Imaginaries, Fashion and the Internet. Towards a New Ethics Paradigm

Fashion in our contemporary world, thanks to its natural tension be-tween tradition and innovation, has assumed a key role for understanding indi-vidual and collective acting in society, both online and offline. The mirror of the modern social imaginary, fashion represents a paradigmatic form of “direct access society”, à la Taylor. In the Web anyone can access fashion communications without the mediation of professionals. The question that emerges then is whether these new forms of access to fashion, typical of the present era, favour the genera-tion and dissemination of new social imaginaries conveyed by the world of fash-ion and whether these imaginaries open up ethical implications regarding fashion communication. But above all, if, and to what extent this facilitates the construc-tion of people’s identity and individuality on the basis of such imaginaries. This form of access facilitates our knowledge of fashion itself and, ideally, gives voice to any “ordinary” individual to display themself through fashion, in the creation of many different fashion imaginaries. However, it also gives rise to a radical indi-vidualism and to a form of narcissism. These imaginaries are conveyed online by the mechanisms that regulate the Web, inducing people into following the fashion that responds to their personal taste and into generating further imaginaries. The risk is of individuals becoming enclosed within non-communicating worlds. This fosters an ethics based on visibility and self-referentiality at the expense of more mindful and responsible relationships between individuals, fashion and the media.