When Bloggers become Designers: On the Role of Professions in a Fashion System Undergoing Change

Abstract

This paper aims to explore how the rise of social media challenges the traditional borders of the professional fashion system. This is done by analyzing activities related to two fashion blogger-driven fashion brands. In total, material comprising 341 blog posts covering a period of 36 months was collected and analyzed. The presented results show how the two studied bloggers through their fashion brands came to participate in several of the professional practices of the fashion industry and, by doing so, arguably gained access to the professional fashion system early on in their blogging careers. By illustrating the withering of traditional borders of the professional fashion system, this paper therefore contributes to extant literature within the field of fashion marketing and fashion studies by illustrating the ways through which actors situated outside the system manage to approach it by utilizing social media. This paper also highlights the challenges this development yields for established actors within the fashion system.