The work of Agnès Rocamora has helped me understand, more fully, the evolution of fashion communication where she synthesises, really clearly, ideas from a number of theorists such as that of Barthes, Bourdieu, and Baudrillard. I’d very much like to meet her one day.
Today I was rereading her article Hypertextuality and Remediation in the Fashion Industry (2011) as I’m starting to think about how I’ll carry out my discourse analysis and some of the ideas presented here really stand out to me as being useful in helping me do so.
First there’s the concept of the blogosphere as a “hypertextual space [or] electronic linking of a wide range of written texts and images, brought together in a constantly shifting configuration of networks” (p. 94). This leads on to the notion of fashion blogs as dynamic – “texts in perpetual movement, always new, never ending”.
Another interesting observation in this article is the linking that goes on between one blog and another (or a number of others), which Rocamora positions as being unlike fashion magazines and more traditional media. This is something I hadn’t really considered before but I do know that community is a huge thing for bloggers, both on and offline. There are strong networks that exist today for bloggers to network, for example the North East Blogger Network. This implies that bloggers do not view each other as competition but rather as equals and colleagues of the profession who can (and will) help each other.
The other line of discussion I took from this article was “where printed text is static, hypertext responds to the reader’s touch” (Bolter 2001, p. 42, in Rocamora, 2011, p. 96). I just really like this quote and feel that it adequately demonstrates the power of the reader. I’m starting to build up a really clear mental of image of an interconnected blogosphere where fashion bloggers provide signposts for the much valued followers the needs of whom they serve.
References
Bolter, D. J. (2001). Writing space. New York: Routledge.
Rocamora, A. (2011). Hypertextuality and remediation in the fashion media. Journalism Practice. 6(1). Pp. 92-106
Scottish Fashion & Identity 