Di lotta e di governo. I digital fashion influencer e l’immaginario di moda

The essay focuses on the phenomenon of fashion blogging and influencing, and analyses how the work of digital influencers affects the production and circulation of fashion imaginary. The aim of the contribution is twofold. Firstly, to show the institutionalisation of fashion blogging and influencing through a "fight and rule" strategy: trying to maintain, at least rhetorically, the appeal of the outsider voice born from below, bloggers and influencers are now a structural component of the communicative processes that link brands and consumers. Secondly, to identify the contribution of fashion blogging and influencing to the construction/deconstruction of the contemporary fashion imaginary. The article develops a case study, that of the most successful Italian digital influencer: Chiara Ferragni, author of The Blonde Salad, who counts more than 24 million followers on Instagram (September 2021). The initial phase of Ferragni's "career" (2009-2016) is reconstructed. The categories of "fashion imaginary" and "alternative media" are used to understand to what extent the dominant fraction of bloggers, represented by the influencer Ferragni, was (and is) able to feed the contemporary fashion imaginary with alternative narrative