Keyword – digital fashion

Petra, Egri – Maksa, Gyula:

Impersonally Personal Fashion Content

The emergence of digital influencers (CGI influencers) has precipitated a paradigm shift in the brand recognition industry, engendering a transformation in the manner how fashion brands communicate with their prospective clients via social media. The social media platform Instagram, in particular, has been found to facilitate the establishment of a sense of “personhood and immediacy.” However, the advent of artificial intelligence has led to the creation of non-human profile avatars, transforming advertising op- portunities for fashion brands and engendering a new personality for the audiences. These CGI fashion avatars have been observed in a variety of real-life scenarios, seemingly indistinguishable from reality, including travel, cinemagoing, manicures, and advocacy for environmental causes. They are depicted alongside real-looking individuals and photographs, further enhancing their perceived realism. In this paper, we investigate the five most prominent CGI fashion influencers (@lilmiquela, @shudu.gram, @magazineluiza, @noonoouri, and @fit.aitana) through qualitative content analysis, examining their character and the visual content of their channels. The focal point of our inquiry lies in the manner how the visual content and posts of CGI influencers transform the prevailing paradigm of fashion creation and our collective attitudes towards fashion.

Keywords: CGI influencer, digital fashion, fashion influencer, Instagram, luxury fashion