©Bottega Veneta The news of Bottega Veneta’s social media account closure in 2021 has paradoxically made the brand's name even more prominent on these very platforms. This clearly shows that social media has become the new grammar of the fashion industry. We now consume fashion through images on a small screen before encountering a physical garment, making it nearly impossible to envision fashion without social media. We are faced to the truth that images floating around in what we think are virtual spaces are shaping our consumption experiences and value judgements. In response, the fashion industry has consistently voiced warnings and concerns about how social media has changed our consumption experiences. ©Vogue / Annie Leibovitz “Today with social media, we also see the influence of screens, how it has flattened fashion a little,” (…) “When I am at a fitting with women, not just celebrities, before even looking at, feeling the dress, or moving in it, they take a picture of themselves to see how the dress is captured on the screen”1 Alber Elbaz's interview pinpoints the crisis of design and dress in the contemporary fashion industry. In the age of social media, the capital success of fashion no longer hinges on the feel of the garments, the quality of their materials or the experience of wearing them. Instead, digital metrics such as image sensitivity, views and ‘likes’ drive fashion businesses. As Alber Elbaz astutely observes, the most significant aspect of a garment is how it looks on screen, and its value is determined by its ‘Instagrammability’. Social media posts have redefined the nature of fashion consumption, blurring the distinction between the physical and digital realms. ©Diesel / Francesco Nazardo This shift inevitably alters consumer perception. People constantly question the authenticity of clothes and bodies they see on social media, wondering about the extent of retouching and filtering. Moreover, the rapid-fire content that dictates trends in 15 seconds, judges marketability in 30, and evaluates collections in under a minute raises fundamental questions about the reliability of such information and our dependence on it. Paradoxically, social media, which has accelerated the digitalisation of the fashion industry, has simultaneously made consumers wary of images on screen and question the reality of clothes and what actual clothing is. ©Balenciaga However, these social media-driven changes can no longer be explained simply as a dichotomy between image and reality. This is because there are increasing cases where the ‘original’ exists in the digital realm, and this image replaces and defines reality. As seen in the collaboration between Balenciaga and The Simpsons, fashion images are no longer mere replicas of real-world originals. Now, digital images can be the original, with the physical collection functioning as a product of the commodification and fetishisation of that digital original. In this newly unfolding pattern of consumption, we should not simply dismiss images on social media as deceptive and be wary of images appearing on social media as deception. Digital fashion, which allows for the consumption of fashion without producing actual clothing, presents a new possibility for addressing the issues inherent in the existing fashion industry and consumption patterns. ©Getty Images / Jared C. Tilton Of course, it is natural and necessary to be wary and concerned about experiencing fashion solely through screens and the marginalisation of the physical experience of clothing. In the future, people may look back with fright at the indiscriminate use of social media and unfettered access to the digital world, as was recently the case in Florida, where a bill to ban minors under 14 from having social media accounts passed both the House and Senate with bipartisan support. However, even if this assumption is valid and social media images play a lesser role in the fashion industry and we return to the ‘essence of clothes’, it is hard to assert that this aspect will help make fashion ‘three-dimensional’. Plato's allegory of the cave by Jan Saenredam, according to Cornelis van Haarlem, 1604, Albertina, Vienna The digitalisation of fashion through social media has reminded people of Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Still, in truth, even before the advent of social media, fashion was becoming a consumer good of images. In this situation, what meaning can the attitude of considering screen images as shadows viewed in a cave have beyond repeating the past? Perhaps what we need, as people who have already become accustomed to a fashion experience in which clothes are absent, may not be anxiety about the potential loss of clothes’ true value and negative preconceptions about images, but rather attempts to seek new possibilities in this ‘shift to images’. If fashion has always been a mirror of the times, it also must be a reflection of social media and the digital world. It is time to reconsider whether digital fashion is merely a shadow of the essence of fashion, or whether it has the potential to free fashion from its inherent tendency to repeat the past. 1 AFP-Relaxnews, "Alber Elbaz : les réseaux sociaux ont "aplati la mode”, Fashion Network , 2015. 9. 9. Available at here BY MUYO PARKJULY 31, 2024 >READ THE KOREAN VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE> READ OTHER ARTICLES