Digital Post-Fashion: Transformation of Design Paradigm and Metamorphoses of Identity Practices

Abstract

In this digital age almost all cultural practices are experiencing changes; neither the fashion industry, nor the fashion itself as a form of social behaviour are exceptions. Fashion brands face the challenge of creating new discourses as fashion consumers are becoming more sophisticated and more individualistic at the same time, with their knowledge and imagination helping them to make conscious choices. This, in turn, affects fashion advertising and communication strategies: advertising campaigns use new discursive and narrative practices. A new emerging and developing design paradigm creates a ”post-fashion.” The phenomenon of post-fashion is associated with a deep focus on the consumers, and not so much on their needs, but on their fantasies and desires. Fashion becomes a social laboratory, helping us to decipher the mechanisms of identity building and more to understand more clearly current and future social changes. Remaining a creative industry, fashion enters the virtual space, setting new coordinates for the social imaginary of body, age and gender: that is, for all those identity parameters that are becoming increasingly vague today. This process exposes a new social imaginary, new imaginative structures and experiences. Post-fashion combines traditional elements (textiles, folk crafts and eco-production, as well as silhouette and form, and much more) with the new digital technologies in the creation and distribution of fashion products.