SKIN DEEP

People co-create their identities with brands just as they do with religions, communities, and other other systems of meaning.

The Internet and its extensions become a realm of imaginings, visions and fictionings of self. As we traverse the clarinet (the web available to us), we start seeing the digital ether littered with new species. Sure, for many these might be aesthetics, TikTok trends or waves of escapism. However, with individuals creating, embodying and manifesting... See more

Humans are finding new ways to express themselves in both the digital and physical realms in order to join wider communities and reject our most physically distanced era. In other words, the rise of community through visual identifiers is a growing phenomenon. Second, these trends allow people to explore their identity through relative pseudonymity... See more

maybe here, we do have an aesthetic counter to the wallflower non-style of Big Tech: a raging messy semiotic meltdown of radicalizing (if absurdist) meme culture where the only ideological no-go zone is the liberal center. Key here is that most of this activity is happening under the guise of avatars, pseudonyms, and collectively run social media a

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K-HOLE and Box1824 captured the new landscape in their breakthrough 2014 report “Youth Mode.” They described an era of “mass indie” where the search for meaning is premised on differentiation and uniqueness, and proposed a solution in “Normcore.” Humorously, nearly everyone mistook Normcore for being about bland fashion choices rather than the grea... See more

Virtual Fashion pushes the limits of creative idealism, removing restrictions around material malleability, a humanoid colour spectrum, or as previously mentioned, gravity.

The shifts triggered by the crisis could also reinforce the viability for digital fashion -- clothing rendered in computer-assisted design programmes either for prototyping purposes or to be 'worn' virtually (by avatars, or via augmented reality, for example) -- in place of tangible garments. “I have seen a need for people to express a deeper sense... See more

We're all technological beings now; it's ingrained into the way we operate. It's almost an extension of our body. And we already know how we want to shape that technology. We just need to be better supported to do so.