Remix,labour,and visibility: Fashion memes as participatory visual culture on platform media

Abstract

This article examines fashion memes as participatory visual culture at the intersection of fashion media and platform algorithms. Drawing on convergence culture (Jenkins), everyday tactics (de Certeau), and audience agency (Fiske), alongside scholarship on algorithmic participation (Carpentier; van Dijck et al.; Abidin; Cotter), it analyses how meme creators use remix aesthetics to parody, critique, and reconfigure fashion discourse. Based on qualitative visual analysis of 22 Instagram fashion meme accounts, triangulated with secondary texts, the study codes meme-making into three strategy categories: image–text hybrids, image juxtapositions, and reconstructed visuals. Findings address three linked questions: (RQ1) memes materialise convergence by borrowing editorial and campaign frames and reworking them through meme grammars optimised for recognisability and circulation; (RQ2) they blur boundaries between amateur and professional production, producing emergent creative expertise through curation and remix rather than institutional credentials; and (RQ3) they enable accessible critique through humour while remaining shaped by platform visibility logics – where attention operates as both reward and constraint. Meme-making is shown to involve largely unpaid visibility and hope labour, generating cultural value within algorithmically curated environments characterised by datafication, commodification, and algorithmic selection. Rather than treating memes as ephemeral, the article approaches them as situated interventions in fashion communication and suggests affinities with platform-native, vernacular forms of fashion commentary.