Speculative sewing: Researching, reconstructing, and re-imagining wearable technoscience

Abstract

This article contributes to Science and Technology Studies (STS) literatures on ‘making and doing’ by describing and analysing the practice of researching, reconstructing, and reimagining archival clothing patent data. It combines feminist speculation and reconstruction practices into what I term ‘speculative sewing’. This involves stitching data, theory and fabric into inventions described in patents and analysing them as three-dimensional arguments. In the case here, of 1890s British women’s convertible cycle wear, I examine how inventors used new forms of clothing to challenge socio-political restrictions on women’s bodies in public space and help them make alternate claims to rights and entitlements. I argue that translating text and images into wearable data renders lesser-known technoscience stories visible and (more) knowable and transforms clothing (back) into material matters of public concern.

Inter-weavings of Practice and Research in the Tšombiach (Woven Sashes) of the Kamëntŝa Biya People

“…For us, the tšombiachs, cartographies, exhibitions, and speculative garments all constitute resources for collective analysis that encourage remembrance, exchange, and signposting of the core themes identified and of their design spaces (Botero, 2013). They are also outputs from our inquiry -in the vein of other experiences that nourish our work (e.g., Iconoclasistas, 2013;Jungnickel, 2023) keeping close to what we have learned from the jecoyëng.…”