Fashion and Identity in Virtual Spaces

Abstract

As fashion researchers Susan Kaiser and Denise Green discuss the role of fashion and identity in terms of intersectionality, fashion is a device that incorporates one’s boundaries (gender, country, age, ethnicity, etc.) and others, and is a device for realising the ‘self one is trying to become’. The other as an ideal image to aspire to has been constructed in images and discourses by the fashion media over the centuries. In order to get as close as possible to this ideal image/other and become the 'real me', people have tried to get closer to the ideal other by changing their own faces and bodies, from corsets to dieting, changing hair colour, cosmetic surgery, etc., wearing make-up and fashion and crossing various boundaries. Fashion media, which have provided readers with idealised images in this way, have spread over time to mass media such as television and film, and digital media from blogs to social network services, and now the term 'metaverse' is rapidly emerging, with virtual spaces including games also becoming a new fashion media are becoming new fashion media. Wearing virtual fashion without physical cloth in virtual space is considered a sustainable act, but in the first place, does wearing this virtual fashion with an avatar mean abandoning one's own body and becoming free to follow one's own desires, unrestricted by the boundaries of the various “I's” as Kaiser and Green, does this mean that I am free to follow my own desires? In other words, does it mean that one can freely overcome the boundaries of the various 'I's and become the person one wants to be? Using the Japanese game Animal Crossing as a case study, this paper analyses the relevant discourses of several actors to explore how virtual fashion has been used to create new forms of identity for those who have abandoned their physical bodies in the age of Liquid Modernity, and what the issues are.