Digitalization of Fashion in the Modern Symbolic Economy

On November, 23rd, the Department of Sociology of St. Petersburg State University, together with the Centre for German and European Studies, was hosting the third seminar of the autumn session of the ongoing event “The Scientific Wednesdays”, on the topic "Digitalization of fashion in the modern symbolic economy." SESL members Denis Bulygin and Ilya Musabirov presented results of their research on the seminar.“Scientific Environment "is an open interdisciplinary seminar for young researchers organized by the Council of Young Scientists of the Department of Sociology of St. Petersburg State University and the Centre for German and European Studies. 

It provides young researchers with an opportunity to present their findings in front of their more experienced colleagues and to get valuable comments on their work. On the 23rd of November, the topic was all about fashion, but this didn’t prevent our researchers of computer games from presenting their report at the seminar. Overall, there were many participants at the seminal, from students of different years of studying to graduates from the HSE and St. Petersburg State University, which helped to sparkle a really scientific discussion. There were only 2 presentation at the seminar, but both of them got sufficient attention, with almost an hour each for presentation and further discussion.Denis Bulygin and Ilya Musabirov made a presentation on the topic “Cosmetic items pricing in the Steam Community Market. The case of Dota 2." They talked about the structure of the market for in-game virtual goods, how the fashion shapes their consumption, and on the mechanisms of price formation in specific item categories. In the context of this work, it was important to compare cosmetic items, the price of which depends on their looks, visual effects and rarity, with the autographs of famous players, the price of which might be to the success of these players and their social activity. Even though this research was conducted in the environment of an online game, it directly relates to the problems of the real world. Economic sociology and value formation in the market are of great interest to many modern researchers. In the real offline world, value formation of various goods in the market can be estimated based on their price to quality ration, however value formation in virtual markets depends on a larger number of factors. Also there is a question of why are people willing to buy virtual goods for real money.Our colleagues from the Center for Youth Studies also presented their research in the seminar. Margarita Kulyova and Daria Maglevanaya presented their study “Fashion bloggers as cultural intermediaries: analyzing the choice of brands in clothing consumption and style production” that focused on interaction of fashion brands in 15 blogs from around the world.  The researchers were interested in the relationship between local and global trends in mixing clothes and accessories from different brands. As it turned out, the global trends are dominating, which can be clearly seen from trajectories of goods production and goods usage. The study has showed that fashion becomes more democratic and tends to mix brand categories.In the post-presentation discussion, there were many questions on  further prospects in the research conducted by Denis, and there were quite a few suggestions on refining methods for studying fashion bloggers. One of these ideas suggested using neural networks for image recognition in Instagram. Such events are useful for the scientific and student society, because they help us to exchange our research ideas, discuss important issues, get feedback about our research, and get experience in public speaking.
By Denis Bulygin, Anna Golovchenko, Irina Krylova, and Anastasia Kuznetsova