THE CONCEPT OF «FASHION» IN THE CONTEXT OF DIGITAL CULTURE: A MULTIMODAL APPROACH

Abstract

The paper examines the concept of FASHION as a multilayered cognitive-semiotic construction whose existence in digital culture takes on qualitatively new forms. The authors’ focus is on the cognitive linguistics framework concerning the nature of concepts and the mechanisms of multimodal meaning-making. The research claims that the multisemiotic concept FASHION comprises linguistic, visual, cultural, and ideological components that interact constantly. The corpus of research comprises publications from Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Elle, as well as official Met Gala coverage from 2021–2024. The findings reveal how digitalization, namely, the proliferation of Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and online editions, reshapes the semantics of the concept: sub-fields such as digital fashion, phygital fashion, and sustainable fashion emerge, resulting in an expansion of the concept’s boundaries. Identity, corporeality, power, gender, style, and cultural belonging are identified as the thematic dominants of fashion discourse. Conceptual, linguocultural, multimodal, and discourse analysis were employed. Met Gala and international fashion weeks function as catalysts of semantic shifts in the FASHION concept so that each annual theme generates new conceptual oppositions and activates previously peripheral features. The translation of the concept’s multimodal components is addressed separately: Ukrainian translators rely on transcription, functional equivalence, and explication, often combining strategies. The results carry practical implications for cognitive linguistics, stylistics, media semiotics, and translation studies.