Online Fashion Systems,   

2025/2026 Syllabus

The Online Fashion Systems module explores how fashion operates within digital cultures, networks, and infrastructures. Framing aesthetic strategy as a critical and creative method, the course investigates how online systems shape meaning, identity, and value — and how practitioners can engage with, subvert, or reimagine these frameworks.

Through a mix of theory, practice, and experimentation, participants will engage with digital platforms, images, and interfaces as cultural materials. The module emphasizes digital agency and literacy, encouraging participants to see the internet not only as a medium but as a dynamic structure for connection, communication, and creation.



   
Are.Na Group Channel
Assesment & Deliverables
 
Author Guidelines 
Additional Resources [...]
00 

INTRODUCTION: NAVIGATING ‘ONLINE (FASHION) SYSTEMS’

 
Getting familiar with Are.na and alternative online environments. We’ll explore why these marginal spaces matter and how they help us reflect on fashion’s online landscape from a critical perspective.

The Hmm interview with Daniel Pianetti
Zora Zine interview with Charles Broskoski

10/10/2025 
11:00 - 14:00



01 

DIGITAL AGENCY, LITERACY, DEPENDENCY?


Tracing the internet’s evolution — from early utopian visions to its current politicised and commercialised terrain — and what “digital literacy” means today.

17/10/2025
11:00 - 15:00

please prepare:

Present yourself through a simple network map of the digital platforms, tools, and communities you interact with regularly (including social media, research platforms and/or alternative spaces). Annotate how each platform deals with  visibility, social connection, or influence. Think about how this map reflects (or masks!) your practice, interests, or values.

please read:

Tiziana Terranova (2000) 
Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy.

Silvio Lorusso (2021) 
The User Condition: Computer Agency and Behaviour.

Joanne McNeil (2020), 
Lurking: How a Person Became a User; Chapter 3  (Visibility).

Annette N. Markham, Katrin Tiidenberg (2020), 
Metaphors of the Internet: Ways of Being in the Age of Ubiquity;
 [!] Chapter 1 (Ways of Being in the Digital Age) & Chapter 2 
(A Wormhole, a Home, an Unavoidable Place).
[more]




03

FASHION X INTERNET


Exploring the symbiotic relationship between fashion and technology — how they mutually influence one another through innovation, visibility, and acceleration.

30/10/2025
11:00 - 15:00



please prepare: 

Choose a specific example of interaction between fashion and technology (historical or contemporary). Analyze its ecosystem by examining the processes of production, dissemination, audience engagement, and the underlying technological infrastructure. How do fashion and technology influence and shape one another within this context?
please read:

Agnès Rocamora (2016),
Mediatization and Digital Media in the Field of Fashion.

Adil Bouglala, Silvia Mazzucotelli Salice (2024),
Consuming Digital Fashion in Online Communities: A Mixed-Methods Research on Consumption Motivations for Digital Fashion End Products.

Chinouk de Miranda (2019),
The Fashion Systems Algorithmic Gaze: de-mystifying algorithms’ propagandistic core & its influence on the consumers’ digital agency.

Rosie Findlay (2019),
“Trust us, we’re you”: Aspirational realness in the digital communication of contemporary fashion and beauty brands.  Communication, Culture & Critique.



04

SUBVERSIVE FORMS & AESTHETIC STRATEGIES



Decoding how aesthetic gestures operate as tools for critique, subversion, and alternative meaning-making in digital fashion spaces.

[...]
6/11/2025
11:00 - 15:00





05

CURATORIAL TOOLS



Exploring how alternative online spaces function as curatorial and narrative tools. Participants will begin to curate their own digital collections or assemblages. 

[...]
13/11/2025 
11:00 - 15:00





06

SHARING SESSION (1)



Individual presentations of collected findings, references, and case studies. Reflect on the emerging “red thread” within your curated digital collection or online practice.

[...]
19/11/2025 
11:00 - 15:00





[!]

DRAFT DEADLINE


Please share a first draft of your essay in which you: (0) define your chosen aesthetic category, (1) outline the range of practitioners working within this aesthetic field, (2) identify the case studies you plan to analyze, and (3) reflect on how your own practice relates to—or differs from—these case studies and their strategies.

21/11/2025
@ 17:00





07

SHARING SESSION (2)



Peer critique sessions in small groups (4 participants).
Discussion of curatorial strategies, narrative coherence, and conceptual positioning.

[...]
27/11/2025 
11:00 - 15:00





08

REVIEW


 
[...]
16/12/2025



PART of the Critical Fashion Practices MA programme at Artez University of the Arts.