First Impressions & Fashion / Instagram

Fashion affects others' first impression of you. We all make judgements based on information we subconsciously collect from seeing what people wear.

In any culture there is the “presence of a code, a system of signs matched to messages and clothing styles look to be signs” because the clothing styles we choose are ultimately arbitrary (Ferrari, 2017, p. 34). You can find cues to society’s values, and norms through the clothing its citizens wear or wore.

The different ways we wear our clothes can communicate different things. According to Ferrari (2017, p. 77) ”it is to choose garments that import inescapable associations with activities, situations, and (sometimes) characters in society, and therefore in the life of the person they are to clothes”. It is to choose a look; and the look will trigger ideas about what that person is like (Ferrari, 2017).

As such, what we wear is linked to impression management since it offers a look into the personality and character of someone. However, some people like Mark Zuckerberg have questioned the amount of time we spend on impression management when we get dressed every day. You can read about that, here.

Zuckerberg explains that he wears the same grey shirt most days because he wants to spend less time making meaningless decisions which allows for time to make meaningful decisions about “how to best serve this community”. Zuckerberg wears the same clothes most days to avoid wasting time on small, nominal decisions that suck energy and give little reward.

This suggests that if clothing styles/fashion wasn’t a part of how we communicate, and a part of managing our impression then we wouldn’t waste time making the seemingly useless decision every day, since societal norms dictate that we wear different things every day.

What about online?

There is an emergence of social media profiles popping up that are shattering the idea of impression management and promoting authenticity and realness online. One core online characteristic in this movement is a lack of impression management. Insta models have increasingly been posting photos of themselves before and after editing to show the difference between reality and Instagram.

One model has shown how to be critical of impression management online. The model shows real and fake photos online to illustrate that what you see on a models Instagram isn’t always true. You can read about her here, and follow her on Instagram, here.

References

Ferrari, G. R. F 2017, The messages we send: social signals and storytelling, Oxford University Press USA.