The Production Of Symbolic Meaning Of Fashion Advertising In Social Media Environment

Forty to fifty years have passed since the concept of consumer society was born.The society is increasingly dominated by discourse of power such as social media,and consumers have fallen into a crisis of symbolic meaning.Through the symbolic process,fashion brands give symbolic meaning to fashion objects,and continuously fascinate the millennials and generation Z consumers,making them almost in a panopticon built by consumerism.And the symbol wars triggered by fashion advertising became the most familiar part of the social media environment in the 2010s.In the anxious fashion industry,various brands have fallen into a creative crisis,taking culture,history,and nature as a huge signifier library,arbitrarily decontextualize symbols,and frequently collage and reorganize symbols to produce symbolic meaning of authenticity.All these strategies are to differentiate from competitors and gain more market share.The communication power of social media has gradually shortened the cycle of symbolic meaning being produced and consumed,resulting in "overcapacity"in the fashion world in terms of material production and meaning production.People don’t care whether the symbolic meaning system will be exhausted,which is only used as a raw material of creativity in the fashion advertising by various participating entities(commercial organizations,creative directors,social media,celebrities,etc.),then consumed and imitated by millennials and Generation Z.Based on semiotics,this article analyzes the unique symbolic meaning production methods of fashion advertising in the social media environment in the 2010s from the perspectives of the meaning production basis,meaning production system,and meaning production crisis of fashion advertising.This article is committed to revealing the mainstream social discourse reflected in fashion advertising,discovering the selfcontradictions of consumer culture that are not easily detectable,and at the same time being vigilant against the tendency of excessive consumerism.