Food as a Visual Practice: Fashion Design and Communication in Vegan Food Trends

Fashion and food are interconnected in our daily lives, culture, and various lifestyles. They both significantly shape our daily lives and habits, influence our choices, and express our identity and creativity. Designing and creating vegan food (and vegan food content) relies on aesthetics and visual presentation and adheres to the backdrop story of food sourcing and fair-trade production. Food is central to our lives, and food democracy is connected to communication, art, and design (Vodeb, 2017). Fashion design and food are central to social experiences, and people often make choices about their food based on their values, personal preferences, beliefs, eating practices, and knowledge about food sourcing. In addition, this includes considerations related to sustainability, ethics, and health. This paper presents how (vegan) food as a visual practice is closely connected to sustainable fashion design and style due to its similar functioning, from production to distribution and their environmental impact. Also, research on the effect of food as a visual and communicative practice in vegan food trends is presented. Based on Barthes’ semiotic framework, this paper has explored how packaging, presentation, and digital media construct, communicate these meanings in visual codes. While the dominant visual codes of vegan food design effectively convey its ethical and environmental values, they also face challenges of inclusivity and accessibility, underscoring the need for more diverse and representative narratives. As vegan food continues to grow as a cultural and commercial phenomenon, its visual codes will remain a critical site for negotiating identity, values, and aspirations.