The fashion industry is in flux and how people find inspiration, discover new brands and buy products has been through a seismic shift. Our fashion report, Fashion Forward, explores these shifts through the lens of three distinct trends: Inclusive Inspiration, Ethics En Vogue and Luxe Access. To find out how these shifts are playing out for consumers on Instagram we commissioned behavioural insights practice, Canvas8, to speak to fashion expert Emma Hope Allwood.

As Head of Fashion at Dazed Digital, Emma Hope Allwood eschews judgement of hemlines and silhouettes in favour of discussions about the intersection of fashion and digital culture. Working across editorial, social media and branded content, she’s likely to be found analysing how fashion relates to what we think, what we buy and what makes us tap ‘like’ on Instagram.

Canvas8 spoke to Emma, to get her no-nonsense view on the relationship between fashion and social media, and how platforms like Instagram are playing a role in an industry that is changing at a rapid pace.

There’s a global youth culture now that exists because of social media, and while there are different style tribes within that, you get the sense that there is this real worldwide community. A young person growing up in London using Instagram is not very different from a young person growing up in Paris or Berlin using Instagram. When it comes to fashion, clothing has always been a medium used to mark out different groups, to express individuality, to project or declare something about identity. That hasn't changed, but today, the stage on which people make those statements are on platforms like Instagram meaning fashion has a bigger influence than ever before.

I grew up with the idea of fashion being this exclusive, untouchable thing that was reserved for a certain few. It was an incredibly alienating feeling. Now, there’s a shift that is starting to be reflected across the industry more generally. This sense that maybe fashion shouldn’t be so top-down with a small group of chosen people calling all the shots, that it can, and should, be more diverse. Thanks to platforms like Instagram, today, young people have incredible access to all these different types of people and ideas of beauty and fashion, rather than this very singular ideal that was presented previously. I think it’s incredibly powerful because it opens people's eyes to different experiences and various ways that you can be beautiful beyond the accepted norms that I grew up with. The most important thing is that it has allowed brands to realise they can hire a transgender person or a plus-size person, or anyone who didn’t fit the narrow definition of a model before, to front their campaigns.

Although there’s been this weird faux empowerment and ‘wokeness’ around social issues like feminism, I don’t think brands are talking about sustainability enough. It’s something I’m incredibly passionate about. But sustainability is not sexy and it’s very complicated. For my audience and my peers, it’s obvious when companies don’t really mean it. There’s nothing that turns you off a company more than knowing they don’t actually care about the issues that they pretend to care about. But, there are brands that are using Instagram to tell stories about sustainability in good ways, including the athleisure brand, Girlfriend Collective (@girlfriend), which creates workout clothes made from recycled plastic bottles. Their imagery is very naturally diverse – they have a range of sizes and models with different body types. You feel that for them, it’s not just marketing – it’s who they are as a company.

My generation and younger don’t want to wait for stuff. Platforms like Depop (@depop) have made buying second-hand pieces convenient and attractive. Instead of car boot sales and charity shops, the experience of shopping has been translated into the language of Instagram – cool fit pics and selfies. And for discerning shoppers with more money, there’s Vestiaire Collective (@vestiaireco) or The Real Real (@therealreal), where shoppers can search designer archives and collections, curating the wardrobe they’ve always wanted.

Social platforms like Instagram have provided new avenues for in-depth storytelling, allowing consumers to build emotional connections and relationships with a brand or a product. It's not just new products either – for example, there are great accounts like Pechuga Vintage (@pechuga_vintage). A good vintage account on Instagram will generate excitement around the era of fashion or the collections of fashion that it stocks – for instance, there might be a video from an iconic late-1990s Tom Ford for Gucci show on Pechuga’s account, which acts as a sneak peek of what’s arriving soon at the store. The power of vintage is about the moment that the piece represents and the storytelling behind it. Instagram can make fashion history feel like something you can reach out and touch.

Everybody talks about the role of influencers and I’m really keen to see how that changes with sustainability. In the traditional sense, influencers are living magazines – wearing the latest clothes from current seasons and trends. That sense of newness is central to the business model of who they are and what they do. So I’m keen to see how that may change in terms of becoming more sustainable. Vloggers have started to talk more about minimalism, ditching fast fashion and the death of the ‘haul’ video, which is a perfect example of our massive overconsumption. One of the reasons I work in the fashion industry is because I believe that we can make it a better, more inclusive place. But you have to move beyond tokenistic surface-level gestures and make sure that what you're doing is actually moving things forward, whether that’s in terms of sustainability or representation.

Download our report, Fashion Forward, to discover key trends infashion and see how brands are connecting with audiences on Instagram.