INFORMATION FOR
When getting dressed in the morning, you consciously (or perhaps subconsciously) assess how you look in different items of clothing. Do these items match? Do they look professional? Too casual? Boring? Fun?
“However, the insistence on connecting fashion with looks is so pervasive that it has obscured another way of thinking about fashion, which brings it closer to another sense: touch,” writes Laura Di Summa, associate professor of philosophy at William Paterson University, in a research paper published in the British Journal of Aesthetics.
“Touched by Fashion: On Feeling What We Wear” explores fashion as “a performative understanding of identity” that is inevitably linked to touch.
Runway shows, Met Galas, and big awards events like the Oscars and Emmys clearly focus on the look of fashion, Di Summa notes in her article, but “what is it like to live with it, and in it,” she asks. Bodies hardly exist in their social and often personal dimension as naked.
After a historical dive into the different fabrics used to create fashion through time, spanning from pineapple fibres to cellophane, paper, and silk, Di Summa presents philosophical case studies on sportswear and maternity wear—the latter a “particularly powerful example” of the intersection of aesthetics and embodiment in fashion.
Pregnancy brings dramatic change and attention to one’s body that is both visually apparent to others and very much felt by the mother. As their bodies change, expectant mothers’ preference for fashion often changes, too, as the need for physical comfort becomes paramount.
Di Summa worked on her article as she co-curated, with William Paterson University Galleries Director Casey Mathern, an exhibition titled “Touch Me: Feeling Fashion.” The exhibition was on display on campus between February and May 2024 and featured exhibiting artists who explored touch in fashion through new materials, reuse, skins, remnants, and more.
“Contemporary society, Instagram feeds, consumerism, media, and the fashion industry are all tied to the importance of looks: looks that move at a staggering pace. One collection after the other, senseless shopping, yet another sneaker’s drop,” Di Summa writes. This “spectacle of looking” ignores the tactile component of fashion, which is equally important, she argues.
“If I ask a student why she likes a specific sweatshirt so much, her response is, invariably, ‘because it is so soft,’” Di Summa adds.
Given how well her journal article has been received by a wider audience beyond academia, at the request of her publisher, Di Summa is working on a book on the same topic. Her previous book, The Philosophy of Fashion Through Film, was published in 2022.
Di Summa hopes her recent work on touch will help people to better recognize, respect, and nurture their bodily identity.
Reflecting on garments and touch can, she writes, “become a starting point for an aesthetics of care that does not stop at the level of mere appearance. Reflecting on how we are touched by garments and the emotions they communicate can lead to better self-understanding in terms of both our changing bodies and our presence in society.”
12/10/24
