Cambridge Analytica Used Fashion Tastes to Identify Right-Wing Voters

You've heard of profiling criminals, but welcome to fashion profiling -- the practice of classifying and targeting individuals based on their clothing brand preferences. Fashion profiling played a bigger role in the 2016 American presidential election than anyone realized, according to new information from Christopher Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistle-blower. Today at a conference in Britain organized by the fashion industry website The Business of Fashion, Mr. Wylie explained that clothing preferences were a key metric for Cambridge Analytica, whose business was constructing and selling voter profiles drawn from Facebook data. "Fashion data was used to build AI models to help Steve Bannon build his insurgency and build the alt-right," he said. Preferences in clothing and music are the leading indicators of political leaning, he said.