Influencing Fashion: A Provocative Proposal of the Application of McLuhan’s Theory, “The Medium is the Message”

The purpose of this contribution is to investigate the connection among influencers, fashion and media and to analyze the phenomenon of the “influencer” through the lens of Italian poet and fashion journalist Gabriele D’Annunzio, artists Salvador Dalì and Andy Warhol, whose surrealist and pop art, respectively, influenced the fashion collections of international stylists, and Italian digital influencer and fashion blogger Chiara Ferragni. Additionally, the paper aims to apply Marshall McLuhan’s theory of media ecology, postulating that the medium is the message and that images are more important than what they represent, on the phenomenon of “influencing fashion”. In fact, this theory is apparently applicable to the specific cases of Dalì, Warhol and Ferragni as fashion influencers to the extent that this process involves the use of images through different media of communication.