About Celebrities, Fashion and the Digital Revolution: Consequences of the Influencer Era in fashion

Introduction

Grace Kelly carried the Hermès Sac à Dépêches bag in 1956, bringing it momentum and turning it into a staple of glamour, to the point that people began calling it The Kelly Bag. The international fame of the bag took Hermès to make the decision to rename it The Kelly in the seventies (The Kelly, n.d.). Celebrities have influenced fashion even before digitalization brought the influencer era, the era where fashion is even more influenced by celebrities and saw a rise of online retailing and fast-fashion production (Marroncelli & Braithwaite, 2020). The influencer era refers to the boost of the key development of Instagram Influencers as a fashion-marketing tool. Influencers are public personalities with a significant following and using their Instagram and other social media outlets to monetize from their aesthetics and lifestyle (Perthuis & Findlay, 2019). Furthermore, as Instagram gains power as the main platform to engage with fashion, Influencers become intermediaries between producers and their targets (Salisbury & Pooley, 2017). The digitization of fashion and celebrities altered the nature of fashion retail, from the decline of sales in brick and mortar stores to the rise of online retail and fast fashion.

This paper analyzes the influence of celebrities on fashion and the rise of online fashion retail and its consequences, the main theme of the article from the Journal Fashion Practice, #insta-fashion: How the Digital Revolution Has Affected Celebrity Culture and the British Fashion Retail Landscape by Marroncelli and Brathwaite (2020) in the context of Business History of Fashion. The research article examines the role of digitization and the use of social media and its consequences in the retail landscape of the UK. The authors highlight the surge of Instagram celebrities as one of the components of the shift in retail by drawing from archives on trends on High Street at Nottingham Trent University by connecting fast fashion, celebrities, and social media.

Celebrities and Fashion through the years

Marroncelli and Braithwaite (2020) explain that the twenty-first century brought with it a transformation in the number of celebrities and the origins of their fame, and as a result, a change in how they influence consumers. Fashion, mass media, and celebrity culture always had a close relationship. According to Blaszczyk (2008), the historical origin of this relationship has to do with members of bourgeois and how mass media constructed the fashion system around their values and taste. As years passed, celebrities discussed in the media included monarchs, politicians, and entertainers. Whereas in the past celebrities were seen as unobtainable sources of inspiration representing the high brow culture, nowadays Instagram celebrities represent commodities and consumers can buy into their lifestyles (Marroncelli & Braithwaite, 2020). It can be argued that the Internet lowered the entry barrier to celebrity status, closed a gap between the common public and the goods and lifestyle of celebrities, and allowed more individuals and companies to have a say in the fashion trends in the last decade.

The lowered entry barrier provided by the web, and the subsequent existence of Instagram celebrities blur the lines between social classes and their division. As new-found celebrities do not represent a rich cultural and social capital, it resembles and contrasts with the sociological conception of fashion explained by Simmel (1957). Fashion as understood by Simmel had to do with a form of imitation, which can be suggested that is still the case nowadays with the imitation of trends that are promoted by Instagram influencers. Moreover, it is possible to compare the fashionable person of Simmel (1957) with the celebrity influencer: “The fashionable person is regarded with mingled feelings of approval and envy; We envy him as an individual but approve of him as a member of a set or group” (Simmel, 1957, p. 548). The cult of celebrity that is present on Instagram is bolstered by impressionable teenagers and young adults that crave to have the life of the influencer, even though it merely is a portrayal of life and not reality. However, Simmel (1957) understood fashion as a social equalizer and differentiator and that is not observed by the study on trends by Marroncelli and Braithwaite (2020). Nowadays, influencers come from both upper and middle classes, the “abandonment” of trends by the upper stratum of society when a lower stratum adopts them is not a common practice and trend inspiration could be linked to both high and low culture (Marroncelli & Braithwaite, 2020).

Tastemakers and trendsetters

The research paper by Marroncelli and Braithwaite (2020), includes the exploration of the evolution of fashion trends on the high street. Furthermore, it includes 171 presentations and a list of celebrity influences from 2000 to 2017. The researchers confirm that young fashion consumers are influenced by celebrities of the digital age. The accessibility that social media poses to purchasing their promoted goods and lifestyle saw a rise in online retailing (Marroncelli & Braithwaite, 2020). The digital revolution is influencing the business of fashion, not only from the way that it is purchased and consumed but also from the way it is created and promoted. Tastemaking, a role of the monarchy and fashion designers in its beginning (17th to 19th Century) (Blaszczyk & Wubs, 2018), is now also partially in the hands of celebrities and influencers. As explained by Quinn (2016) as cited in Blaszczyk and Wubs (2018), celebrity culture is amplified by the Web and is an important driver for trends. Therefore, it is possible to assume that Instagram influencers should be seen as stakeholders and tastemakers that are important cues for the forecasting of new trends.

From a business perspective, Instagram was the main actor in the creation of the Influencer Marketing phenomenon, which is of utter importance for the fashion industry as much of the products advertised are fashion items. As explained above, influencers not only are now one of the tastemakers of the industry, but they also saw a shift in retail that benefits online fast-fashion retailers. Marroncelli and Braithwaite (2020) quote Dover (2019) in their analysis of the celebrity status of the 2018 reality TV show Love Island participants and the fast-fashion brand that was the official sponsor of the show, Missguided. Participants on Love Island end up having an Instagram Celebrity status, and a following of millions of users. The authors report that the app of the show had a style section with items worn by the famous contestants, and that Misguided reported a 40% of sales increase during the airing of the program. Retail trends are favoring online shopping, which poses a problem for brick and mortar stores.

The future of brick and mortar

The high streets in the UK are suffering from the latest trends in retail that are amplified by social media. Marroncelli and Braithwaite explain that in order to survive these new trends in Fashion and retail, physical stores will have to adapt and change to prosper in the digital age. The authors recommend the shifting of stores into community hubs instead of occasional shopping places. As fashion influences, many sectors of economic life and “constantly creates innovation and obsolescence” (Blaszczyk & Wubs, 2018, p.5), the decline of the fast-fashion high street of the UK can be seen as an outdated entity in fashion that has to adapt to the changes brought by new communication technologies and provide something that the online retail experience cannot provide. This can be exemplified in the lack of sense of community that the online retail experience has and the potential that brick and mortar stores could have in this aspect.

Conclusion

The relationship between celebrity, mass media, and fashion has existed for centuries and it has developed to what it is today. From Le Mercure Galant describing Louis XIV trends in 1672, old Hollywood actresses like Grace Kelly influencing the name of a Hermès bag and their popularity in 1956, we now encounter thousands of Instagram celebrities influencing millions of young adults online towards fast-fashion items and online retailing (Blaszczyk & Wubs, 2018; Salisbury & Pooley, 2017; Marroncelli & Braithwaite, 2020). Celebrity and media, combined by the new communication technologies, are currently influencing retailing trends, shifting towards an online setting of fast-fashion consumerism. Fast-fashion consumption challenges the previously held idea of fashion being a clear division between classes explained by Simmel (1956), since both celebrities, representing the higher classes, and the common public, representing the imitators, have access to the same goods and trends not only originate from the upper classes, but also from the lower ones. Furthermore, the online retailing of fast fashion is competing with physical stores in a way that the latter are at a disadvantage and need to evolve to adapt to this new reality that benefits online retailing (Marroncelli & Braithwaite, 2020). Finally, technology has always been a major factor in the development of fashion and society, disrupting practices and creating innovation. Even if it is not possible to know for a fact how Instagram and influencer culture will continue to develop, celebrities are an important source of information for trends and important stakeholders in the fashion industry.