Facemask: from pandemic to marketplace iconicity

ABSTRACT As a result of Covid-19 outbreak, surgical facemasks first emerged as a pandemic icon to then expand into a marketplace icon, with substantial transformations in their meanings, uses, and commercial expressions. This essay contends that facemasks have become a (post-)pandemic marketplace icon by articulating tensions in the socio-cultural, the public media, and the economic sphere. Relying upon secondary-data retrieved from mass media and scientific articles boomed during the pandemic, we propose a theoretically eclectic appraisal of (1) facemasks’ iconisation, (2) the distinct systems raising masks to that iconic status, and (3) the “Marketplace Icons” series more broadly.