Abstract
Fashion can be seen as a tool that can symbolically extend oneself through confirming and asserting a sense of being through consumption. Fashion enables an individual to participate in social groups and classes through apparel selection.
The self-concept is a primary determinant of people’s self-presentations and the specific aspects of self that they wish to control and portray. Self-presentation is a means for an individual to develop their identity through engaging in public behaviour, which indicates the identity-relevant characteristics. For example, where children are concerned, the fashion marketplace is dominant from an early age in their construction of identity. Dolls are now designed to highlight personal styles that represent individuality, as opposed to the ubiquitous black or yellow-haired, swimsuit Barbie of 1959. For children, representations of the self have become increasingly more complex, with fashion synonymous with identity and its display.
Such as in this example, individuals are prompted to monitor any given environment, gaining clues as to how to construct an image. The self-evaluative or self-conceptual outcome, however, depends heavily on social context. Fashion marketers sell social context, and what is being sold has changed over time to the sale of the intrinsic qualities of individuals rather than the extrinsic properties of the physical items themselves. The marketing system is synonymous with the acceleration of fashion’s role in identity construction and management and underpins the growth in consumption and disposal of fashion garments over the last few decades. This chapter seeks to explore the role of marketing in how consumers use fashion to construct their identity and examine how this has created barriers to reducing fashion consumption.