Is Authentic Personal Style Possible?
Courtesy of The Zoe Report
Is authentic personal style possible? The “echo chamber” that social media has become has inhibited our ability to consider objectively fashion and our personal sense of dressing. The constant influx of promotional fashion media has resulted in a structure of fashion codes that are becoming increasingly harder to dissociate ourselves from.
Courtesy of Vogue Runway
Vogue’s article “Personal Style Is Trapped in the Algorithm’s Echochamber,” discusses this and refers to recent fashion commentary. Alexandra Hildreth says that ‘”ideas are starting to exist in a vacuum,” in consideration of our individual algorithm-defined echo chambers. Cultural critic Charlie Squire explains that “If you’re going to this algorithmically generated place to look for fashion, you aren’t interacting with ideas manifested in images, as fashion has always been.” Instead, “‘you’re interacting with data manifesting as commodities.” The subconscious influence of algorithmic curation and commercial optimization is, unfortunately, almost impossible to escape on social media platforms.
Courtesy of Vogue.com
“Subversive fashion” is similarly a trend in itself. Subversion in personal style or attempts to contradict or transcend the current sphere of media-based fashion, seems to be guided by simply another series of recognizable fashion codes. The expanse of trends or algorithmically coded fashion limits the ability for clothing to be entirely undirected as well as clouds any personal objectivity. We are often identifiable by what we wear regardless of our awareness of it. This is, of course, not specific to the digital age, however nowadays items of clothing are far more nuanced and personally indicative. “You can tell a person’s screen time by that their outfit,” as mentioned by Hildreth, is, at present, an unfortunate unsaid assumption.
So, how often do we question the significance of what we are wearing day-to-day? The subconscious implications of fashion media and the current algorithmic authority has resulted in what seems to be a confining set of fashion codes and significations, that we can hope to unravel as we become less shaped by transitory media.
Article by Alana Courtney-Gleeson, Contributor, PhotoBook Magazine
Tearsheets by Chenglin Qu, Graphic Design Intern, PhotoBook Magazine
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