ple in Italy. We will finish this line by examining the creation of an editorless fash-
ion zine, Syntax/144, where a community form a temporary alliance forming their
own symbiogenetic vector together with their involuntary host.life transmissions
During industrialism our western societies have come to master many forms of
communication. Media often starts by being centralized to then become more de-
centralized. The production of books in medieval times was controlled by the
Church and written in Latin, but following Gutenberg and the development of the
printing press, books and leaflets in the vernacular language could be distributed
throughout the world. The development was the same for radio and later televi-
sion.
These models of transmission were always one-way. Even if the readers or listeners
could “call in” or write “letters to the editor” the media was mainly a one-way,
monoplex channel. This affected the models of dissemination of fashion, as fash-
ion was regarded as a phenomenon “trickling-down” from above and from the
centre to the periphery. Fashion followed the distribution lines of magazines from
the printing press or via radio waves from the broadcasting antenna. Designers
spotted upcoming trends and surveilled the latest subcultures to appropriate cool
street styles. This model is still dominant, as most of us are more “readers” than
“writers” of fashion. We can choose and switch between programs and channels,
but very seldom create our own channel.
What we have seen over the last decade is the rise of new channels, mainly those
carried on the Internet. Here production monopolies are contested by a wide rise
of amateur media, Internet radio shows, podcasts and blogs that offer channels for
once passive receivers to “be the media” and produce user-generated content. Yet,
the fashion ether is still filled with one-way broadcasts from the fashion top, and
even when “talking back” the content mainly comments the broadcasted content.
Nevertheless, if we look at street level and among blogs a new model is gaining
momentum, in which communication is more egalitarian, where we are all senders
and receivers and where we are all participants. It is parallel to the top-down broad-
casting model, but here fashion is transmitted through other lines. In this model
fashion is spread quite differently, no longer in straight lines from the centre, but
turbulently or dynamically like a virus.
Yes, on this level fashion is a contagious disease, a virus. It is an epidemic, spreading
partly through vectors like the media, but mainly through human interaction and
street buzz (Gladwell 2000). The viral transmission is sometimes designed on pur-
pose, but the spread mostly happens unintentionally. The fashion virus is continu-
ously morphing and mutating, as if it had a life of its own and just using the host
as reproduction facility before recombining and moving on. Thus the virus is just
temporarily hosted in human minds and on human bodies, like an ephemeral
“meme” - a transitory “virus of the mind” (Dawkins 1976; Brodie 1996). It is what
Gabriel Tarde would call a “germ”, an analytical resource “radiating” from each one
of us and infecting others. The germ itself is “trapped between pure repetition,
endurance and continuity on the one hand, and on the other, pure vibration, pure
potential.” (Lepinay 2007: 526) According to Tarde, it is also a specific form of
capital that cannot be accumulated because as it loses vibration, intensity and pas-
sion it becomes dead and worthless.Viral marketing or subvertising?
Liberated advertising billboards for the Ger-
man fashion week in Berlin, by XOOOOX
in Berlin Mitte.