Charlotte Brachtendorf

Arbeitstitel: Virtually Dressed: Towards an Anthropomedial Theory of Digital Fashion

Digital fashion describes a recent phenomenon of garments designed digitally with 3D software to be then edited onto photographed bodies. “Dressed” in digital fashion, users can upload these images to Instagram. Through the Dutch digital only fashion house The Fabricant and online marketplaces for digital fashion like DressX, digital fashion of late has garnered substantial attention. Within the fashion industry, digital fashion is largely perceived to be less wasteful and thus treated as a solution to the industries environmental problem. It is this phenomenon of digital fashion that is central to my dissertation. Specifically, I investigate how digital fashion can be understood in terms of materiality and embodiment. In popular media, digital fashion is thought to differ from physical garments in that it is immaterial, disembodied or even “not real”. This presupposes a fundamental divide between a seemingly immaterial digital culture and a physical material culture. Through the lens of anthropomediality, I propose to bridge this gap in the notion of digital fashion. The neological term of anthropomediality has developed out of media philosophy and refers to the irreducible and antecedent entanglement of humans-and-media as a site of production for human modes of existence. This relational approach, which employs a wide notion of media to include fashion, anthropomediality conflicts with widespread dualisms, such as nature-technology, inside-outside and of course matter-meaning. In line with new materialist and material culture approaches, I thus argue for a material-discursive notion of fashion generally and digital fashion specifically. The material-discursive nature of digital fashion is evident in its confinement to images where it manifests in a two-fold materiality: That of the hardware or apparatus and the sensuality of the simulated or imaginary. From these reflections on the digital materiality of both images and fashion, arguments regarding the haptic visuality of digital fashion images and their embodiment via surrogate bodies can be made. Being a clear and vivid object of investigation, digital fashion is able to uncover and illustrate the inadequacy of a materiality-immateriality dualism that is still prevalent in discourses pertaining both to the digital and fashion. As such, I hope to contribute to a nuanced understanding of the medialities of fashion beyond traditional fashion media.

Fashion Theory, Digital Media, Fashion Cultures, Virtual Fashion, Fashion Media, Material Culture, Social Media, Posthumanisms, New Materialisms, Textiles, Aesthetic Theory for Fashion, Japanese Design & Fashion, Visual Culture, Fashion Subcultures

Netzwerk Mode Textil

Dress and Body Association

WiSe 2023/24

Modedarstellungen zwischen Text und Bild

Streetstyle, Subcultures & Authenticity

WiSe 2022/23

Digital Fashion: Mode und Materialität
 

WiSe 2021/22

How the female body became political in the 70s and 80s: Examining film and fashion as bodily media (zusammen Hannah Peuker) an der Bauhaus-Universität Weimar

(Digital) fashion through the lens of new materialisms (evening lecture) am Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London

Medialität und Materialität: Mode(theorien) in den Medienwissenschaften, Nachwuchstagung des Netzwerk Mode Textil, Berlin, 11.05.2023.

The Way It Moves: Digital Fashion and the Cinematic, Digital Fashion Symposium, Parsons Paris & London College of Fashion, 14.04.2023.

Materializing Digital Fashion, Earth, Water, Air, Fire: The Four Elements of Fashion conference, Università Iuav di Venezia, 16.03.2023.

Materialitäten virtueller Mode am Beispiel von The Fabricant (together with Helga Behrmann and Judith Brachem), Jour Fixe Netzwerk Mode Textil, 21.06.2022.

Fashioning the In-Between: Everyday Aesthetics in Contemporary Tokyo Street Style, Sartorial Society Series 5: The Places and Spaces of Dress, 05.05.2022.

Material Dress and Immaterial Fashion? On the Entanglement of Dress and Fashion, Defining the Contours of Dress Studies, Dress and Body Association annual conference, 30.10.2021.

Panel chair for „Performing Gender“ at the Dress and Body Association annual conference, 30.10.2021.

Panel chair for „Inter / Intra / Infra. Eine Wissensökologie des Dazwischen aus medienanthropologischer Perspektive“ at Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft annual conference, University of Innsbruck, 23.09.2021.

Body and Mind in Digital Fashion, Virtually (Un)Dressed: Researching the Body in the Digital Age, Dress and Body Association Conference, 13.11.2020.

Fashioning Virtual Influencers, Critical Fashion Studies Conference, University of Melbourne, School of Culture and Communication, 27.02.2020.

Virtual Influencers, M.A. Fashion Communication Evening, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, 16.10.2019.
 

Japanese Aesthetics in Tokyo Street Style, Practice Based Fashion in Research, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 05.10.2018.