Fashion in an Age of Transindividual Disruption: Feeling the fashion milieu through fashion media and mobile phone technology

In an era where mobile phone ownership among UK young adults (16-24) reaches nearuniversal penetration (99% as of 2024), this thesis interrogates the complex interrelationship between mobile technology, fashion media consumption, and user affect.

The research originates from observations at the London College of Fashion in 2013, where students' profound digital immersion appeared to compromise their engagement with physical learning environments.

Drawing upon the theoretical frameworks of Bernard Stiegler, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Gilbert Simondon, this study examines fashion media as technological prostheses that mediate affective flows within digital networks, fundamentally shaping users' selfunderstanding and worldview. Through a postphenomenological methodology incorporating micro-phenomenological interviews and focus groups, the research investigates how technological disruption reconfigures community formation and social bonds.

The study introduces the concept of ‘the fashion milieu’ to theorize the intricate entanglement between embodied experience and socio-cultural dimensions of fashion media consumption. This framework, coupled with Simondon's notion of transindividuation, illuminates the dynamic tensions between individual and collective identity formation in digital spaces.

The findings reveal a paradoxical phenomenon: while fashion media accessed through mobile devices fosters philia (social connection), it simultaneously disrupts transindividual relations, generating patterns of digital dependency characterized by anxiety and addictive behaviours. This research advances scholarly understanding of how mobile-mediated fashion media consumption reconfigures affective experiences and social formations in contemporary culture.

This thesis makes significant contributions to digital media studies, fashion theory, and phenomenological approaches to technology by demonstrating how mobile devices, as mediators of fashion media consumption, fundamentally alter both individual affect and collective social fabric. The findings have implications for understanding digital well-being, social cohesion, and the evolution of fashion communication in an increasingly mobile-first world.