social network platforms signifies the expansion of product value in fashion, and it also represents inherited traditions and modernization of images. Second, it also signifies the democratization and globalization of fashion through the open replication and sharing as well as the interaction of criticism and acceptance. Third, it signifies the personalized taste and fashion as everyday lifestyle, through personalized services, securing playful space, and real-time updates.
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