Political Consumerism in Fashion as a Tool of Support and Protest in Russia since 2007

This paper is devoted to the study of the practices of political consumerism in fashion as a tool of political participation. Political consumerism, representing one of the non-traditional practices of political participation, is here seen primarily as a discursive, communicative action, since fashion is one of the communication channels. In political consumption, however, not only consumers are important, but also producers, since they also have a certain identity embedded in the DNA of their brand and spread it. The work identifies relevant political symbols associated with major political events in Russia since 2007. Next, a selection of designers was carried out in order to identify specific cases of using the symbolic repertoire in the context of political support and protest. Then fashion images containing various political symbols were analyzed. Visual analysis of the images showed that political support uses political symbols more actively. Cases of using certain symbols in a clearly protest context have not been found, which may be caused by political apathy in the fashion industry in Russia.