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Iris van Herpen, Seijaku, F/W 2016, dress made of hand-blown glass bubbles in transparent silicone. Photo and copyright by Peter Stigter.
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Working from the case study of Dutch designer Iris van Herpen, this article proposes a new-materialist framework for fashion studies. The ‘material turn’ has gained substantial recognition in social and cultural research in the past decade but has received less attention in fashion studies. At the same time, fashion hardly ever figures in scholarsh...
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... In the analysis, biological differences between bodies are taken as material conditions for the design. Thus, following Smelik (2018), materiality in this study does not only refer to materials like fabric or garments, but also to the wearer's or user's body, and the world of production and consumption. Although the concept of inclusive design consists of much more than paying attention to the differences between female and male physiologies, this study focuses on that as it was the aspect of inclusivity that the informants most emphasized. ...
Particularly since the 1990s, there has been an active discussion on inclusive design and on the possibility of designing products that would be suitable for every kind of user. Wearable technology products that need to be in close contact with the user's skin to function must be a good fit for the user's body. As wearable technology has transitioned from a specialty of the "quantify-yourself" movement to a widespread, everyday item, the Jenni Hokka works as a specialist in research methods at the Doctoral School at Tampere University. This research is part of a project undertaken while affiliated at Aalto University in which she scrutinized design
... For instance, the turning towards posthumanism, new materialism, and postdigital scholarship, has enabled a resurfacing of embodied approaches to research across many disciplines (e.g., Spatz 2017 on embodied research). Specifically, refocusing on bodily experiences and their entanglement or intraaction (Barad 2007) with the material world has facilitated scholarship through/with art (including dance, music, painting, and photography, e.g., Bolt and Barrett 2013;Hickey-Moody et al. 2016), fashion (Smelik 2018), media (Bruno 2014), sports (Markula 2019), and other ways of moving (e.g., walking: Springgay and Truman 2017), to name a few. These lines of work build on the recognition of human bodies being intrinsically intertwined with materialities and in fact coming into existence only through their intra-action (Barad 2007). ...
The pandemic affected more than 1.5 billion students and youth, and the most vulnerable learners were hit hardest, making digital inequality in educational settings impossible to overlook. Given this reality, we, all educators, came together to find ways to understand and address some of these inequalities. As a product of this collaboration, we propose a methodological toolkit: a theoretical kaleidoscope to examine and critique the constitutive elements and dimensions of digital inequalities. We argue that such a tool is helpful when a critical attitude to examine ‘the ideology of digitalism’, its concomitant inequalities, and the huge losses it entails for human flourishing seems urgent. In the paper, we describe different theoretical approaches that can be used for the kaleidoscope. We give relevant examples of each theory. We argue that the postdigital does not mean that the digital is over, rather that it has mutated into new power structures that are less evident but no less insidious as they continue to govern socio-technical infrastructures, geopolitics, and markets. In this sense, it is vital to find tools that allow us to shed light on such invisible and pervasive power structures and the consequences in the daily lives of so many.KeywordsTheoretical kaleidoscopeToolkitMethodologyDigital inequalitiesPostdigitalCollaborative writing
... The idea of care is understood here, according to the reading provided by Joan Tronto (2013), as an action to maintain, continue and repair our world. Manzini's focus on fashion objects as positive agents of change is an evolution, on the one hand, of the critique developed by Mol, Moser and Pols (2010) on the fact that care is often mistakenly distinguished from artefacts, which are considered apersonal and "cold" in comparison to the intimacy assumed in care; on the other, of the theories on the new materialism elaborated by Anneke Smelik (2018) in the context of fashion studies, which are contributing to bringing matter and bodily experience in its weaving interconnections with the world back to the centre of the debate. In recent years, the idea of the future and its very existence are at the centre of theoretical reflections in design and fashion. ...
The contribution questions the possibility that fashion and its objects can be interpreted as a practice of care, agents capable of stimulating a positive change in the relationship between people, environment and territories. Within the theoretical framework of fashion futuring, the design and social innovation workshop Talking Hands is analysed as a case study of redirection practices, which are expressed in participatory design dynamics, relationships between the subjects of creative and production processes, new narratives and synergies between people and communities.
... In one of our previous introductions, we argued that the material turn involves a turn (or return) to matter and materiality . From a new-materialist perspective, the aim of illuminating matter and investigating material agency includes the intelligent matter of the human body (Smelik 2018). This perspective also points to materially grounded processes of identity formation, which connect it to (neo-)Marxism and critiques of capitalism. ...
Several cross-cutting themes run throughout fashion theory: ambivalence, tensions, and immateriality and materiality, within the larger framework of capitalism. In this introduction, we interlink these themes by arguing that immateriality is inextricably entangled with materiality. The material flows through capitalism require negotiated meanings in everyday social interactions, yet cannot resolve the underlying tensions involved. Pursued by some, resisted by others, capitalism’s profit motivation always involves tensions and ambivalences. While we emphasize the material ground of fashion and beauty practices, also in relation to the formation of identity in all its ambiguity, the digital realm invites and highlights immateriality. Yet, in the end, we maintain, materiality is and must remain stubborn.
... Sophie Woodward briefly mentions the methodology of "following the materials," claiming this approach is "predominantly theoretical" as it is rooted in new materialism (2020,110). As I consider my own work as part of new materialism (Smelik 2018), I investigate here the material agency of polyester beyond its discursive meanings. My methodology mainly consists of literature research, bringing together diverse strands of research on polyester. ...
Polyester is the most ubiquitous fabric for textiles. In 2021 textile production in the world amounted to 113 million metric tonnes, of which 54% was polyester. Yet, we seem to know very little about this most important fiber for textiles and apparel. This article fills that gap by tracing a cultural history and critique of polyester. There are several phases in the production and reception of polyester, which was invented in the early 1940s. From the initial suspicion in the 1950s for a then still expensive new fabric, it moved to an immense boom in the 1960s, only to be followed by a steep bust at the end of the 1970s. Polyester was then made interesting again in the 1980s by the avantgarde designs of the Japanese couturiers. From the 1990s onwards polyester became the staple ingredient for fast fashion. Polyester is by far the most produced and used fiber for apparel: from couture to fast fashion and from sportswear to high-tech wear. However, consumers worry about polyester’s negative impact on the environment, by not being degradable and shedding microfibers into earth and water. Polyester has moved from an optimistic age of “plastic fantastic” to the awareness of the “plastic soup.”
... Promoted by the rapid development of society and science and technology, interdisciplinary learning and research has also emerged in the fashion industry. Innovative design, fabric innovation or innovative display combined with high-tech, novel materials and virtual or digital industries turns out to be a novel topic of great interest in the fashion industry (Barati, Karana, & Hekkert, 2019;Burns, 2022;Bower & Sturman, 2015;Chuah, Rauschnabel, Krey, et al., 2016;Feng, 2020;Ferrara, 2019;Huang, Tang, Liu, et al., 2018;Juhlin, 2015;Rocamora, 2017;Smelik, 2018;Smelik et al., 2016;Ünay & Zehir, 2012). ...
Fashion or apparel refers to a topic discussed publicly as an indispensable discipline on a day-to-day basis, which has aroused rising attention from academic sessions over the past two decades. However, since the topic of fashion design covers knowledge in extensive ranges and considerable information, scholars have not fully grasped the research field of fashion design, and the research lacks directional guidance. To gain more insights into the existing research status and fronts in the fashion design field, this study conducts a quantitative literature analysis. The research of this study is conducted by employing CiteSpace technology to visualize and analyze 1388 articles regarding “fashion design” in the Web of Science (WOS) Core Collection. To be specific, the visualization and the analysis concentrate on the annual number of articles, author collaboration, institutional collaboration, literature citations, keywords clustering, and research trend evolution of the mentioned articles. As highlighted by this study, the effect of the US and the UK on academic research in fashion design is relatively stronger and extensive. Sustainable fashion refers to the research topic having aroused more attention since 2010, while new research topics over the past few years consist of “wearable fashion”, “transgender fashion” and “medical fashion”. The overall research trend of fashion design is developing as interdisciplinary cross research. This study systematically reviews the relevant literature, classifies the existing research status, research hotspots and frontier trends in the academic field of “fashion design”, and presents the knowledge map and information of literature for researchers in relevant fields.
... 6 New materialist thinking approaches people and things not as separate entities, but rather thinks in terms of how people and things constitute each other in a process of becoming. 7 This opens up an understanding of things, nature, and matter as having agency: 'new materialists make a radical shift from [human intentionality] by attributing agency to non-human actors, like things, artefacts, technologies, animals and nature in general'. 8 In this sense, we can thus understand matter as well as artefacts not as passive and inert stuff, but as active actor in the world. ...
DRAFTS#3 invited more than 80 designers, design researchers, and design students to discuss the role of artifacts in research and design activities within disciplines such as fashion, textile, and interaction design through the means of two exhibitions and one symposium. A cooperation between the Swedish School of Textiles – University of Borås and designtransfer – UdK Berlin.
... This approach unpacks the dualism between the human and the non-human, the material and the immaterial, and in doing so shows us that the material world is not neutral and passive. This enabled our methodology to work from a dynamic notion of life in which human bodies, fibers, fabrics, and materials are inextricably entangled in meaning making (Smelik, 2018). Such a perspective permits an understanding of emotional mapping as materially co-produced through the interactions of human and nonhuman actors. ...
Within the field of emotional mapping, and mapping more broadly, nonhuman things are often understood as mere instruments-they have utility but not agency to shape meaning-making. In this paper we experiment with a new method that aims to challenge the dualism between human and non-human things by bridging new materialism and participatory emotional mapping. We experimented with this 'new materialist methodology' during a one-day workshop to explore residents' spatio-emotional experiences in a disaster-affected favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This paper reflects on this one-day participatory workshop, arguing that materials with diverse colors, textures, shapes, densities, weights and smells are key collaborators in emotional mapping. Materials have agency to invoke and evoke diverse emotions with past, present, and future temporalities, and which fall within and beyond the positive-negative emotion binary. Materials can facilitate conviviality and discussion amongst mapping participants, which enables participants to speak about their emotional-spatial experiences with more nuance and complexity
... In doing so they deny research in which humans attempt to explore differing perspectives on their material entanglement, moving themselves away from the analytical focus of encounters, as not sufficiently fulfilling the aim of decentring from the human. In relation to this tension, ethnographic studies with a New Materialist focus, along with New Materialist fashion studies often explore animals and the nonhuman (Parker, 2018;Vänskä, 2018;Smitheram andJoseph, 2019, 2020), or the role of the digital (Joseph, 2017;Smelik, 2018Smelik, , 2020 as their primary focus. This approach avoids the possible contradiction of focussing on human experience, yet these studies still rely on the human interpreter representing the more than human. ...
... Previous New Materialist studies in a garment design and prototyping context have focused on the researcher's reflections on finished garments and studio visits, without acknowledging the problematic nature of this theoretical and methodological contrast. Indeed without considering the ontological prioritisation of the creations of particular famous designers, whose work is held in museum archives (Toussaint and Smelik, 2017;Smelik, 2018Smelik, , 2020. In the context of this thesis, the reintroduction of the significance of matter and the non-human is key to exposing what is underresearched and unarticulated in the context of garment prototyping. ...
... This is absent in current literature, which uses posthuman theory to focus on artefact analysis of finished garments (Smelik, 2018(Smelik, , 2020, or more philosophical discussions of entanglement between garment and maker as a justification of personal practice (Y. Sampson, 2018b), rather than exploring the role of entanglement as a critical aspect of the garment prototyping process. ...
At a time of rapid digital transition in garment design industries and education, this thesis ethnographically documents garment designers’ use of touch and its role in meaning-making and understanding during garment prototyping. A novel diffractive ethnographic attention is utilised to attune to differing aspects of touch and felt experience, revealing the significance of the felt, kinaesthetic awareness of the moving body to garment prototyping. Further demonstrating that designers relate felt histories of material entanglement with their moving bodies to their contemporary experience. Development of felt histories is thus identified as a key means of designers’ enskillment, alongside moments of overlooked and informal skills sharing. A socio-material perspective informed by New Materialism is adopted to foreground the critical role of designers’ entanglement with non-human things in structuring their felt experience and deriving meaning from it. Significantly, this thesis demonstrates that sensations are perceived beyond the conventionally defined body in and through entangled tools and materials and that sensations are socio-materially mutable and can be altered by peers directing designers to touch and feel in particular ways. This problematises current haptic technologies, which simulate touch at physical and virtual boundaries. The ethnographic data is supplemented by two workshop studies facilitating garment designers to engage with prototypical digital touch technologies, enabling speculation on future digital touch tools more relevant to garment prototyping. The thesis analytically discusses differing theoretical stances on non-human agency in design and making and their implications for digital touch tools. It concludes by proposing a theoretical Framework of Garment Designers’ Felt Enskillment and making recommendations for the design of digital touch interfaces for garment prototyping. The findings of the thesis contribute to the fields of HCI, design and education, deepening academic understandings of designers’ sensory experience and the impact of digital processes, potentially informing future technology development.
... Both films utilize costumes significantly to crystallize the migrants' cinematic identity. In the analysis to follow, the two films were analysed from a theoretical perspective of materiality of dress (Miller 2010;Smelik 2018) as a practice and as a thing. ...
Malayalam films since the 1970s have captured the history of Gulf migration fromKerala, which occurs primarily due to the desperate need of its people for jobs andfor money. Predominantly, the discourses of migrants in the films are embeddedin various things, including dress from the Gulf, the insignia of opulence thatdepict the status of the migrants in the public sphere. Using thematic analysis oftwo Malayalam films, Pathemari and Marubhoomiyile Aana, this study arguesthat the motif of the Gulf is associated with power and control in the culturaldiscourse of Kerala. Drawing on the semiotic analysis of Barthes, we contend thatthe replacement of mundu, a traditional attire of Kerala men, by trousers, is oneamong several mythical markers of modernity, including perfumes and watchesbrought from the Gulf. The performativity and materiality of dress in these twofilms produce imageries of the Gulf by which the wearers, mostly male, accumulatesocial and symbolic capital and assert dominance in the film’s narration.
