Fashion You Do Not Own, Fashion You Cannot Feel: Toward a New Paradigm of Sharing Fashion in the Digital Age

This paper explores the implications of contemporary sharing—a central cultural activity in the twenty-first century related to social media, the shared economy and ways of communication—on fashion. First, it maps the connection between fashion, body and personality. Later, following a theoretical model presented by John, it argues that sharing and fashion are internally connected and that sharing is the driving force behind the appearance of new consumer concepts such rental services and digital collections. Finally, the article analyzes these services to demonstrate how they disrupt the historical relationship between subjects and fashion objects in terms of ownership, physical connection and speed of circulation. It arises from this that in fashion, where the object used to be owned or literally attached to the body, and is part of a constructed personality, sharing is motivating a radical shift in the bond connecting subjects and clothes.