Oyindolapo Adegbile
In the digital age, media holds an unparalleled power to shape societal norms and trends. Fast Fashion has been on the rise as trends have begun to shift faster than ever before.
Influencers, the internet, and e-commerce are largely to blame for this rise. With fashion trends coming in and out of style every other week, consumers must find easy and affordable ways to stay in the loop.
Fast fashion is characterized by its trend-driven designs, quick production process, and inexpensive garments. This means of fashion continues to grow as style changes further impacting our environment.
Advertising, social media, and e-commerce all play a large role in facilitating the ownership of fast fashion by persuading consumers to buy into micro-trends.
Media outlets, such the internet and social media influence consumer decisions, shaping fashion trends. Due to the fast paced nature of the internet, these trends change often.
Staying on trend sustainably would result in constantly splurging on clothing. However, whether fashion is significant enough in order to entail social and political changes is a somewhat controversial topic.
Moreover, there are multiple ways of distributing information about the latest trends, which have their own peculiarities. Different fashion media like magazines, blogs, websites and social media platforms all publish fashion content.
As fashion is inseparably connected with different spheres of people’s lives, it can subsequently fuel or enhance changes in society.
In the twenty-first century, though, fashion became much more accessible and spread into people’s lives in many shapes and forms.
Nowadays, fashion concerns not only clothing, footwear, hairstyles and accessories but also lifestyle, sport, careers and hobbies.
Svendsen (2006, p. 7) describes fashion as “one of the most influential phenomena in Western civilisation since the renaissance.” The fashion system can only exist when there are interaction and communication based on the discussion of fashion items and events, which helps to unify, organise and regulate fashion.
Thus, the existence of various fashion resources and media is imperative for the system to exist and function properly.
Therefore a conclusion can be made about the importance of people’s attention to fashion and their interpretation of it.
Whatever the fashion industry produces will not be sufficient enough without fashion media coverage.