The Datafication and Quantification of Fashion: The Case of Fashion Influencers

Abstract

The article approaches the field of fashion influencers as an instance of the pervasive power of datafication and quantification in everyday life. It discusses the role of metrics in the fashion influencer economy, and the quantification of the self it goes hand in hand with, a quantification that is also an object of struggle in the field of influencer marketing. Drawing on conceptual tools such as “like economy” and “data capitalism,” as well as on the work of Bourdieu, it points to the instrumentalisation of numbers for economic purposes, and the centrality of such numbers to the business of fashion influence. Drawing on Moore’s notion of “quantified worker” it conceptualizes fashion influencers as iterations of the “quantified self.” The article elaborates on the centrality of quantified data in influencer marketing companies’ quest for a dominant position in the field. It discusses the ways it participates in the quantification of the business of influence, further tightening the relation between capitalism, quantification and datafication in the field of fashion.