Staging Atmosphere, Cultivating Intimacy, and Paying the Price: A Case Study of a Successful Fashion Live-Streaming Room on RedNote
Fashion live‑streaming has evolved from a simple digital marketplace into a complex socio‑technical phenomenon in which commercial success rests upon the deliberate production of atmosphere, intimacy, and intensive aesthetic labour. Moving beyond superficial commercial metrics, this study critically deconstructs the mechanisms underpinning "successful" livestreaming commerce through an in‑depth qualitative case study of Ivy, an independent fashion host on RedNote, drawing on two years of digital ethnographic data, multimodal broadcast recordings, broadcast logs, and transcribed interactional material. The findings reveal that the immersive atmosphere is constructed through a deliberately designed multimodal architecture, including temporally layered "warm‑up" content and synergistic configurations of spatial layout, lighting, and interface elements. Long‑term fan relationships are sustained through four integrated strategies: knowledge‑based content delivery, life‑like companionship, deep emotional investment, and private‑domain operations, which shift the marketing logic from transactional exchange to deep relational engagement. However, these achievements incur significant hidden costs: the host's bodily presentation becomes internalised as an ever‑adjusting "project", her private life is curated and publicly displayed, and the relentless pace of constant content production erodes any genuine space for rest. By integrating the aesthetics of atmosphere, parasocial interaction theory, and aesthetic labour theory, the study offers both a replicable relational strategy map for independent streamers and a cautionary account of the occupational health risks embedded in platform visibility regimes, contributing to ongoing debates on the sustainability of platformed cultural labour.
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