Digital fashion bodies between the conflicting priorities of media-technological innovations

Abstract

This article presents an insight into my ongoing Ph.D. project ‘New fashion bodies: Digital fashion bodies between the conflicting priorities of media-technological innovations’. The thesis considers how digital technologies have impacted the construction of gender as well as the cultural (body)practices and (body)enactments tied to it via fashion. The relationships and interactions between the body, fashion, media, gender and staging of queerness are at the core of interest. To elaborate and highlight the interdependencies of these categories and their intricate entanglements, this article studies the phenomenon of digital fashion influencers such as Miquela (@lil_miquela), Lil_wavi (@lil_wavi) and the digital fashion bodies created by the Institute of Digital Fashion (@institute_digital_fashion).