Posting

about menswear: A netnographic inquiry on virtual community of fashion bricoleurs Bricolage (Fr. bricolage, tinkering) is an act of construction of a sculpture or a structure of ideas achieved by using whatever comes to hand. In consumer culture theory (CCT), bricolage has referred to expression of personal sovereignty and claims to personal authenticity through nonconformist acts of consumption (Holt, 2002) or amalgamation and adaptation of culturally available resources to make something new (Thompson & Haytko, 1997). Hence, a fashion bricoleur can be described as an individual presenting such means for personalizing her fashion style i.e. having deep understanding of the predominant fashion phenomena and the consumer products attached to it, as well as means to mix & match these products into aesthetically pleasing ensembles. As tastemakers of their own niche, fashion bricoleurs lead the pack by their consumption choices. Besides as living things in various shopping arenas, one can encounter fashion bricoleurs in virtual form while they gather to share thoughts about their consumption habits in various discussion forums of the great Internet. Supertalk at superfuture.com is one of those. Originally created for offering urban cartography for global shopping experts, the website has evolved into a densely populated web community of fashion connoisseurs. Supertalk discussion forum has grown into one of the websites core features, inhabiting active group of fashion enthusiasts from all over the world. Notably, while fashion talk is traditionally seen as a feminine thing, Supertalk is almost exclusively a community of men. What makes it even more interesting, it is geared towards higher end avant-garde fashions and most importantly is the virtual stronghold of fashion bricoleurs. CCT explores how consumers actively rework and transform symbolic meaning encoded in advertisements, brands, retail settings or material goods to manifest their particular personal and social circumstances and further their identity and lifestyle goals (Arnould & Thompson, 2005). In prior CCT research, fashion (McCracken, 1986; Thompson & Haytko, 1997; Arsel & Thompson, 2011) and virtual communities (Kozinets, 1997; Kozinets, 2002) have been addressed from time to time but the stream has yet to see a study combining these two. Thus, I would like to extend the sphere by conducting a study on the virtual fashion bricoleur community of Supertalk. The fashion bricoleurs of Supertalk share in-depth insight on themselves, their lifestyles and the reasons behind the choices they make as consumers. This information is commercially valuable, as it can help companies develop better marketing strategies, identify industry trends, or guide designers in improving their products. When inquiring a virtual community in the light of CCT, the method of netnography (Kozinets, 2002) would come into question. Derived from ethnography (Arnould & Wallendorf, 1994), it is considered as virtual take on its original form. Compared to traditional ethnographic or common interview-based techniques, netnographic approach thrives thanks to its inexpensive and unobtrusive nature. In this connection, it would reach sufficient amount of fashion bricoleurs in far lesser amounts of money and time invested in collection

of data. This is simply because the desired research subjects are scarce and spread widely around the world. The virtual community would act here as a gathering force to join subjects under same umbrella. In practice, applying netnography to Supertalk would consist of following phases: firstly, distinguishing the devotee and insider bricoleur users (Kozinets, 1999) and transcribing the chosen messages posted by them. Further, analyzing the data to form a thick description (Geertz, 1973) of the diverse consumption behaviors and their roles in the construction of bricoleur personal identities.