Paula von Wachenfeldt

Paula von Wachenfeldt is Associate Professor in Fashion Studies, Stockholm University. She is the author of several articles in the fields of fashion and cultural studies. Her research addresses, among other things, the interface between fashion and fiction, fashion representations and fashion and social media. During the last ten years she has devoted her research to luxury studies, and in her publications she has addressed the debate on luxury and the interpretation of luxury in media and advertising. These issues have been examined from both historical and contemporary perspectives. She is also the co-author of the first book on Swedish luxury, The Swedish Desire: Centuries of Luxury Consumption (2015). For the time being, her chapter about the first institutionalization of fashion and the close relationship to credit use in early modern France is under publication in a Routledge anthology led by Professor Klas Nyberg (2020).

My research interests revolve around the cultural expression of materiality and luxury fashion culture and consumption. In my publications I have addressed the debate on luxury, its representations in media as well as the role of social media in the creation of the self. Lately I have been investigating the presence of the myth behind many luxury fashion brands and its evolution in post modern time. My research takes into consideration the socio-cultural dynamics that reside in the phenomenon of fashion through time. In the same vein I have studied the medation of luxury fashion and lifestyle in digital media and contemporary self-branding within.