Bodily ways of knowing in fashion: Connectedness between clothing and the body

Classic  design virtues such as empathy and user centricity are challenged by climate change, ecological fragility, and an increasing focus on the limitations of human-centred design approaches in more-than-human worlds. In a world affected by scarcer resources yet defined by increasing overconsumption that pushes “us” fast towards meeting and crossing ever more of the planetary boundaries, there is a persistent need to re-think and –do not only how consumption and resources are understood and used but also how all of “us” together intra-connect and –act in the entanglements of the world’s continuous becoming. This calls for new orientations towards care and connectedness that reach beyond the question of environmental sustainability.
Exploring methodological approaches that might help us in developing new ways of designing, in this video article, we present and discuss some of our learnings from the project Touch(ing) Grounds, a research- and design-based exploration formulated at the Lab of Sustainability and Design at Design School Kolding in Denmark. Initially, the project explored the potential of “touch” as a counterpole to the overtly visually-centric focus in fashion. Curious about how we can (re-)think and do the relational entanglements between designers, uses of and knowledge about material resources and the human body, our exploration was guided by the question of how we might study embodied knowledge in relation to garments and thereby find spaces for bodily ways of knowing to explore our relationships with resources and garments in new ways.
In our research, we have dived into use-abilities by combining a concrete garment with a more abstract yet personal reference, creating a space to recognise the attachments connected to embodied knowledge. Analysing our exploration, we developed a diagram to further understand and thicken the seemingly mundane encounters between clothing and the body, based on the three levels of product, use-abilities and connectedness.
We understand bodily ways of knowing as approaches toward knowledge production that emphasize and explore the body and its sensual capacities. We argue that designers and design researchers could become engaged with bodily ways of knowing by embracing more than human worlds in their design practice, approaching alternative and anarchistic design methodologies.
With the learnings brought forward in this video article, we want to challenge the human exceptionalism dominating the existing fashion system and explore which methodologies might help us come closer to an understanding of relational entanglements - whether it’s the larger picture of care for resources and the planet or the closer relations of care for the garments in our wardrobe.