This hashtag is just my style: popular feminism & digital fashion activism

The emergence of digital fashion activism in the second decade of the twenty-first century coincides with 'popular feminism'. As trend forecasting site, Worth Global Style Network (WGSN) noted in 2014 'the idea of feminism in itself has become almost fashionable'. In this paper we explore how the appropriation of feminism as a fashionable slogan relates to the framing of fashion as a feminist issue, via digital campaigns such as Fashion Revolution's, 'Who Made My Clothes?' (WWMC). We argue that digital fashion activism performed in the name of feminism raises uncomfortable tensions. The imperative to care about the conditions under which our garments are made is based on twentieth-century concepts of gendered solidarity; 'we should all be feminists' in order to identify with female garment workers. At the same time, campaigns such as Who Made My Clothes? reflect a neoliberal context that favours women with the economic resources to shop consciously. In this paper we explore how the WWMC campaign constructs the female body both as a site of injustice in the global South, and of ethical fashionability in the global North.