Fashion communication has played a key role in the construction of the legitimacy of the fashion concept. The development of fashion communication in the context of media technology has led to ethical dilemmas such as aesthetic manipulation, blind consumption, and digital labor in China. This paper takes three typical approaches to fashion communication in the age of new media, such as the recommendation algorithm, live-streaming shopping, and e-zines, and examines how they construct legitimacy and the ethical dilemmas behind the legitimacy from the perspective of ethics. Finally, this paper draws on six dimensions of advertising ethics from Clifford G. Christians to summarize the three key players in the ethics of fashion communication norms: the system, the practitioners, and the audience, to re-defamiliarize the legitimacy of fashion and propose a referable solution path for the benign development of fashion communication.
The fashion communication academic community should not only focus on how to construct the legitimacy of fashion, but also incorporate ethical reflection from a critical perspective into the scope of research, so as to understand the communication mechanism and the dilemma behind fashion through dismantling the legitimacy of fashion. The changing technology of fashion communication drives fashion trends and traps audiences in the trap of consumerism. In order to avoid blindly following the fashion fantasy created by capitalism, we need to reflect on how the ethical failure of fashion communication can affect society.
About the presenterHao Tian
I am a graduate student majoring in Fashion Communication at Donghua University. My research interests focus on fashion, gender, and media.