The Augmented Body: Technological Contamination in the Fashion-Tech Paradigm

Abstract

The paper aims to address how dresses and garments in the fashion-tech are beginning to acquire their own shape and meanings: the technological, electronic dress with digital, bionic, or robotic components can act and move independently from the body that wears it, sometimes even modeling, modifying or altering its shape. According to these perspectives, techno-fashion products become alive because they react autonomously to external or internal inputs, they become able to mediate the relationship between the human body and the world around it in a new material dimension that lives in a fluid environment with blurred boundaries between the physical, digital, and biological spheres. This highlights the pivotal role of new technologies for the study of fashion, as by empowering the human body they can influence human relationships with themselves, others, and the environment. These transformations involving the collision between technology and fashion could have long-term implications that affect the shape and meaning of our clothes as well as our bodies.