Incorporating ‘Fashion Identity’ Into the Right to Privacy

Abstract

We need a concept of the right to privacy and identity that incorporates an individual’s perception and self-relationality. This paper scrutinises the meaning of the right to privacy in terms of identity construction, focusing on the meaning of ‘identity’ in fashion studies. This investigation delves into the value of privacy as a shield against unwarranted intrusions, an enabler of dynamic boundary negotiations, as well as a social framework for an individual’s autonomy to analyse the European Court of Human Right’s (ECtHR) interpretation of Article 8(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The right to privacy suffers from two problems regarding the role of parameters and conditions for identity-building in the digital age. First, profiling technologies necessitate an understanding of normative barriers that are not reactive to societal attitudes, but which maintain an internal sense of privacy. Second, profiling technologies’ relation to the conditions of identity-building suggests that we need to move away from a structural account of privacy and investigate the meaning of an individual’s self-relationality in individual sense-making. I suggest that a definition of ‘fashion identity’ could clarify the right to privacy, stipulating how aspects of identity are affected by social constraints in the management and perception of appearance.