Letter from the Editor
Image courtesy of Chinouk Filique de Miranda.
Fashion and Digital Engagement : (Re)Orienting Connectedness in Imaginary Realities.
As I’m trying to write this editor's letter, I (once again) feel like Alice. As Alice falls through the looking glass, she gets lost in a network of imaginaries. So I feel like Alice, but the kind of glass I’m referring to is the one in which you can see yourself staring back when the device you're using runs out of battery. And while the screen is not a looking glass, it is a glass for looking. And while I see myself in it, I never get to see myself as others see me, on the other side, via their screen. A shift in orientation takes place, without me having to change my position. Orientation on screen seems to ask of us a different type of engagement, and all the -tions come to mind: decentralization, democratization, imagination, and conversation. All the things fashion seems to grapple with and seeks to regain and reconfigure through screens that cause re-orientation as much as disorientation.
The rise of digital culture has led to a seismic shift within the way we think and interact with and through fashion. As I write this, there are currently 5312 articles published online via Business of Fashion that concern themselves with the digital pivot of the fashion industry. Most of them report on what the next best steps might be to stay relevant (read: generate revenue) and how to go about it (read: how to do it fast and catch up with the ever-evolving whirlwind of radical digital innovation). Thus, needless to say, fashion’s digitized landscape subsequently services a new type of interaction and connectedness between the industry, its practitioners, and its audience. As we live by the screens that surround us, our digital devices have become a gateway for fashion brands to weave their way into our everyday lives.
I’ve thought a long time about what this Digital Engagement issue represents. In itself, but also as a form of collaboration between the Fashion Studies Journal team, the individual contributors, myself, and you, the reader!. As I shift words and reorient my sentences, I realize that I’m trying to find descriptions that may not grasp the full extent of the ways in which fashion impacts these personalized experiences. And maybe that is exactly the point… by sharing observations, lived experience, and niche(ish) research, writing, and visualizing, we’re able to cross-pollinate the paradoxically confined spaces our digital landscapes provide us.
Digitized everyday life has formed itself into a constellation of hyper-personalized interactions. This is why the issue is built around ‘Digital Engagement’ and not ‘Digital Fashion’. It aims to convey that digital fashion is not just one linear ‘thing’ or commercially viable alternative but a mode of doing, being, and interacting through fashion in a virtual communal space. And so, fashions’ digital dimension beholds a wide variety of multidisciplinary practitioners and collectives scattered all around the internet, using different vernaculars. As a result we set out to find and underscore a few of those voices that critically unpack various modes of digital engagement through a fashion-focused lens.
The Fashion & Digital Engagement issue turns out to be a compilation of visual essays, long-form writing, a deepdive into pro-counterfeit and anti-counterfeit fashion spaces online, a review on the peculiar ways language is imposed on us through fashion media, a poised piece on virtual dressing tinged by 21 questions, and a poetic center piece on experiencing digital fashion while navigating visual impairment.
I wanted to create a space for stories, observations, and investigations that live beyond the strict question-and-answer framework of scientific publications. And I think you'll find that the content of this issue reflects a very balanced palette when it comes to form, approach, and tone of voice. You’ll find that some of them are in search of more sensorial magic and, when unable to find it, have set steps in motion to be the creators of that haptic-like experience themselves. And while we’re fully committed to finding the good in the opportunities digital brings us, such as the ability to have intimate private spaces and connect with others through the self, we also debate and creatively explore the grounds on which fashion needs to change and circumvent or even refuse the commodification of self.
One thing is certain, as visuality has always been the prevailing vehicle of influence for fashion, and its utilization of virtual spaces the prime method of interaction, turning what once were communicative platforms into commercial spaces: our online environment needs us to play an active role as interpreter, and that notion extends to the importance of digital agency. Keep in mind, we must become the systems we need.
So, here we are! We’ve stepped through the cracks of the looking glass and landed in a place where imaginary realities come to life, the unknown spaces seem daunting, the subliminal is yet to be fully understood, and most of all, connecting with the other veering outside of the screen seems to be the basis of our constructed day-to-day.
I could go on editing forever, adding, changing, adapting, growing. We are now a year from when I first proposed this issue to the FSJ team, who I want to thank for their support and enthusiasm along the way, and hopefully the intent for this issue—to highlight a growing collection of initiatives and shed light on the dynamic fabric that fashions’ digital spectrum upholds—shines through. Please enjoy our Fashion & Digital Engagement issue and be inspired (!) by things that might happen beyond your digitized, and algorithmically mediated, peripheral vision.
