Exploring Grassroots Fashion Storytelling: An Analysis of the Practices and Strategies of Italian and Chinese Bloggers

This paper investigates how the grassroots fashion storytelling developed in the second wave of the fashion blogosphere in Italy and in China. While in the first wave, according to the literature, the tropes that emerged were equality, counterculture and authenticity, our results show that in the second wave the main characteristics have become in both countries, Italy and China, technological diversification and commercialization, with the confirmation of a preference towards visual communication. In addition, in the Chinese fashion blogosphere a specific tension between the colonization of Western fashion and the autochthonous production of fashion content was registered. We argue that only by historicizing the phenomenon of fashion blogging is it possible to make sense of its real social meaning over time