Impact on the fashion industry

Fashion is a multibillion-dollar industry that has considerable impact on the way ordinary people dress and present themselves and relies heavily on media and advertising to communicate the producer's preferences and goals and influence public perception through various types of promotion; at the same time, fashion can be influenced by social change and counter-trends outside the producer, retailer or advertiser's control. As fashion is driven by trends within and without the fashion industry, fashion blogs and other "new media" outside the control of traditional establishment represent a disruptive innovation to the social dynamics of mass media and fashion consumption in modern consumer society. It is likely that the blogosphere will have a considerable longterm influence on the industry, as the number of fashion based blogs continue to grow, with increasing numbers of consumers able to create and modify the media that they consume, and traditional producers and advertisers adapting their practices to avoid dilution of their own influnce