Dressed Body Assemblage: A Performance Paradigm for Fashion Exploring Body and Material Dynamics

This article advances a performance practice-based methodology for fashion research, foregrounding the dynamic interplay between materiality—the physical properties of garments and bodies in relational environments—and fashion’s capacity to evoke moods, transformations, and embodied experiences. In doing so, the article contributes to the discourse on practice-based research methodologies, advocating for an interconnected, process-driven approach that situates fashion practice within broader creative, social, material, and affective contexts. Drawing on Karen Barad’s agential realist framework and Jane Bennett’s vital materialism, the study uses performance project Slippage (2016) as a methodological instrument: a structured event in which improvised body-material encounters were recorded and subjected to video analysis. By creating and critically reflecting on a performance work, this study examines the interactive agency of materials, bodies, and spatial contexts. This approach facilitates a deeper understanding of the dressed body assemblage, capturing the often-overlooked dynamics between non-human materials and human participants.