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Personal Style Blogs:

Subverting the Fashion Hegemony

March 28 2011

Robyn Hobbs

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Fashion has commonly been associated with the exercise of power and been thought of as

a consumer activity grounded in hegemony (Craik, 1993: ixx). It has been conceived of as, “an

authoritarian process driven by a recognised elite core of designers dictating the fashion

behaviour of the majority” (Craik, 1993: ixx). However, with online personal style blogs quickly

becoming the go-to resources for all things fashion, blogs such as Selective Potential, The

Clothes Horse, and Sally Jane Vintage are working to undermine this common conception of

fashion and subvert the hegemony in the way that they offer alternatives to the notion of fashion

as a purely consumption oriented activity. Personal style blogs encourage the idea that fashion

does not have to lay solely in the hands of the elite designers, celebrities or models but rather

fashion-making can be up to the general public and their own individual creativity. (Berry,

2010:2) In this essay, I will first outline the nature of the cultural hegemony and show the way

in which consumption and fashion have been thought to participate in hegemony, and finally

work to show that personal style blogs work to subvert the hegemony.

According to O’Brien and Szeman the concept of hegemony refers to, “the ability of

dominant groups in society to exercise control over weaker groups not by means of force or

domination, but by gaining their consent, so that the unequal distribution appears to be both

legitimate and natural” (2010: 53). That is to say, hegemony works to trick people into believing

something has to or should be the way that it is and uses this deceit to control the masses.

Hegemony is always in flux and is always being negotiated as oppositional consciousness shift

and take different forms and stances (O’Brien Szeman, 2010: 53).

Fashion has been conceived of as a type of hegemonic oppression (Crane, 1999: 541).

The fashion world has been seen as being led by an elite oligarchy and followed by a hoard of

non-thinking passive impersonators (Craik: iv). According to McDowell fashion and clothes

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have been used as, “a tool of oppression, a weapon yielded against the poor. They were used to

drive home the lesson that the grand were not simply different, they were better, because they

were rich. They wore on their backs the proof that they were superior intellectually, morally and

socially” (1984:10). Lakoff and Scherr claim that fashion magazines and the photographs of

women found within them can generate dissatisfaction among average women because of the

unrealistic images represented in them (1984: 114). In this way, the fashion magazine and

fashion photograph are working to perpetuate the hegemony by persuading women to ease their

dissatisfaction by way of consumption. In all of these ways fashion can be perceived as a tool to

oppress and control the masses. Yet all of these things are changing because the personal style

blog is working to take away the power that the elite few once had.

The personal style blog or fashion blog is an online resource that covers a wide array of

content like personal style preferences, spotted runway trends, daily styled outfit photographs,

and general thoughts on fashion. The difference between a fashion blog and a magazine is that it

is run by your average everyday person for your average everyday person. Anyone can start one

up regardless of credentials, status or experience. Berry states that, “they offer instantaneous

access to fashion from around the world and have influenced the way traditional forms of media

cover events (2010). The fashion blogger presence has been felt world over at fashion weeks

and events (Berry, 2010). Not only does the fashion blogger herself have the opportunity to

express her voice but offers the opportunity to her readers by way of generating discussion in the

comments section of the blog. In this way, the fashion blog has been hailed for aiding in the

democratization of fashion in the way that it takes the power to create the narrative and meaning

of fashion away from the few and gives it to the many (Berry: 2010). To illustrate the way in

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which personal style blogs work to democratize fashion and offer alternatives to common

conceptions of the fashion world I will analyze three different fashion blogs.

The first blog I want to look at is titled Selective Potential and is run by blogger Tieka

Dierolf. Tieka runs her blog out of Grand Rapids Michigan and is a graphic designer by day.

She has well over 3000 followers and posts three or four times a week. Her blog has three basic

focuses: personal style, marriage and adventure. All three of these different aspects of her blog

work to enhance the appeal of what she has to say about fashion. That is, in reading her blog you

really feel like you are talking to a friend in the way that she so comfortably tells you about her

life and daily projects. When she talks about her style preferences it feels like she is just casually

sharing her thoughts on her outfit that day. This is important because as research done by Diana

Crane shows women identify more with the models in fashion photographs than the actual

clothes being shown (1999: 555). Tieka is the model in all of her outfit photographs but she is

also the writer of her blog and a real woman. She is not projecting some unattainable ideal but

rather a relatable one. In this way, she is working to democratize fashion by making it attainable.

In a post of hers titled Antwerp Fashion Show she details her trip to a local fashion show

put on by a boutique in her home town. Amongst the text detailing her night are pictures of the

event as well as photographs of her in her outfit. Under the outfit pictures is the details section in

which she tells her readers exactly where she got her clothes. An important thing to note

about the dress she is wearing is that it did not come as a result of a purchase but

rather from a swap with another blogger. Swapping is a common practice

amongst fashion bloggers and is something that Tieka does quite often with other

bloggers. To clarify, a swap is when two or more bloggers of all sorts get together

and trade clothes. Swapping is a great alternative to plain consumption. It affords

bloggers with the opportunity to infuse their wardrobes with new items without

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resorting to buying new things regularly. They are able to be creative without

spending money. In this way, the swap undermines one important aspect of the

fashion hegemony in the way that discourages consumption and reinforces creativity amongst

the public.

The Clothes Horse is a fashion blogger out of Virginia who explains her blog as, “an

artistic personal style blog that features my daily outfits as well as magazine editorials, movie

reviews, illustrations, and other various visually inspiring things” (The Clothes Horse, 2011).

Every Saturday she does a feature called Saturday Remix in which she shows a wide variety of

ways that one piece can be styled up. In the example found in the appendix you will notice that

she has restyled a vintage dress nine different ways. This remixing commonly showcased in the

blogger world also emphasises the importance of creativity over consumption.

Sally Jane Vintage is another blogger who is aiding in the project of democratizing

fashion. She is a blogger out of Pennsylvania who has a penchant for all things vintage and

vintage inspired. She posts outfit photos, inspirational photos and highlights some of her

favourite clothing lines. In the post found in the appendix she is showcasing a small clothing line

out of Portland called Filly Designs. In talking about this clothing line and expressing her

interest to her readers she is taking power away from the elite group of fashion-makers and

becoming a fashion-maker herself.

With all of this said I do not doubt the possibility that a peer could view my exact

examples and make a compelling case for the way in which fashion bloggers perpetuate the

fashion hegemony. As Stuart Hall argues, meaning is not only artfully encoded into media but it

is also made by the process of decoding done by viewers (2010: 2010). With that in mind, a

researcher with a different vantage point might be able to make a case completely oppositional to

mine from the same examples through a different decoding process that is equally valid.

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However, I hope to have made a compelling argument for the notion that personal style

blogs are working to take power away from the fashion hegemony. Bloggers are usurping the

fashion elite and taking it upon themselves to put the meaning into fashion. They are taking

wind out of the argument that fashion is all about consumption and making it a creative project.

In this way, the future of fashion looks to be a fun and creative project rather than a means of

control dictated by the fashion elite.

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References

Berry, Jessica (2010) Fashion, Photography, Weblogs, and the Urban Image. Inter-Disciplinary Net <http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/jessberypaper.pdf>

Berry, Jessica (2010). Flaneurs of Fashion 2.0. Scan Journal 8 (2) <http://scan.net.au/scan/journal/print.php?journal_id=152&j_id=20>

Craik, Jennifer (2005). The Face of Fashion: Cultural Studies in Fashion. New York: Routledge.

Crane, Diana (1999). Gender and Hegemony in Fashion Magazines: Women’s Interpretations of Fashion Photographs. The Sociology Quarterly 40 (4) 541-563.

Lakoff, Robin T., and Raquel L. Scherr. (1984). Face Value: The Politics of Beauty. Boston: Routledge.

McDowell, Colin (1984). Directory of Twentieth Century Fashion. Frederick Muller Ltd.

O’Brien, Susie & Szeman, Imre. (2010) Popular Culture: A Users Guide. Toronto: Nelson Education.

Appendix

http://theclothes.blogspot.com/2011/03/saturday-remix_26.html

http://sallyjanevintage.blogspot.com/2011/03/filly-designs.html

http://selectivepotential.blogspot.com/2011/03/antwerp-fashion-show.html