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"Trust Us, We're You": Aspirational Realness in the Digital Communication of Contemporary Fashion and Beauty Brands

Findlay, Rosie (2019) "Trust Us, We're You": Aspirational Realness in the Digital Communication of Contemporary Fashion and Beauty Brands. Communication, Culture & Critique, 12 (4). pp. 553-569. ISSN 1753-9129. E-ISSN 1753-9137. (doi:10.1093/ccc/tcz047) (KAR id:90107)

Abstract

In recent years, a number of fashion and beauty brands have developed promotional content that circulates an aspirational quality imbued with unstudied “cool” around their product. Despite the appeal of this conceit to tropes of the everyday, authenticity and belonging, it presents a superficially relatable ideal whilst exploiting digital media’s capacities to foster intimacy and promote a postfeminist subjectivity based on consumption.

This article examines three brands that circulate “aspirational realness” around their product: Glossier, Reformation, and Maryam Nassir Zadeh. All remediate the conventions of prior fashion media to communicate discourses of neoliberal femininity to a media-savvy consumer. Aspirational realness is thus read as a means by which consumption is both encouraged and situated as a means of self-realisation in the likeness of other aspirational “cool girls.”

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1093/ccc/tcz047
Uncontrolled keywords: Digital Media; Fashion; Branding; Postfeminism; Glossier; Reformation
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of Arts
Depositing User: Rosie Findlay
Date Deposited: 02 Dec 2021 14:02 UTC
Last Modified: 04 Jul 2023 13:56 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/90107 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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