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 first institutionalization of fashion and the close relationship to credit use, fashion representations and fashion and media. During the last ten years she has devoted her research to luxury studies, and in her publications she has addressed the historical debate on luxury and the contemporary view of luxury in media and advertising. 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, she is co-editing a volume for Bloomsbury about the communication of luxury fashion through time.

My research interests revolve around the textual and visual communication of fashion and its effects on the consumer behaviour. 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 self. 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.