Indonesian fashion blogs: On the promotional subject of personal style

Abstract

Over the last several years, a growing number of bloggers from around the globe have forged themselves into voices of authority within the international fashion scene, challenging the status quo of the fashion world, and creating new possible modes of participation in a notoriously insular industry. But some voices are still largely shut out of the conversation. This article considers the still marginal position of Indonesian fashion bloggers in the context of an expansive global fashion industry. It argues that fashion blogs have become a dynamic site for the reconstitution of power and influence within that industry at a time when design and manufacture often happen on opposite ends of the globe. Indonesian fashion bloggers, thus, are helping rebrand Indonesia as a site for the creative production of fashion, not just the rote manufacture of other peoples' products. But they do so, the article concludes, at a significant personal cost: the further incorporation of Indonesia, and themselves, into the global neoliberal economy. © 2013 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.