The dual nature of the personal style blog: towards a new interpretation of fashion theory in the digital era

This research examines the personal style blog from a philosophical perspective in an attempt to understand its implications for fashion diffusion theory. Starting from an evaluation of Georg Simmel’s trickle-down theory of diffusion (1904), the paper goes on to dissect the rhetoric of democratization that has come to define fashion blogging in the media and previous scholarship, only to show that the success of bloggers both reaffirms and challenges the notion that fashion is elitist. Phenomenologist Martin Heidegger’s concepts of authenticity and inauthenticity are then used to gain a better grasp of how the personal style blog reflects the dual nature of fashion and of the Self. Tavi Gevinson’s The Style Rookie was selected as a case study to demonstrate the personal style blog’s potential to act as an authentic means of expression, while still being a part of the inauthentic media complex.