(UN)TOUCHABLE

Carmem Saito Junqueira Aguiar

MA Integriertes Design
October 2015
2
 3

“To touch and to touch oneself (to touch oneself = touched-

touching). They do not coincide in the body: the touching is never
exactly the touched. This does not mean that they coincide “in the
mind” or at the level of “consciousness.” Something else than the body
is needed for the junction to be made: it takes place in the untouchable.
That of the other which I will never touch. But what I will never
touch, he does not touch either, no privilege of oneself over the other
here, it is therefore not the consciousness that is the untouchable - “The
consciousness” would be something positive, and with regard to it there
would recommence, does recommence, the duality of the reflecting
and the reflected, like that of the touching and the touched.
The untouchable is not a touchable in fact inaccessible - the
unconscious is not a representation in fact inaccessible. The negative
here is not a positive that is elsewhere (a transcendent) - It is a true
negative, i.e. an Unverborgenheit of the Verborgenheit, an Urpräsentation
of the Nichturpräsentierbar, in other words, an original of the
elsewhere, a Selbst that is an Other, a Hollow - Hence no sense in
saying : the touched-touching junction is made by Thought or
Consciousness: Thought or Consciousness is Offenheit of a corporeity
to . . . World or Being
The untouchable (and also the invisible: for the same analysis can
be repeated for vision : what stands in the way of my seeing myself
is first a de facto invisible (my eyes invisible for me), but, beyond this
invisible (which lacuna is filled by the other and by my generality)
a de jure invisible: I cannot see myself in movement, witness my own
movement. But this de jure invisible signifies in reality that Wahmehmen
and Sich bewegen are synonymous: it is for this reason that the Wahmehmen
never rejoins the Sich bewegen it wishes to apprehend: it is another
of the same.”

Merleau-Ponty, 1960
4
 5

(Un)Touchable

Master Thesis submitted by Carmem Saito Junqueira Aguiar

MA Integriertes Design

Supervisors: Prof. Ursula Zillig and Prof. Dr. Andrea Sick

October 2015
Bremen, Germany.
6
TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S
7

Abstract 9

Introduction 11

Methodology 15

Manifest I: Dramatic Clothes or The Fetishised Touch 19

The F Word 21
R.I.P 26

Manifest II: Neo Crafts or The New Touch 31

The Egg or The Chicken 33
To Wear or Not To Wear 34

Manifest III: Fashion Without the Body or The Absence of Touch 43

Is This Real Life? 45
Augment Everything 50

Bibliography 56
8
ABSTRACT
9

Fashion role as both physical and metaphysical signifier is

unquestionable. The phenomenon of fashion has been extensively
investigated for its social and economic relevance. This field is
porous, hence undergoing numerous changes due to socio-technical
advancements. In order to pursue understanding of this shifting scenario,
I am researching the topic of materiality of fashion looking into three
identified main trends - ‘Dramatic Clothes’, ‘Neocrafts’ and ‘Fashion
without the body’ -, in order to map different design statements, forms of
exploration and production, so that we can start to converge discourses
and envision preferable futures for fashion studies and practice. The
three main trends were identified through a practice-led research, which
employed a ‘diffractive methodology’ combined with fashion design
methods, i.e. mood boards and trend books. ‘Dramatic clothes’ is about the
constant threats directed to postmodern fashion and the fear of letting go
of the craft and touch. ‘Neocrafts’ is about the advent of wearables versus
fashion and a new, smart materiality. ‘Fashion without the body’ is about
projections of fashion behaviour in digital environments and a rejection
to the physical. These themes were explored through practice and
resulted in manifestos, which are proposed to highlight the emergence
of these topics for the fashion industry, and broadly to society, and to
encourage discussions and actions towards preferable scenarios that
reflect our current socio-technical context.
10
INTRODUCTION
11

For the past decades, intangible internet-related technology has

become a big and mundane part of our lives. Since the latter half of
the twentieth century, when the computer became a personal tool,
technology has been reshaping our economy, behaviours and the whole
environmental context around us is becoming embedded in our ways of
existing and constructing ourselves in the world. We are experiencing
new forms of living and existing in new subjective territories and new
forms of economy are being discussed and developed that correspond
to those values. People have now a whole new relationship towards
mobility, time and space, new visual inputs, new codes, signifiers, social
lives, privacy and the very meaning of the individual and collectivity is
undergoing transformations. The internet allows us to transit between
worlds, virtual and real, time and space, multi-tasking and expanding
our experience, and that transit is so natural that the borders are merging,
and digital environments and things that previously were maintained in
a distant virtual reality are now coming into being (Clark, 1998).
Throughout western history fashion has developed in a way that
spreads and unfolds into different or even opposite ways of production,
consumption and distribution. We have even given different nouns to
these pieces of cloth sewn together that we wear on the surfaces of our
bodies: “clothing”, “garments” and “dress” are terms usually applied in
relation to the materiality aspect of what one can use to cover, adorn
or even modify the body; “costume” is used in historical and cultural
contexts; the word “fashion” as we know it1 has either began to be used
in the fourteenth century to illustrate the changes and cycles of clothes
within the emerging capitalist system, also followed by the development
of the textile industry, or on the nineteenth century with the industrial
12
revolution, modernity and of course the designs of Charles Worth, the
first couturier (Laver, 1969). Since then, fashion is the most popular word
to describe practices of wearing and regarded as a social phenomenon,
tight to the construction of our individual and collective identities and
with the way something is done or worn (Steele, 2012), and the most
recent word, the “wearables”, used to identify technology that can be
1 either carried, worn or incorporated in our bodies, it can but is not
Expression used
by trend forecaster necessary that it resembles clothing or accessories. There’s also more
Lidewij Edelkoort
in interview with that can be added to the list: wardrobe, apparel, style, outfit, look and
Dezeen about her so on. However, none of those words seem to entirely cover its complex
“Anti-fashion”
manifesto. participation in the everyday life, making it very difficult for both
where she states scholars, designers and consumers to perceive its full capacity beyond
that “It’s the end of
fashion as we its surface. Still, we can grasp that the act of dressing is a semiological
know it” . phenomenon, that is our very first and immediate interaction the body
has with another material object and then to the world, extending and
exceeding other dimensions of sociological, cultural and psychological
contexts - a network system (Barthes, 2006).
By its (non)-definition, fashion (and all its acronyms) is deeply
intertwined with both past and contemporary social dynamics. It
has been used as a powerful tool for producing and inspiring change,
expression, modernization and other mutation processes throughout
history, presenting a spectacle of innovation season after season
(Lipovetsky, 2009). Curiously this system has been, according to a
number of theoreticians, historians and also by practitioners, declared
dead. Earlier this season, trend forecaster, Lidewij Edelkoort released
an Anti-Fashion Manifesto, claiming the death of fashion as we know it.
Edelkoort was not the first to make that statement. In her book Fashion
Zeitgeist: Trends and Cycles in the Fashion System2 - though the
original German title, Mode nach der Mode Geist und Kleid am Ende des 20.
Jahrhunderts (Fashion after Fashion: Spirit and Clothes at the End of
the Twentieth Century3) relates a lot more to her theory - professor of
literature Barbara Vinken (1993), uses the term postfashion to refer to the
fashion after the end of the twentieth century - or after the age of the
haute couture; sociologist, Efrat Tseëlon (1995) also theorizes about the
postmodern fashion to describe the era in which we live now, where fashion
only refers to itself, without producing anything new; fashion critic and
journalist Teri Agins (1999), wrote a book called The End of Fashion,
2
Vinken, B. 2005. where she combines a series of reports on the business of fashion from
Fashion Zeitgeist:
Trends and Cycles in catwalk designers to retailers, present consumers and industry factors
the Fashion System. that have resulted in the end of fashion following a similar timeline to
1st ed. New York:
Berg. the one presented by Vinken.
It is argued that fashion got trapped within its own system and
3
Free translation became the ultimate fashion victim. Rooted in the trickle-down system4
and moving from a fragmented and marketing driven model, even
undergoing seasonal transformation, very little has actually happened
that can relate to the complex phenomena described above. Fashion
 13
seems to have lost its entanglements with the happenings of the world,
and changes are merely restricted to a loop of images and garments that
are differentiated by branding styling, if at all.
In today’s age of technology and its media, values are transcending
materiality, shifting towards service and experience based things and
although new design models are being created throughout other
4
disciplines, fashion, a medium that deals directly with shifts, change Hierarchical
consumption and
and novelty seems to have somehow remained mostly neutral to distribution system that
those advances. In paradox, if the internet has changed our individual ruled good part of the
19th and 20th century
and collective behaviours and is deeply involved with new models of in which the couturiers
communication, we can only assume it affects fashion as we know it as it (designers) presented
the new trends, bring
completely redefines our notions of time, space, identity, collectivity and first followed by the
intimacy. dominant higher
classes of consumers
This project aims to draw a cartography between the material and and with time those
immaterial, mapping scenarios of the role of fashion within the flow of trends were spread
down to the mass
the digital and dematerialization of things, stressing the materiality of public in an imitated,
fashion and explore opportunities for preferable (Vieira de Oliveira and diluted and affordable
form, as a reaction,
Prado de O. Martins, 2015) transitional futures that envision new roles by that time the big
for fashion practices and allow for such mutations to happen. fashion houses would
have developed a new
collection the higher
classes can again differ
themselves, working
as a memory of
aristocratical costumes.
Simmel, G, 1957.
Fashion. The American
Journal of Sociology,
Vol. 62, No. 6, 544-545.
14
METHODOLOGY
15

The methods employed in this research are highly inspired

from Rick Dolphjin and Iris Van der Tuin’s book “New Materialism:
Interviews & Cartographies” (2012) in which several other authors are
interviewed and re-written in an attempt to consolidate a new-materialist
methodology.
The first concept taken is Karen Barad’s proposal of a ‘diffractive
methodology’ developed in “Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum
Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning” (2007), in which
she appropriates the physical phenomenon of diffraction and uses it as
a metaphor for this method as an alternative to critique, that as Barad
describes, is:

“...all too often not a deconstructive practice, that is, a

practice of reading for the constitutive exclusions of
those ideas we can not do without, but a destructive
practice meant to dismiss, to turn aside, to put someone
or something down — another scholar, another feminist,
a discipline, an approach, et cetera. So this is a practice
of negativity that I think is about subtraction, distancing
and othering.”
(Barad, 2012, p. 49)

Diffractive methodology proposes a method of textual analysis that

builds up entanglements rather than distancing, allowing for inventive
provocations and engaging discussions. A diffractive practice involves
the reading of texts through one another and the exercise of rewriting.
This method does not ignore differences, but instead of using it
with a subtractive intent, it acknowledges differences as relational. The
“practice of diffraction, of reading diffractively for patterns of differences that
make a difference” is an exploratory process in which differences are read
through attentively while recognizing that ethics lie on entanglements
rather than opposites dualistic structures and this practice as Karen
argues, is essential to overcome such dichotomies.
16
Her theory relates to the analysis from the French philosopher, Henri
Bergson. Throughout his work, Matter and Memory, Bergson explores
notions of cartesian oppositions and raises the issue of ordinary dualism.
He adds that its problem lies “not from the distinction of the two terms, but
from the impossibility of seeing how the one is grafted upon the other.” (Bergson,
2004, p. 297).
5
“Fashion has a nose Taking this relational positioning a step further, I will apply the
for the topical, no matter
where it stirs in the notion of “Affirmative Relationality” (Van der Turin, 2012, p. 127). This
thickets of long ago; it method is based upon Bergson’s principle of pushing dualisms into their
is the tiger’s leap into
the past.” (Benjamin, extremes, instead of merging them, thus, allowed him to escape the traps
1969, p.261) of dualistic philosophy and relationality.
One of the reasons I choose this methodology is because it resembles
the notion of the Tigersprung (tiger’s leap) in fashion as described by
Walter Benjamin5. In Barad’s approach, she argues for a disruption
of disciplines and the temporality of history, as an interdisciplinary
method in which different theories and perspectives can be explored
simultaneously. In parallel, when Benjamin analyses history, he notices
that fashion - and, more specifically, changes in fashion or the creation
of new fashions - has the ability to jump from the contemporary through
history to pull back references with a certain detachment, both from its
temporal historical continuum and the eternal, allowing the juxtaposition
of timing and its imagery for the creation of the contemporary-yet-to-
come. For Benjamin, fashion does not work as a historicized element,
but as a singular historical entity with its own historical development.
It is not progressive, hence, it is in its own constant revolution. This
transhistorical and transdisciplinary jumps and layerings are fundamental
to the diffractive readings and to how I am going to approach this work.
Therefore, the methodology is key to this work - given that more than
presenting a final conclusion, product or trend, this work hopes to incite
reflections on their very practices. Therefore it is interested in raising
debates concerning new forms for fashion practice and discourse. If there
is at all a conclusion it is for the use - or proof - of this methodology.
The composition of this work consists of three manifestos, drafted to
introduce the three proposed trends as augmented discourses to allow
immersion, working as a tool to go deeper into the subjects. Here the
idea of “Affirmative Relationality” and Bergson’s principle is applied.
Each of the three trends are pushed to their extreme and singularly and
dogmatically explored, presented in the form of short initial manifestos
sketches that are then developed throughout the text and are organized
within two subdivisions each. I have chosen to follow a model familiar
to the discipline of fashion as inspiration for the structure of this writing.
6 the Trend Book. The manifestos present three main trends that I have
“Cassidy, (2011).
The mood board identified by mapping imagery - mood board _, behaviours and texts
process modeled together with literature to illustrate different notions of touch in relation
and understood as
a qualitative design to fashion, each followed by a correspondent essay. A trend book usually
research tool. presents multiple different trends separately from each other, which are
 17
expected to be worked on separately as well. Differently to the trend
book model, all trends are correlated by the main theme and constantly
refer to each other in this work. Another difference is the fact that I
will not present the trends as determined future predictions, nor will
I combine them into a conclusion of one determined future prediction,
but rather propose trends as possibilities of becoming - what tends to be
- and use the format as an exploration ground to touch into the subject
from within to enable analysis, discussion and creation.
The research process followed a sequence of a constant literature
review and the practice of rewriting as weaving together the disciplines
and theories on fashion, digital media and touch. It draws a cartography
between the relevant themes, exposing their context and conceptual
propositions in order to bring discussions to the fore.
This research attempts to read through the subjects from a
practitioner’s perspective, differing from most of the studies that have
been done in fashion by scholars of other disciplines in which fashion
is contemplated from a distance. I will act as voyeur to other disciplines
and bring them to fashion in an attempt to sew them together. During the
process of this work I have lived, studied with, worked amongst, learned
from, and informally mingled with other practitioners that represents
nodes of the trends I speak of. The process was a combination of newly
acquired information and literature and past knowledge and practices to
draft direction and decisions. Theory, practice and personal experiences
were combined to explore the subjects, understand the materialities of
it, testings and prototyping and all outcomes are the result of aesthetic,
conceptual and technical negotiations.
The idea is not to simply merge them together to form a final
manifesto for fashion or materiality. This work is not concerned about
finding a final future or conclusion on the relations between fashion
and touch, by following the framework of the trend book, the texts here
form a ground for understanding of what t(r)ends to be and it is mostly
interested in triggering and inspiring fashion discourses and practices
that envision entanglements, affects and possibilities. Therefore, there
are no final block for conclusion or final thoughts, this means that this
work also demands a diffractive form of reading as the themes overlap,
refer and answer to each other.
18
D R A M AT I C C L O T H E S O R
19

THE FETISHISED TOUCH

 FASHION IS DEAD
FABRIC IS OUR SKIN
THE FABRIC OF WHO WE ARE
CLOTHES ARE WHERE WE INHABIT
FASHION WAS OUR CHILDHOOD BLANKET
WE WANT TO FEEL UNIQUE
AS WE ARE
NOW IT’S ALL THE SAME
UNREAL, NOT SURREAL
NOTHING CHANGES
WE WANT THE NEW
THE NEW CLASSIC
WE ARE HAND-MADE
STILL, I CAN’T TOUCH IT
EVERYTHING’S CHANGED
WHAT HAPPENED? WE ARE DEAD
AGAIN
SUCH A SHAME
LET US DRESS, PLAIN DRESS
DRESS IN PEACE

Manifest I
 21

THE F WORD
7

7
As briefly discussed in the introduction, fashion - as well as dress, Steele,V, 1991. The F
Word. Lingua Franca
and costume - a concept and framework has many forms and definitions.
There is no consensus among scholars or practitioners on what fashion
really is. The terms are constantly debated and reviewed between
different disciplines that deal with the subject from different points of
view. Anthropologists, historians, economists, sociologists and so on
all have a distinct approach when they look into the phenomena of
fashion and therefore utilize and produce terminology that will better
accommodate their theories. As pointed out by Joanne Entwistle:

“Far from clearly employing one or other term [ fashion,

dress, clothing, costume, adornment, decoration and
style] and defining it precisely, there is a considerable
degree of confusion in the various bodies of literature
with many authors employing a number of different
terms, often using them interchangeably. A review of the
literature illustrates the fact that there is no consensus on
the definition and use of these words and no agreement
on precisely what phenomena they describe.”
(Entwistle, 2000, p. 41)

Although I acknowledge the distinctions between all terms

employed in the realm of fashion studies, from now on I choose to use
mostly the term fashion as it is a complex phenomenon that embraces
matters of dress, clothing, costume, adornment, decoration and style;
firstly, because such terminology concern towards fashion is not always
reciprocal, and secondly to avoid confusion and constant repetition of
terms. But it is possible to imply that all those other words simply sound

Fig. 01: Lygia Clark,

Corpo Coletivo (2014)
22
more serious. Also, in order to address the statement of the death of
fashion, there is the need for a closer and broader look into the term as a
whole. Still, some of those adjacent terms might come along the text and
used interchangeably with the term fashion.
Georg Simmel (1957) was one of the first to look at fashion as a
unique subject. In his paper, Simmel looks into how clothes can be used
for processes of imitation and distinction within individuals and social
groups and defined fashion as a subject of change. Simmel triggered a
notion of fashion that endures until today, in which groups of power
are distinguished by displaying a unique style, that then becomes the
dominant style when imitated by other groups, the lower classes, thus,
generating the need for new forms of distinction resulting in new
fashions. In this case, fashion is only a matter of velocity, of who dresses in
a certain matter first and who adopts it latter. He also makes a distinction
from dress in primitive classless societies as well as religious or working
garments, arguing that they are not fashion, as they do not have a
cycle of change and do not trigger novelty in clothing. Blumer (1969)
followed the same path of observing fashion role in social distinction first
established by Simmel, but argues that he misses a central point in the
social function of fashion and introduces the concept of collective selection.
Blumer states that fashion has a role of organizing and filtering novelties
proposed by designers and innovators in order to create a style order. For
him, fashion calms the chaos:

“If all competing models enjoyed similar acceptance the

situation would be one of disorder and disarray. In the
field of dress, for example, if people were to freely adopt
the hundreds of styles proposed professionally each year
and the other thousands which the absence of competition
would allow, there would be a veritable “Tower of Babel”
consequence. Fashion introduces order in a potentially
anarchic and moving present. ”
(Blumer, 1969, p.289)

Fashion, therefore allow us the freedom to detach from the past,

while prepare us for the future. Futures, for Blumer, go through a
process of filtration of possibilities resulting on what he calls a common
sensibility and taste. He presents fashion as social mechanism that can
allow for social order in the modern world. Though he does not imply
this statement from a critical point of view, fashion is described here
a powerful normative tool. Dress is granted with the function of social
control and categorization, it can draw lines that not only mirror but
impose hierarchical distinctions between social binaries such as gender,
class and also moral boundaries. That specific categorization function
of fashion started during the modern times, when public and private
zones began to merge and clothes started to be relatively mass produced
 23
(Tseelon, 1995). Fashion could easily adapt to the ambiguous fragmented
lifestyle of the modern bourgeois but the easy clear distinction that
existed before was now a blur and women’s dress became confusing to
understand under moral implications.

“Fashion blurred the lines between le monde (high

society) and the demi-monde, the shadowy “half-world”
where courtesans and actresses reigned”
(Steele, 2004)

Fig. 02: Dzi

13
Croquettes

13
Dzi Croquettes
was a theatrical and
dance group formed
in Brazil during the
dictatorship in the
1970s. They defined
their performances as
political exercises of
“antropofagia”, heavily
influenced by the
Canibalist Manifesto
by Oswald de Andrade.

In an attempt or reestablishing order, subtle moral codes were

introduced, rules on sartorial practices, etiquette, posture and behaviour
allowed distinctions to be again acknowledged.

“The knowledge of ... manners, language, and dress,

became an artificial dividing-line, separating the Ins from
the Outs”
(Steele, 1988, p.93)

Walter Benjamin (1999 p. 62-81), as mentioned before, has looked

into the historical aspect of fashion and its ability to jump between times
and to compose the contemporary by constantly self-referencing. But
this was not the only mention of fashion in Benjamin’s writings.
The most fascinating thing in fashion as he argues, is its ability
to anticipate, to bring what is yet to come;, long before Barthes, he
acknowledges that fashion can be read, and those who can interpret it,
can know the future beforehand (p.63-64). Interestingly, he was also the
first to state the link between fashion and death. The basis of fashion
lies on the fetish of the novelty and the human (female) body is its main
carrier, as fashion is our closest commodity. Bodies are oblivious to the
24

Fig. 03: Garnment

by Tigran Avetisyan

past and fetishise novelty, in this play the body is merely a cadaveric
support for fashion, more corpse than living.
Lipovetsky (2009) states that fashion is a system born and inseparable
to western modernity and cannot exist elsewhere. Different from other
forms of sartorial manifestations found in other ecstatic periods in
8 history, the crux of the western modern fashion lies on embracing the
“The New
Citroën,” pp. 88-90 in ephemeral, novelty and change aligned with the pursuit for aesthetic
Mythologies, 89
fantasy. For him fashion is “endless metamorphoses, its fits and starts, its
extravagance” (Lipovetsky, 2002, p.15) led by the desire of individualization
9
Steele states that of and exclusiveness.
Technology, Valerie But “fashion system” as a term was only coined in 1967 when Roland
Steele: “Clothes
is the general and Barthes introduced his book with the same title, though it does not relate
inclusive term for all to tangible fashion but its descriptions presented in fashion magazines.
the various coverings
and articles of dress From a semiotic perspective he analyses fashion as a signifying language,
designed to be worn a system of signs and codes, something that could be analysed and
on the human body.
Fashion is a particular potentially carry meaning. It was in his other book, titled Mythologies
kind of clothing that that he proposes the myth in the value of novelty and coins the term
is ‘in style’ at a given
time. The concept neomania8.
of fashion therefore It is clear by now that most common and traditional definitions of
implies a process
of style change.” fashion involves looking into the aspect of change and the promotion
Steele, V, 2006. Fifty of stylistic innovation. For those, fashion is defined by the constant
Years of Fashion:
New Look to Now. changing of styles of clothings and conspicuous consumption of
3rd ed. London and garments, particularly for the upper middle class young women. From
New Haven: Yale
University Press. there, in the attempt of establishing fashion theory as a valid field in
pp.11 academia, Valerie Steele proposes a turn on the definition of the term
10
Defined as part of
fashion; though still recognizing the aspect of change as an important
the editorial policy aspect of fashion9, she defines it as “the cultural construction of the embodied
of Fashion Theory:
The Journal of Dress,
identity”10. Allowing the concept of fashion to expand its current limiting
Body & Culture, the borders to menswear, queer, street style, subcultures, hair and piercings.
first interdisciplinary Still, even now that fashion theory is an established field in itself
academic journal
dedicated to fashion. the notion of what fashion actually is is still blurred, especially for
 25
practitioners, who have very few say on this matter. Elisabeth Wilson
(2003) once noted that economists and anthropologists would simply
presuppose but not truly understand the nature of the thing itself they
were exploring and defining. While fashion practitioners work under
stakeholders, marketers, entrepreneurs, bureaucrats and also customers
that are constantly (re-)defining what fashion is and passing it on to the
practice - and so the crash start to form. This state reflects the suggestion
by Japanese sociologist Yuniya Kawamura (2005), that describes fashion
as “a system of institutions, organizations, groups, producers, events and practices”,
a “manufactured cultural symbol in an institutionalized system” (p.43).
By now it should be clear that fashion is still quite a loose term.
Additionally, due to its relation to the body and embodiment affordances,
it allows for a level of individual intimacy that makes it open enough for
a multitude of understandings, and it can be expected that people tend
to develop their own understanding if the matter and the term multiplies
even more.

“The postmodern fashion is a carnival of signs with no

meanings attached to them, or whether it falls prey to its
own rhetoric.”
(Tseelon on Baudrillard-, 1995, p.124)

Also, fashion, as a term, even being constantly debated and rewritten

over the years, very rarely negates other notions of it, nothing has
been discarded, the various definitions mostly only builds on or adds
up as they come, very similar to the very descriptions of how fashion
behaves. There is very little critique between scholars so that a closed
concept can be defined.
What is interesting is fashion as a subject is often looked at as more

Fig. 04: “The New

Look Tropical“ by
Flávio de Carvalho
26
a phenomenom and the practice of fashion design is most of the time
excluded. The tactility of fashion is only felt when we shift the term,
when we talk about dress, costume or clothing. But the feel of fashion,
the Zeitgeist, the aura, is a materiality that is not reachable to the hand.
Clothes are just one of the means in which fashion can come into being.

R.I.P.
We can now advance to the downfall predictions regarding fashion.
Teri Agins (1999) composed an extensive report on case studies in
regard to the end of fashion as we know it, and she does do by presenting
four trends to formulate her argument: women let go of fashion, people
stopped dressing up, people’s values changed with regard to fashion and
top designers stopped gambling on fashion.
Agins defines fashion as a system that operates under the imperative
of planned obsolescence, constantly adapting designs to changes of style
and taste. Her four identified trends represent moments where fashion
failed to deliver shifting points and dictate the trends. She observes
that with the advent of the emancipated individualized consumer,
11
being fashionable was seen as frivolous, so people started going for
The bloomer
was presented as
more casual looks. As a result, the industry became more objective and
an alternative to focused on low-cost manufacturing of basic ready-to-wear clothes,
restraining fashions
of the time. Amelia
and subsequently designers had to tone down their creation in favour
Bloomer, whose name of market demands, though still producing new collections seasonally.
was given to the
garnement describes
Fashion, before considered an art of fit, construction and fabric soon
it in the women’s became unimportant, and that knowledge and appreciation for feel and
journal Lily: “Our
skirts have been
form was lost. The image was all there was left, so labels started to focus
robbed of about a on banding and editorials as their only form of distinction.
foot of their former
length, and a pair of
loose trousers of the “At the end of fashion it takes a whole lot of clever
same material as the
dress, substituted.
marketing to weave ordinary clothes into silken dreams.”
These latter extend (Agins, 1999 p.330)
from the waist to the
ankle, and may be
gathered into a band . From a more poetical point of view, earlier this season, the well
. . We make our dress
the same as usual,
known trend forecaster, Lidewij Edelkoort released an Anti-Fashion
except that we wear Manifesto, proclaimed the death of fashion as we know it. She argues
no bodice, or a very
slight one, the waist
that fashion has become “a ridiculous and pathetic parody of what it
is loose and easy, and has been”. Similar to Agins, she blames the industry and its marketing
without whalebones .
. .Our skirt is full, and
oriented approach for not being able to keep up with what is happening
falls a little below the in the world, its new desires and developments. She mourns the death of
knee.” at
Steele, V. 1st ed.
the spectacle of fashion, its ability to touch and arouse emotions, fashion
Encyclopedia of has lost its ability to disrupt and nothing in fashion can be disrupted
Fashion Costume
and Culture Vol.2,
anymore.
New York: Charles Paradoxically, when we look throughout history, anti-fashion
Scribner’s Sons. pp.
16
1 manifestations were significant triggers of fashion. From the blommer, a
 27
garment born out of the feminist movement in the nineteenth century11
that introduced trousers into women’s wardrobes to the use of jeans by
western North American artists in the twenties (Gordon, 1991) and
other subcultures, fashion has appropriated styles that were firstly seen
as rebellious, inelegant or tasteless. What happens is that by the very fact
that anti-fashion positions itself as opposed to the prevailing fashion, as
different, and it does so by presenting a new form of identity and thus,
generating novelty. As Tseelon notes, “Even resistance to fashion, is still
defined within the order of fashion but fails to acknowledge that fashion
as whole (whatever the authority of its signs) is locked into a broader
signification system” (Tseelon, 1995, p 134).
In her book Adorned in Dreams, Elisabeth Wilson (2003) also
explores this thematic and dedicates a chapter named The Oppositional
Dress to describe manifestations of the self through fashion by
marginalized subcultures as, for example, the queer, ted, mod and hippie
communities. Fashion here presented as a tool to either assert or subvert
identity and contributed to re-establishing new boundaries of looks,
even if at contradictory costs -referring to the condemnation of popular
culture promoted by the School of Frankfurt - of degrading political and
rebellious movements by turning them into fashion.
Fig. 05: Una,
Lady Troubridge
“For sure, the lesbian had an image – a (Romaine Brooks, 1924
gruff person in hairy tweeds and maybe a
few whiskers on her chin – but that was a
stereotype, not a style.”
(E. Wilson, 2013, p.167)

What Edelkoort proposes as anti-fashion

is an independence of clothes from the broken
system that fashion represents. As fashion has
been declared obsolete, she argues that clothes
still have a grip on the world. The celebration
of clothes in a new age of industrial fashion as
well as a return to couture - but couture as craft,
as opposed to creation - are the only hope for
young designers. Following that proposition she
explains that fashion - as clothing - is “meant to be
serial, meant to be all the same; proud to be all the same.
People like to be the same because you like to be part of a
tribe and then your hair, your tattoo is going to say who
you are and no longer your clothes.”(Edelkoort, 2015).
A very different notion of both death of
fashion and anti-fashion was declared in the
seventies by journalist Clara Pierre in her book,
Looking Good: The Liberation of Fashion
(1976): “Let us grant to the seventies its claim to
28

Fig. 06: A Kind

Of Guise

12
Found in Steele, antifashion, for the freedom to wear what you want, where and when you want, is
V, 2015. Anti-Fashion:
The 1970s. Fashion finally here”12.
Theory, 1:3, 279-295. Unlike other historical anti-fashion was a part of subcultural or
political movements and were usually about defying the norm and
functional clothing, Edelkoort’s anti-fashion is about celebrating clothes
as to addressing the empirical fact of covering naked bodies.It is sober,
neutral and uniform. Assuming that this trend is also an outcome of a
tiger’s leap, a possible hypothesis is that she relates this current moment
to what happened to men’s fashion in the nineteenth century and the
anti-fashion she draws from is of the dandy. Elisabeth Wilson describes
the dandy’s anti-fashion as “that ‘true chic’ which used to be defined as the
elegance that never draws attention to itself, the simplicity that is ‘understated’…
Anti-fashion attempts a timeless style, tries to get the essential element of change out
of fashion altogether” (Wilson, p. 183–184).
That claim reflects what many young designers are aspiring to
achieve in order to contour the fashion production system: essential
design. Clothes that are simple, made for everyone to be worn at all
times. The current designs are “sleek”, “timeless”, “local”, “natural”,
“universal”, “unique” and “essential”. Such values are not exclusively to
clothing. This pattern of words and colours are drawn from the design,
from devices we carry and the ones we aspire to have in speculative
futures. As pointed out by Vieira de Oliveira and Prado de O. Martins
(2015) these metaphors are very dangerous and reactionary words
and fail to critically address such production chains and lack of will to
understand the complex systems behind it, automatically condemning it
to the other edge of the system, or the hemisphere (Moon, 2014).
Knotty Objects, a summit organized this year by the MIT Media Lab
exposed four different objects in short viral videos, one of which was the
phone. The Phone invites us to look at phones and phones production
in countries where phones are actually produced. It shows the massive
diversity of designs and individual customization that are created by
the same individuals that manufacture our phones. Their phones have
different shapes, colours, ecosystems and affordances while our phones
 29

Fig. 07: iPhone &

e-commerce

look all the same and fashion is going for the same model. The same
fetish devoted to such sleek shiny phones is projected to pursue of the
perfect white T-shirt. We must then ask if such blend commodities do
reflect our social and individual identities. What does that say about us?
For an optimistic breath, Michel Serres discourse on language can
easily be translated to a discourse on clothes and phones. He argues
that even though globalization and its imperialist presence imposes
only one single way of being, and consequently a single language, he
points out that, in the same way some linguistics defend the hypothesis
that in the beginning there was one root language. Even if we’d go back
into speaking only one language, this language would be spoken with so
many different accents and singularities that it would very fast go back
into becoming several languages again. So if we designers must turn to
celebrate clothes, and even if the clothes are standardized, we would
naturally create differences between them.
Even if clothes and couture are as Edelkoort states, versus creation,
the exploration of the métier of clothing will surely transcend. Firstly, as
Baudrillard says, “objects never exhaust themselves in the function they serve, and
in this excess of presence they take on their signification of prestige” (1981 p. 32).
Secondly, according to a non-hylomorphic ontology of making (Ingold,
2009), as “Matter feels, converses, suffers, desires, yearns and remembers” (Barad,
2012 p.48) new forms of materiality can be traced. Iris van Herpen,
Dutch avant-garde fashion designer known for her three dimensional
garments and experimental materials recalls that it was during her
first internship at Alexander McQueen, while performing repetitive
handcraft tasks that she realised that an “idea can come from a process of
making”. The turn to matter and engage with craft can only lead to new
findings and innovation in fashion instead of the path to what Lipovetsky
would see as an ecstatic era.
The death comes from one understanding of fashion, and since
there is no common consensus for what fashion is and is not, fashion
can only laugh at the face of death and mutate once more. There is a
certain anxiety for fashion to work in the twenty-first century. Again,
30 only a matter of speed. Change in styles and manifestations of embodied
identities have existed since the first cloth and even during periods in
which there is a common acknowledgement of the presence of fashion,
the tiger leaps and shifting points of disruption happened in blurred
forms over centuries or decades, the difference now is that for some
reason we expect it to happen twice a year and rule over billions of
singular mutant bodies. It is within the long thread of history “where
fashion is at once preserved” (Benjamin, 1999 p.65) and we cannot grasp it.

“This is the despair that nothing lasts, and the

complementary enjoyment of knowing that beyond this
death, every form has always the chance of a second
coming”
(Baudrillard, 1993, p.119)

Fig. 08: Jessica

Sanders,
piece in progress
(2011)
NEO CRAFTS OR
31

THE NEW TOUCH

32
NOW WE UPGRADE
LET US MAKE FUTURE,
WE ARE THE REVOLUTION
WE HAVE CONQUERED FASHION
IT IS 2.0
ENGINEERING IS THE NEW TAILORING
RENDERING THE NEW WAIVING
WE DON’T DRAW, WE CODE
WE DON’T DRESS, WE WEAR
FABRIC IS TOO ANALOG
FORM HAS NO LIMITS ANYMORE
FASHION IS NOW WEARABLE
(3D) PRINT OR PERISH
THEY ARE ALL THE SAME
WE ARE THE ONLY SOURCE OF INNOVATION
CREATIVITY IS GENERATED
WE INTEGRATE - AND DISINTEGRATE
LET’S MANUFACTURE THE FUTURE
I DON’T CARE ABOUT TOUCH,
I FEEL EVOLVED

Manifest II
 33

THE EGG OR THE CHICKEN

The link between fashion and technology is not at all new. In the
material world that surround us, our covering are our bodies most
immediate experience, thus, textiles follow a long thread of technological
innovation over history. The binding between computational technology
in textiles can be traced to John Kay with the invention of the flying
shuttle, a big contribution to the industrialization of weaving which lead
to the first Industrial Revolution, then later the automatization of binary
punch cards by Joseph Marie Jacquard to develop the machine that later
took his name that could program the loom to directly weave given
patterns on the fabric, a technology that later let to the Analytical Engine
and then to our private computers (S Park, K Mackenzie, S Jayaraman,
2002, p. 170). In recent years, with the advent of the Maker culture and
the declared new Industrial Revolution, technology and fashion are
once again reunited under the umbrella of wearables. The interest of the
fashion design and retail in 3D scanning and printing technology, as well
as rapid prototyping technologies, has increased considerably, looking
Fig. 09: Jacquard
punch cards
34
forward to develop concepts that are
customizable, made to order and unique.
At the same time software engineers are
turning to the body as a new support for
innovation.
The Third Industrial Revolution
was declared by many authors:
Gershenfeld (2005) describes a future
where digital fabrication will follow the
same path of the personal computer,
and become a personal tool, leading to
what he calls personal fabrication. Personal fabrication involves a mass
democratization of manufacturing resulting in a total disruption of the
current market production and distribution. The Arduino, conductive
threads, laser cutters and 3D printers are amongst the most popular
digital fabrication tools and machines used by makers and have opened
the range of possibilities to rethink the future of clothing and fashion.
Then, in 2010 Chris Anderson published an article in Wired Magazine
titled ‘In the Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are the New Bits’ he
claims digital fabrication is what shapes bits into atoms, and later in
‘Makers: The New Industrial Revolution’ (Anderson, 2012) he argues
that digital fabrication and personal fabrication merge into what he
calls the maker movement. For Anderson, this move represents a bridge
between an idea and a thing, and the producer and the owner.
If we live indeed in a Third Industrial Revolution, and it refers
directly to computation, we must look at fashion and wearables as an
enabler of it rather than a byproduct. To call today’s wearable technology
coded cloths is at least redundant. Still, there is a general shock of how
fashion - an entity associated with feminine crafts, regarded as shallow
Fig. 10: 12 page Apple and unintelligent - can play such a big role in cutting edge digital
ad onVogue technology (Küchler, 2003).

TO WEAR OR NOT TO WEAR

Wearables is a term that describes any form of integrated computer
14
The Internet
technology with embedded electronics components and/or connected
of Things refers to to a network (IoT14) that are closely connected to the body. E-Textiles
objects embedded
with computational
can also be described as a sub-group within this field. Whereas wearable
technology that technology is usually associated with a closed device, E-textiles or Smart
enables them to
receive and send
Textiles refer to materials that have technology woven or manufactured
data through an into the fibre and function similarly to normal fabrics, meaning they can
interconnected
network.
usually be normally sewn, chemically treated and even washed. Though
they are more a material than a finished device, its affordances are
increasing considerably and more types of conductive yarns and sensors
can be embedded in the cloth. 3D printed fabrics refer to nonwoven
 35

Fig. 11: Iris van

Herpen, Magnetic
Motion Spring/
Summer 15
modular chainmail structures constructed using softwares like Maya,
Rhinoceros or Processing and then printed as fabric swatches. Although
3D printed fabrics or garments do not exactly fall into that category, as
they are not yet made out of conductive material, or have computational
processes embedded into it, its computational creation and development
process allows the common association.
Iris Van Herpen, Hussein Chalayan and Alexander McQueen are
examples of fashion designers/design houses of Haute Couture that
have extensively explored technology and tridimensionality in their
work and consequently, 3D printing. They are designers whose work
involves a deep commitment with the experimental and technological
advances.
Iris van Herpen presented her first 3D printed piece as a part of her
Spring/Summer 2010 collection presented at Amsterdam International
Fashion Week. The work was a collaboration with the architect Daniel
Widrig and Materialize studio. Since 2010 Iris van Herpen has become
the name of reference for avant-garde use of technology and 3D printing
in fashion, even though when asked about her work she states that “It’s
not fashion yet.”(2005), and according to Harold Koda, the curator of the
Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, her work not
only lies in that realm between art and fashion - that for now we shall not
dare to discuss - it is art, dress is only the medium.
In contrast to the non-functionality of catwalk designs, architects
and engineers are also alone exploring the realm of clothing, more
interestingly, though the term wearable is used more often, they are also
embracing the use of the word fashion.
In May this year a Kickstarter campaign was launched to fund
Electroloom, a fabric 3D printer and in only one month it was successfully
backed up. The machine works similar to some other home 3D printers,
36
they have a liquid filament that when released it solidifies. The difference
here is first, the filament, it utilises fibers, so far, blends of polyester with
cotton, silk or acrylic, the liquid is released with an electrospinning and
sprayed onto a flat surface or flat garment mold creating nonwoven fabric
and seamless pieces of clothes. The team is based in San Francisco and
is composed by three men, two Biomedical/Mechanical Engineers and
one Computer Engineer.

Fig. 12 and 13: Non-

woven and seamless
3D printed garment
out of printer

Another big project on 3D printed textiles was a dress realized by

the design studio Nervous System in 2014. The duo behind the studio,
Jessica Rosenkrantz who trained in architecture and biology and Jesse
Louis-Rosenberg who majors in mathematics describe their technology
as 4D printing, as their design changes due to the folding and unfolding
of their articulated joints after they come out of the printing. The
innovation here is the fact that this process is automated, but the practice
of folding an articulated piece for printing is very common when using
laser sintering machines. In a laser sintering machine, a container filled
with power of a polymer material -nylon, for instance-, the machine
scans the material and the laser melts the areas corresponded to the
design, hence, if the design can be folded to fit the container in just one
print and improve the area usage, then better.
New York based designer Francis Bitonti has made his first appearance
in fashion in 2013. Trained as an architect, we worked together with the
designer Michael Schmidt to a 3D printed dress worn by the dancer Dita
von Teese. The dress was designed by Michael, generated by Francis
and printed by company Shapeways, but it was Bitonti who became
 37
an advocate for 3D printing in fashion. In an interview to Dezeen in
September 2014 he stated that “Aside from performance-oriented wearable
products and brands, I am not seeing an intrusion of technology (in fashion) that is
influencing design methodology and thereby having a meaningful impact on the way
we think about clothing. I hope my reply does not sounds negative but the first step is
transform design methodology. We don’t even have this conversation happening in
fashion right now.” And that he had given up working with other materials
or processes and that the technology of 3D printing would “turn the entire
fashion industry inside out”. It is true that fashion has not adopted the 3D
printing technology as fast and with the same stem as our colleagues
from product design and architecture, but most probably the works
mentioned above are unknown to him. Another hypothesis (that does
not exclude the first) is that he is not interested in the spectacle aspect
that form takes in fashion. Although the Dita Von Teese dress seems
quite extravagant, it is still for her a very wearable garment. She is a
burlesque dancer, compared to her usual performing costumes, the 3D
printed dress is flexible enough, lighter and one might even argue that it
is rather simple. Only a few months later he gave a talk at the Wearable
Futures conference in London where in between explaining software
and manufacturing process he mentioned a new materiality regarding
this technology:

“One of the things we’ve been noticing is that materials

are becoming media. I’m not operating on materials, I’m
operating on animations, I’m operating on video, I’m
operating on pixels and polygons. [The design process] is
a lot closer to creating a Hollywood film than it is making
an aluminium cylinder.”
(Bitonti, 2013)

Fig. 14: Dita Von

Teese wearing
fully articulated
3D printed dress
38

Fig. 15: 3D printed

textile swatch made
of nylon polymers

In this new form of algorithmic materiality, Bitonti argues that the

body “becomes a container for artificial intelligence”. He also calls attention
for the aspect of craftsmanship in digital fabrication “people always say
that... I mean, who says that craftsmanship is dead? I mean, this is a very messy
process” (Bitonti,2013). He points out that the printing is only half way
the production process, assembling pieces and other various finishing
processes that require intensive handwork.
There is a myth of magic surrounding 3D printing. A false notion
that there are no boundaries of creation as you or it (the machine) can
make anything as the software handles it all. Digital prototyping requires
no need for skills to translate ideas into material, they have become abstract
and “suddenly there is not nothing standing between ideas and practice, and that
step now is optional” (Chris Anderson 2012). We have been distanced from
production processes since the first Industrial Revolution and that makes it
easy to fall into the deception that those steps can be simply erased.
Tim Ingold (2009) identifies this model of creation as hylomorphic -
deriving from Aristotle’s notion of making as the combination of matter
(hyle) and form (morphe) - which he describes as the process of the
imposition of form -an idea- into matter -as passive- by an active agent. He
15
“In his notebooks,
argues this model applies a misconception of what making things really is
the painter Paul Klee and it reads creativity backwards, meaning start from the idea of a finished
repeatedly insisted that
the processes of genesis
object. Drawing inspiration from Paul Klee15, he defends the notion
and growth that give rise that creation is a practice of wander into the flows and transformations
to forms in the world
we inhabit are more
of materials and describes a thing as “interweaving of materials in movement”
important than the forms (Ingold, 2009, p. 96). He constantly refers to practices of embroidery,
themselves. ‘Form is the
end, death’, he wrote.
drawing and carpentry as relational, what we can translate to the notion of
‘Form-giving is life’ skills - though for Ingold (2001), skills are not a possession, but a system
(Klee, 1973, p. 269).”
in Ingold, 2009. p.
of relations between an actant and the environment, and neither is skill an
91– 102. external force but rather an interaction.
 39
As clothing is still a product much dependant on craft handwork,
fashion designers tend to have a broad overview of the whole process of
making, following through from conception to fabrication. This is perhaps
the reason why we have seen fashion designers starting to explore digital
technology in their processes working collaboratively with architects and
3D studios while engineers, architects and interaction designers have not
reached to the discipline of fashion to perform wearable tech projects.

“For making a dress you have to use your fingers, your

hands [holds hands up and moves fingers]. It’s very
important because your hands are culture. Your soul
comes out at the tips of your fingers. Fashion is the last
business of craftsmanship. And this is going to disappear.”
(Yohji Yamamoto, 2013)

Fig. 16: Kinematic dress

right out
of the printer
However, in less than one year later, Bitonti went back to this discourse
and argued that the 3D printing industry has become stagnated, “choking off
its own revolution” (2015). As a result of the matter, he has recently updated
his studio’s website homepage with a manifesto that states:

“Francis Bitonti Studio is a design studio focused on

emerging models of mass production and processes for
material formation. We focus on information driven
production and manufacturing models. We are designers,
developers and materials scientists.
We are focused on the future of manufacturing.
We assume materials can be generated and modified as
digital media. We don’t design static things, we design
systems and algorithms that shape materials.
We design objects, spaces and warbles through
information systems. This is NOT design for the “next
industrial revolution.”
THIS IS DESIGN FOR THE INFORMATION AGE.”
40

Fig. 17: Shapeways

website banner

The “next industrial revolution” that he shows much disappointment

is in regard to the customer centred focus that surrounds the 3D printing
and the maker culture. Bitonti’s criticism is towards a general lack of vision
from the industry and a consumer directed marketing that lead to toyish
explorations (ie. selfie-dolls). As opposed to Gershenfeld this revolution is
about a disruptive technology that can be incorporated to achieve designs
that could not be achieved before but still within similar structures of
production and distribution of mass manufacturing. For Bitonti, this new
technology should aim to compete and eventually substitute current
fabrication machines, in the case of fashion, 3D printed fabrics and clothes
would ideally disrupt the whole textile industry and match the levels of
comfort and desirability as our present clothes.
The “Design for the information age” can also be interpreted as to what
represents a vision of wearable computing that speculate a future where
computational systems will be integrally entwined to our bodies. Taking a
perspective closer to body studies, the term body-media (corpomídia) was
first coined by Christine Greiner and Helena Katz (2008). They propose
the body as medium - not unlike Merleau Ponty - they argue that through
cognitive processes the body is in constant negotiation and exchange of
information data with the environment, always reconstructing itself, in the
state of becoming and acting as producer of knowledge (Greiner, 2006). As
we know that technological artefacts can black-box (Latour, 1999) politics
(Winner, 1986). If in the information age data is a driving force of capital
revenue, and fashion is the embodied identity, wearables are the best path
for acquiring knowledge about an individual.
Another big issue regarding wearables is wearability. These new
materials are presenting new forms of tangible interaction in fashion,
introducing a new touch, a new feeling on the skin. Woven textiles and
animal fur have been covering our skins for thousands of years and it was
only until the 1960s that we came in such a direct contact with synthetic
materials and 3D printed textiles are basically interlocking components
that fold and hinge to simulate fabric-like movement that is only one facet
of what a fabric is, even if 3D body scanning can tailor the parts to better
fit the body it is still uncomfortable. Ideally, wearable computing would
behave and feel as comfortable on the skin as the usual textiles while
balancing on functionality, power sourcing, privacy issues. Still, polymers,
conductive threads and hardware still feel alien to our skin.
Beverly Gordon (2011) maps the history, cultural uses and properties
of textiles from which she draws a line to the physical, emotional, spiritual
 41
aspects embedded in the materiality of fabrics. Such qualities can be
identified in several expressions and metaphors present in the English
language that refer to the world of textiles, fibres, threads and woven cloth
relate to notions of path, time and connectivity – i.e. to be bonded, hanging by
a thread, the web of life, a line to follow, etc. She claims the practice of textile
making is deeply associated with life force and thus, is not only a creative
process but also healing, meditative and almost hypnotic and new cloth
often symbolises new life, and wholeness. Though textiles play a major role
in clothing, they are also used as shelter, container and wrapping and that
enfolding aspect of cloth is metaphorically related to feelings of comfort
and protection. Furthermore, she says that fabrics have living properties -
they can contain, absorb and retain all sorts of things from sweat, smoke,
sound, memories and other forms of spiritual energies.
Textiles were one of the first things created by humans and is a
material that possesses a variety of sensorial properties, referred within the
industry as textile hand, that are related to physical, mechanical, surface
and thermal aspects -among others- as well as aesthetics and emotional
qualities that are very hard to mimic with digital tools (Petreca et. al., 2013).
There is a new materiality generated by these new machines that is not
the same of woven fabrics. They carry another whole set of their own
properties and affordances that are in need for further exploration.
Fig. 18: Lygia Clark,
In parallel to the turn to clothing as grounding solution in fashion Máscaras Abismo/Abyss
proposed by Edelkoort, fashion educator Dotrothea Mink (2007, p.280) Mask, 1967
hints at another angst:

“It seems urgently necessary to me for the

entire further development of clothing
design that it reinforces its communication
with other design disciplines and their
socio-cultural contexts”
(Mink, 2007, p.280)

To acknowledge that fashion has to turn to other

disciplines must also indicate that fashion is also a
discipline that must be reached too, not only cited.
Ingold proposes a similar action to the practice of
making. He proposes that we should return to weaving
as a terminology for the practice of embodiment and
movement. As he looks into textiles, he notes that
commonly they are referred to as materials, because
they are still not yet in their final form - of a garment
- therefore they can still become. We must then go
back to the story of the Jacquard loom, return to the
making of fibers until the 3D printer, it is from that
dialogue that we might be able to draw an ontology
for new practices of craft.
42

“Only if we are capable of weaving, only then we can

make”
(Ingold, 2002, p.69)

Wearables, just as fabrics, and just as fashion also have a living aspect
that is theirs and not necessarily given by the bodies that carry it. Again,
we look back to Benjamin and the fashionable corpses, as the bodies are
only a medium for display or as a source of data. The role of the body is
now of the carrier, the container, as opposed to cloth. The challenge here
is to overcome this oppositional relationship in which either one is subject
to the other, and find a path of wearing that is relational (Latour,1999)
between two smart living entities.

Fig. 19: Iris

Van Herpen,
Crystallization,
Spring Summer 11
FASHION WITHOUT
43

THE BODY OR
THE ABSENCE OF TOUCH
44
FASHION IS DEAD
WE DON’T BELIEVE IN CLOTHES ANYMORE
LET’S FREE OUR BODIES FROM OBJECTS
MEANINGFUL OR MEANINGLESS
MATTER IS WASTE
MATTER DOES NOT MATTER
WE ARE NOT SIMPLY VIRTUAL
THIS IS THE NEW REAL
ONCE WE WERE ADORNED IN DREAMS
NOW WE ARE ADORNED IN BITS
WE CREATE OURSELVES ON THE CLOUDS
THERE WE CAN BE MANY, THERE WE CAN BE
WHOLE
BE ALL, WATCH ALL, BE SEEN BY ALL
NO-BODY, JUST BITS
THERE IS NO TIME
NOT FABRIC, BUT A NET
IT’S A SMART WORLD WE LIVE IN
WE TOUCH BUT WE DO NOT FEEL
BUT WHY TOUCH AT ALL WHEN I CAN
TOUCHSCREEN

Manifest II
 45

IS THIS REAL LIFE?

The Internet’s integration into sociality happened with such
impressive speed that it is at once mundane. In addition, the Internet’s
qualitative and subjective impacts are harder to measure than simple
indicators like use or penetration. We are shifting towards easily
accessible digital intangible goods, no longer aims for a physical product,
there’s less desire for ownership of material products, since everything
can be accessed from everywhere at any time. Our behaviour is reshaping
itself into a similar behaviour of the internet, relating to concepts of
networking, codependency and shareability.
16
The collaborative economy16 has penetrated and transformed many The phenomena of
collaborative economy
areas of our daily lives, such as housing, transportation, education, was first identified by
travelling, etc. Collaborative economy can take a variety of forms (and Rachel Botsman in her
published book called
terminologies) but the crux of the movement is built on the internet “What’s Mine Is Yours:
enabling the construction of distributed networks of connected How Collaborative
Consumption is
peers and communities, redistribution of wealth, shared access and Changing the Way
transparency. The dynamics of this economy emerged from the structure We Live” (2011). She
describes collaborative
of distributed networks, in which agents and nodes work independently consumption
in a self-organized form. Ideally, the internet would be a place free from principles to be about
the reinvention of
the constraints of governments, corporations as well as our own bodies, traditional market
looks, gender, race etc. A motto that traces back to the Californian behaviours based on
“reputation, community
counterculture movement in the 1960s and the Whole World catalogue. and shared access” that
Although most of these platforms were initially the alternatives, the allow collective forms
of distribution and
scope of such models is now so wide that it is fast becoming the norm, consumption that
even for conventional business and a hybrid of economy of on-demand would not be possible
before the internet.
service and experience are seizing the market.

Fig. 20: On Distributed

Communications:
Introduction
to Distributed
Communications
Networks (Paul Baran,
1964)
46

Fig. 21: Book cover

There are interesting current behaviours towards intangible media

that mirrors the ones people usually have towards fashion. Throughout
experiences in the online environment we started to project values and
significance to untouchable goods as well. To establish a parallel between
fashion and intangible digital media is to assume they are somehow of
the same nature, perform in a similar way or have similar functions.
Historically, fashion has had the function to expose one’s age, gender,
social role, marital status, occupation, nation etc through the agency of
wearing, composing signs and codes that enable visual communication
within the social context. That is very similar to how the digital and its
mediated relationships work.
 47
Distanced only by their level of tangibility, they both started to
share a common place as a commodity in people’s mundane life and
act as networking systems, a platform to generate individual and social
discourse and curate identity, having the potential to mirror human
subjectivities.

“Ever since Roland Barthes formulated the term

‘fashion language’ in 1985 we have known that fashion
is comprised of readable signs, that it creates signs and
transports them. Today the principle is the same, but
everything else is different. Barthes was still concerned
with clothing and style, whereas now every expression of
every desire figures as fashion, yes, even the body itself
becomes a fashion formula, an accessory.”
(Mink, 2007 p.268)

Mink argues that although skin was considered the line between
the self and the space, but language knows no borders, hence fashion as
language can contain deeper forms of selfhood.
From a body-media understatement of the body (Greiner, 2006)
concept we can affirm that the body is perfectly capable of extending
its relations to the virtual environment just as in the real world, and
therefore is virtually adorned with bits. Fashion is being worn without
the need for a physical body and without clothes, and has become an
expansion of the constructed identity, maybe even more efficiently than
material artefacts in terms of exposure and its curation.
Departing from those theories we can map layers of fashion
construction from the body. We can establish the skin as the center point,
as the body is composed of embodied medium. For example, under
the skin we have organs, genetics, surgeries (related to health, gender
or cosmetic) and body modification, over the skin there are possibly
more body modification (tattoos or piercings), body shaping underwear,
underwear, clothing, accessories, jewellery, hair styles and makeup and

Fig. 22: “Pinterest is a

visual discovery tool that
you can use to find ideas
for all your projects and
interests.” - Pinterest
48

17
Fig. 23: DressCode

17
DressCode is wearable technology devices like smartphones and gadgets. I argue that
a game prototype
created by researcher the later devices recently have the affordance to augment fashion and
Thomas Makryniotis allows for new bodily constructions, dressing and embodiment.
to explore semiotics
of fashion as Over the past decade the vast and ever changing field of online social
formation of media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube, and
identity and social
performance within a Wikipedia have become part of people’s daily life, mediating relationships,
virtual environment. providing and generating online content as well as ideas and thoughts
He argues that digital
fashion works as an - personal or in forms of re-appropriation, for example through text,
extension of the body imagery, videos and questionnaires. Different from the concept of the
and 3D technologies
such as scanning avatar in gaming, they provide a platform for self-exposure, giving them
and modeling can multiple tools to both manage and perform a digitally extended identity.
allow for the creation
and use of a digital Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are more concerned with the user’s
(but real) body that actual life, it let us curate and select what to show from our real-selves
dresses with digital
(but real) clothes. to our mundane life - “What’s on your mind? What are you doing or how’re you
(Makryniotis, 2014) feeling”. There it all revolves more or less around the tangible life, there’s
a timeline according to our birth, we add family members, relationship
status, friends, travels, etc. Users also get to like pages and join groups
according to their real interests, follow people that really exist, express
their own thoughts, share real news or other online content that may
reflect political or religious views, music taste and so on. Imagery can
only enhance and proof notions of time, presence and reality to other
users. They can also show details that may be overlooked in the real life
- nails, lipstick, eyebrows, jewelry, face expressions and things that can’t
be worn - house items, food, location, art, etc.
Pinterest still connects through other social media, importing
and maintaining the basics of the user’s information - profile picture
and name - but it differs from Facebook as it is mostly focused on the
realm of desire and aspiration since the product conducts the user to
editing and curation of non self-produced imagery, users create boards
and pin images that they somehow relate to. Users utilise images that
either come from what is already in the Pinterest database - called the
“re-pin” feature or; from other websites through a bookmark button
 49
or uploaded from their own computer - the latter the least common
practice. Pinboards are usually named and categorized, Pinboard offer
a number of predefined categories - such as Food & Drinks, Woman’s
Fashion, Hair & Beauty, Home Decor- but users can also add or suggest
categories even to other users and although the thematic usually remains
close to the given categories users can specify better their collections by
naming the boards for different means. Images are linked to their source,
though the originality or ownership of that is most likely questionable.
Whether users are interested or not about what, who is or who created
these images is not really relevant in general terms - for the users - what
is interesting is that the lack of acknowledgement of the source allows
them to take ownership of their images so that they not only identify
with them, but are also identifiable by their collections. - Deeply
anchored in real, offline, tangible desires. Such platforms play a big role
in the intangible fashion industry. The need to construct identity in the
virtual world has led to the consumption of images from and for flatness.
Code and algorithms can not only help us organize our taste in likes,
shares, pins, boards, albums, wishlists etc, but can also predict, suggest
and generate our own taste. It allows a break in the link between having
and being. Still, although the scrolling seems to be filled with infinite
possibilities, users are bound to the limitations of the platform. The
algorithms used are not in any way random, they are pre-designed and
constructed within certain business models and frameworks that pre-
determine what and how content will be displayed. In the same way the
world became small, the internet is not anymore as big as it used to be.
It is arguable that the limitations of these platforms allow for little room
for true agency, chance or serendipity.
But though the tool has changed, that idea of the consume of fashion
imagery cannot be considered new. When Roland Barthes wrote ‘The
Language of Fashion’ (2006), he did so by solely analysing fashion
magazines. Barthes even hypothesised that the physical pieces of
garments themselves beings signifiers might not alone contain meaning,
as that the signifieds were given through text - they are an intensive
fashion semantics construction tool.

Fig. 24: L’Oreal

Skin Perfection
50

AUGMENT EVERYTHING
“Technology is seductive when what it offers meets our
human vulnerabilities. And as it turns out, we are very
vulnerable indeed. We are lonely but fearful of intimacy.
Digital connections and the sociable robot may offer
the illusion of companionship without the demands of
friendship. Our networked life allows us to hide from
each other, even as we are tethered to each other. We’d
rather text than talk.”
(Turkle, 2011, p.1)

Fig. 25: The Topshop

Virtual Reality
Experience Autumn/
Winter 14

MIT Professor Sherry Turkle is probably the most well known

enthusiast on the effects of the digital interactions of today’s world.
Turcke explores how emerging technologies affect human identity
and behaviour on psychological and social levels. For Turkle (2011),
we are living a “robotic moment” in which digital tools have taken
hold of our everyday lives, distracting us from the real world and real
human connections, real experiences, real conversations in favour of
virtual (unreal) experiences within the cyberspace. She also points out
that devices have grown to no longer just a tool for interaction but the
interaction per se.

“It is easy to become so immersed in technology that we

ignore what we know about life.”
(Turkle, 2011, p.101)

Throughout her work, she describes how technology lures us into an

emotionally easy and “risk free” environment, where we are able to edit
what she calls “the boring bits” either hiding or highlighting aspects of
ourselves, then “structure” and “control” conversations to avoid affliction,
 51
but and consequently leaving less room for chance and serendipity,
leading to what she calls a “dumbed down” society. By experimenting on
children, she observed how they would easily develop strong emotional
bonds to robotic beings such as the Tamagotchi , considering there was
indeed “something ‘there’ that is “alive enough” to care for.

“They sanction the idea that it is appropriate to mourn

the digital ... that there is something “there” to mourn.”
(Turkle, 2011, p.34)

She collected several similar stories like those mentioned,
and concludes that we are living in an age of anxiety, dislocation,
disconnection and specially loneliness.

“When part of your life is lived in virtual places…a vexed

relationship develops between what is true and what is
‘true here,’ true in simulation”
(Turkle, 2011,p.153)

Though her argumentation is touching and such stories are not

strange to anyone, her position has an inherent moralism in the sense
that she is constantly pointing out such behaviours and interactions are
unreal and therefore less substantial or significant. She also implies that
they are not what or how they should be, referring to the essence of what is
means to be human and what human relationships are, and she does it by
constantly sourcing from the past to refer to more meaningful examples.
Such conservative logics are also not new, not even regarding this subject
or period in time. For centuries novelty and disruptions triggered by
technologies have been condemned by the older generations, generating
massive moral panic.
In an interview given in 1999 the French philosopher Michel Serres
when asked about the issue of the banalization of knowledge considered
to be introduced by the internet, he reminds us of the same crisis the
academia faced in the fifteenth century with the invention of the press
(impressão) and the panic that surrounded the concept of the library. For
him the internet of today is the library from back then. Going further
on the subject he also makes the analogy that the real libraries are just
as virtual as the internet, given it is impossible to actually read a whole
library.
By limiting her argumentation to her own territory - the psychology
within the regular middle class American families with children and
teenagers - Turkle fails to address a wider social political context to the
problem she analyses. For Turkle, online technology - and the devices
that carry it - as an entity in itself clashes with the reality of the offline
and the lives we should be living, thus generating significant behavioural
impacts on society.
52

Fig. 26: Selfie with

Edward Snowden

My readings of Turkle’s dualistic approach of the online as in

competition with the offline fits into Jurgenson (2012) notion of ‘digital
dualism’. Jurgenson is highly inspired by Donna Haraway’s ‘Cyborg
Manifesto’ (2000) in the notion that there is no nature in humans that
can be separated from technology. The ‘Cyborg Manifesto’ is a feminist
analysis over the female body, society and technology. The crux of the
manifesto is to explore the potentials of what we are heading into, an
“organic, industrial society to a polymorphous, information system” (161) in which
then she presents the cyborg as a mythical being, a post-gender cybernetic
organism, a hybrid of machine and the human body that denies “organic
wholeness”. She argues towards a blur of categorical boundaries and that
society has evolved along and through technology, thus being the two
fundamentally meshed. Technology is embodied and bodies are always
technological. In fact, digital and physical environments are so complexly
intertwined, it has become an unravelable mesh. When I first started using
the internet, anonymity was the norm. I wasn’t supposed to use or give any
real information about who I was and so should I expect the same from
whoever I would interact with. Back then yes, maybe online and offline
identities weren’t necessarily connected. Soon after it changed, especially
after 2004 with Facebook and the boom of social media. And as it became
a mundane part of society, it also started to resemble it. Identities are not
anymore mutually exclusive of the real.
It is not given that data is such a powerful thing to own. Data can
be used to collect, understand and predict one’s identity and behaviour
- ethnicity, religious and political views, gender, sexual orientation,
personality, age and more can be retrieved from such devices and Turkle
fails to overlook its political aspects. It is then in fact, the very reality aspect
of the virtual is what should be problematized and brought to discussion.
That gap on Turkle’s argumentation is an example of what philosopher
Langdon Winner (2009) calls ‘naive technological determinism’. Winner is
 53
interested in analysing the dept of technological affordances and argues
that “To discover either virtues or evils in aggregates of steel, plastic, transistors,
integrated circuits, chemicals, and the like seems just plain wrong, a way of mystifying
human artifice and of avoiding the true sources, the human sources of freedom and
oppression, justice and injustice. Blaming the hardware appears even more foolish
than blaming the victims when it comes to judging conditions of public life.” (Winner,
2009, p.122) reminding us that technology is man-made, thus inseparable
from the political context in which they are designed in. Furthermore,
when comparing notes on both Turkle and Winner we can draw a line
between what the symptoms that she has from her observations - such as
a preference for risk-free, easy, uncomplicated, taking comfort in control
and even loneliness - can be associated - to the neo-liberal capitalist
culture we live in. Artefacts, as Winner calls it, are both carriers and
maintainers of power structures, deeply rooted in the system they inhabit
and embody in a physical form. Not unlike fashion - and fashion also not
as not technology -,technology devices are intensively entangled with the
individual and social subjectivities and power structures.

“Ontological indeterminacy, a radical openness, an

infinity of possibilities, is at the core of mattering. How
strange that indeterminacy, in its infinite openness, is
the condition for the possibility of all structures in their
dynamically reconfiguring in/stabilities”
(Barad, 2012 p.7)

As a critique to Digital Dualism, Jurgenson (2012) proposes the

concept of Augmented Reality. The term was reappropriated from the
technology that allows for a live view of an image from the real world
that is captured by a device and is either modified or complemented by
a computer device. For Jurgenson, Augmented Reality is a hybrid reality
composed of a constant overlap between online and offline, arguing they

Fig. 27: Jenny Lee,

Immateriality/The
Future Human (2011)
54
both exist in the same reality. The Augmented Reality is both organic and
technological, composed of bits and atoms.
For a more practical exploration of the Augmented Reality we can
go back to the twenties and thirties and look at Dadaist artist Raoul
Hausmann who fascinated by the invention of the television developed
theoretical ideas of presence, reach, touch and the new spatio-temporal
dimensions it allowed. In contrary to futuristic notions of hands-on
tactility, Hausmann affirmed that “A new tactility could only be imagined in
terms of an electronic and tele-communicational nature, in which the somatic limits
of the material body are extended indefinitely” (Bloom, 2001, p.211). This idea
is central to Hausmann understanding of sensation as technology here is
not understood as something artificial, rather as an organic environment
of connected electronic waves, which allow interactions of subjectivity that
defied notions of presence, those of historical time and physical space. His
views on tele-tactility were followed by the pioneer of video-art Nam June
Paik. They both were interested in touch as an event in which “closeness and
distance collapse against one another” and saw the television as a medium in
which “bodies are literally penetrated by light”. If in the nineteenth century we
have started to experience freedom from the restraints of clothing, now we
experience freedom from the restraints of our bodies.

Fig. 28: Nam June

Paik (1983)
55
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edelkoort. [Accessed 10 August 15].

Fig. 04:
New Look Tropical, (1931) [ONLINE]. Available at:http://www.
nasentrelinhas.com.br/noticias/costurando-ideias/349/o-new-look-de-
flavio-de-carvalho/[Accessed 01 August 15].

Fig. 05:
Romaine Brooks, (1924), Una, Lady Troubridge [ONLINE]. Available at:
http://www.americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=2926
[Accessed 08 June 15].

Fig. 06:
A Kind of Guise, (2015), Gobi Shirt [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.
vooberlin.com/a-kind-of-guise-gobi-shirt-off-white#.VhAgD7xDlH1
[Accessed 14 August 15].

Fig. 07:
Ivania Carpio, (2014), New November Recommendations [ONLINE].
Available at: http://i-love-aesthetics.tumblr.com/post/101410803140/
love-aesthetics-new-november [Accessed 13 July 15].

Fig. 08:
Jessica Sanders, (2011), Piece in Progress [ONLINE]. Available at:
http://showstudio.tumblr.com/post/35138684131/jessica-sanders
[Accessed 17 August 15].

Fig. 09:
Jacquard-card Making, (1800), sadadsa [ONLINE]. Available at: http://
www.computersciencelab.com/ComputerHistory/HistoryPt2.htm
[Accessed 12 July 15].

Fig. 10:
Pete Pachal, (2015), Apple’s first ad for the #AppleWatch, in Vogue
Magazine. #Apple [ONLINE]. Available at: http://mashable.
com/2015/02/25/apple-watch-vogue/#RcIVQy5BNSkh
[Accessed 02 August 15].

Fig. 11:
Iris van Herpen, (2015), MAGNETIC MOTION (backstage)
[ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.irisvanherpen.com/
[Accessed 16 August 15].
 63
Fig. 12:
Electroloom. (2015). Electroloom Kickstarter video. [Online Video]. 18
May. Available from:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzHo1j_Zz7I.
[Accessed: 05 July 2015].

Fig. 13:
Electroloom. (2015). Electroloom Kickstarter video. [Online Video]. 18
May. Available from:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzHo1j_Zz7I.
[Accessed: 05 July 2015].

Fig. 14:
Albert Sanchez, (2013), Dita’s gown [ONLINE]. Available at: http://
www.francisbitonti.com/ditas-gown/[Accessed 14 June 15].

Fig. 15:
Nylon SLS 3D Printed Textile, Carmem Saito J. Aguiar, (2015)

Fig. 16:
Dress Breakout 2, (2013), [ONLINE]. Available at: http://n-e-r-v-o-
u-s.com/projects/albums/dress-fabrication/content/dress-breakout2/
[Accessed 09 August 15].

Fig. 17:
Shapeways [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.shapeways.com
[Accessed 05 August 15].

Fig. 18:
Lygia Clark, (1968), Máscara Abismo [ONLINE]. Available at: http://
espacohumus.com/lygia-clark/[Accessed 30 July 15].

Fig. 19:
Iris van Herpen, (2011), CRYSTALLIZATION (backstage) [ONLINE].
Available at: http://www.irisvanherpen.com/haute-couture#escapism-
couture [Accessed 16 August 15].

Fig. 20:
Paul Baran, (1964), Centralized, Decentralized and Distributed
Networks [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.rand.org/pubs/
research_memoranda/RM3420/RM3420-chapter1.html [Accessed 14
June 15].

Fig. 21:
Cover art: Photograph © Camera Press Ltd. / A, (2015) [ONLINE].
Available at:https://www.dukeupress.edu/asians-wear-clothes-on-the-
internet [Accessed 11 August 15].
64
Fig. 22:
Pinterest. Fashion Tours. [ONLINE] Available at: https://br.pinterest.
com/paulmaia/fashion-tours/. [Accessed 01 August 15].

Fig. 23:
Thomas Makryniotis. 2014. Dress Code Game. [ONLINE] Available at:
https://dresscodegame.wordpress.com. [Accessed 17 August 15].

Fig. 24:
L’Oreal Skin Perfection, (2013), [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.
freebeauty.tv/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/skin-perfection-600x243.
jpg [Accessed 14 July 15].

Fig. 25:
Topshop Virtual Reality Front Row Experience, (2014) [ONLINE].
Available at: http://www.retail-week.com/sectors/fashion/video-
topshop-virtual-reality-front-row-experience/5057585.article
[Accessed 02 August 15].

Fig. 26:
Bret Hartman, (2014), Snowden selfies: Edward Snowden roams
TED2014 [ONLINE]. Available at:http://blog.ted.com/snowden-
selfies-and-conversations-in-the-halls-edward-snowden-roams-
ted2014/[Accessed 09 August 15].

Fig. 27:
Jenny Lee. (2011). Jenny Lee’s Face-tracking AR. [Online Video].
27 June. Available from: http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/is-
digital-skin-the-future-of-fashion. [Accessed: 06 July 2015].

Fig. 28:
Lim Young-kyun, (1983), Nam June Paik [ONLINE]. Available at:http://
www.74gazette.com/2015/02/23/nam-june-paik-father-of-video-art/
[Accessed 04 August 15].
65