Practices of Handling: On embodied methodology in professional fashion design

Abstract
While few will dispute the idea that fashion designers relate to the notion of the body in their work practice, the actual embodied engagement of the designer, and the role that the personal bodies of the designers play in processes of fashion design, is an underexposed although nascent area within fashion research.
This paper proposes an understanding of the work process of fashion designers as practices of handling comprising a number of embodied methodologies tied to both spatial and temporal dimensions. The term handling encompasses four meanings. As a verb it is literally to touch, pick up, carry, or feel with the hands. Figuratively it is to manage, deal with, direct, train, or control. Additionally, as a noun, a handle is something by which we grasp or open up something. Lastly, handle also has a Nordic root, here meaning to trade, bargain or deal. Together all four meanings seem to merge in the fashion design process, thus opening up for an embodied engagement with matter that entails direction giving, organizational management and negotiation. By seeing processes of handling as a key fashion methodological practice, it is possible to divert the discourse away from a dichotomized idea of design as combined, alternating or parallel processes of thinking and doing. In other words, the notion of handling is not about reflection in or on action, as brought to the fore by Schön (1984), but about reflection as action.
Below the methodological macro level of handling, the paper introduces four ways whereby fashion designers apply their own bodies as tools for design; a) re-activating past garment-design experiences, b) testing present garment-design experiences c) probing for new garment-design experiences and d) design of future garment experiences by body proxy.
The paper is based on the Ph.D. thesis Addressing the Body – methodological practises in professional fashion design finalised October 2014 (Ræbild, in press)