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fashionable self, vision and self-knowledge, an aesthetic of ephemerality, rhizomatic time, eclecticism and contemporary ideals of femininity, also questioning the waves of feminist theory and where this places feminist ideology today.
Hollander argued that the visual language developed by fashion photography came to ape the look of snapshots, and that ‘modern visual taste’ came to be grounded on instantaneity.4 This thesis draws on this notion in order to speak of a ‘hypermodern visual taste’, shaped in and by digital images. Hypermodernity is the term utilized and coined by French philosopher Giles Lipovetsky in Hypermodern Times, a 2005 essay that meant to actualize the dated concept of postmodernism. In short, hypermodernity is a societal status in which freedom and individuality predominate. Within this context, there is an important emphasis on the values and developments of new technologies of information. Hypermodernity is also a context in which norms are imposed by choice; it is also about the realm of the spectacle, where ideological discourses have been taken over by the logic of fashion and where there is a multiplication of subjective viewpoints and singularities; stances that, according to Lipovetsky, are not necessarily defined by creativity or reflectivity, but by flexibility and variety.
These elements, described by Lipovetsky, combine with another form of diversity: stylistic eclecticism, a feature commonly attributed to postmodernity. This combination creates a temporal framework for the developments of subjectivity and perception of dress through digital imagery. Eclecticism is a recurring theme in the images of street-style photography that render a contemporary fashionable ideal; it is also common ground in the self-representations of personal style bloggers and often stands as a trait of contemporary fashionability, a virtue in stylistic or sartorial creativity and audacity. I am defining eclecticism as a style in which things that are not usually combined can go together, where contrary elements can display a harmonic, fashionable whole. This eclecticism, I argue, is exaggerated by a digital fashion context. It can be visible within a single outfit, but also in
4 Hollander, 322.