Paper short abstract:

My wardrobe does not look very digital, but almost every item can be seen on Instagram. This paper examines what happens when we intellectually discard the data inherent to digital fashion photography and reinterpret garments in universe without social media.

Paper long abstract:

Following a long period of digital ethnographic fieldwork with well-dressed sartorialists on Instagram I stepped away from the digital fieldsite and looked around my terrestrial space. Chaos reigned. Suits sprawled on every surface, ties overflowed their boxes and shoes were scattered with abandon on the stairs. I had spent years photographing these items for my digital self to wear on Instagram but now, they seemed little more than hollow, lifeless objects...tailored detritus washed up on the shores of my post-fieldwork blues. These tangible objects of wool, cotton, leather and silk had been transformed into something else; digital data. I had been so compelled by the power of the image that the objects themselves had somehow lost their currency. This paper examines a process of rediscovery, with objects of clothing from the researcher’s personal collection being examined devoid of their digital context. These objects cast a deep transactional digital shadow, but by considering this through the lens of multiverse spacetime these objects can be experienced anew, before helping the researcher reposition the digital in relation to these garments. By asking what happens to material culture through the process of datafication, this paper will problematize the increasing weight we place on data in the world of fashion and retail and question how the image as data impacts our own practices, values and imagination.