Designing Expressions of
Body-Fabric-Space Intra-Actions

Materiality in the digital does not inherently come into existence with pre-set properties, behaviours, and expressions. How it appears, behaves, and responds is programmable, which fundamentally questions the causal material thinking commonly found in fashion design. It also introduces a dimension of openness and ambiguity as regards the role and purpose of materiality that fashion design as a discipline needs to embrace if it wants to create meaningful content using, and for use in, digital environments.

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The research programme presented in this thesis considers phenomena to be the basic ontological unit, and the body, fabric, and space as entangled components therein. Rather than designing for the human body, using fabrics, and within three-dimensional spaces, the research programme proposes designing resolutions wherein the roles, purposes, and functions of the body, fabric, and space are expressed based on their material performances and enacted using digital technology.

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Notions, methods, and tools developed within the research programme shift the focus away from making concrete physical products to be worn on the body within socially constructed spaces, and towards the design of resolutions within material phenomena in which the body, fabric, and space equally constitute the design experience through their performative intra- actions. Phenomena-based fashion here does not rely on causal structures of wearing; instead, it more intimately and immediately involves people in the sense of ‘being’ and ‘being part of’, via performative boundaries of digitally enacted material interventions. In this sense, the contribution of the research presented in this thesis stretches beyond the development of methods, in that different ways of experiencing, engaging, communicating, and ‘being part of’ fashion on a material level were formulated.

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Author: Jan Tepe