In the late 20th century, Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto (1985) introduced the “cyborg” as a hybrid figure of disruption, blurring boundaries between human and machine, nature and culture, body and code. Today, ‘cyborg fashion’, characterized by prosthetics, coded materials, and speculative aesthetics, is more visible than ever, largely due to its circulation within digital media ecosystems and the rise of AI-driven design. Yet this visibility is shaped by a new kind of control: the technological gaze of algorithmic moderation, platform standards, and commercial optimization. This paper explores how this platform culture has affected the identity and creation of the cyborg. Drawing from my own artistic practice and theoretical frameworks rooted in feminist and posthumanist thought, I examine how digital infrastructures reshape not only the aesthetics of cyborg fashion, but also the very conditions under which it is conceived, made, and shared. Rather than offering a single definition or solution, this text explores alternative spaces of creation and thinking. It proposes that cyborg fashion’s relevance today lies in reimagining how we make, relate, and remain critically attuned to the systems in which we work. By expanding its possibilities through interrogating the conditions of its creation and circulation, the cyborg identity becomes not a static icon, but a living methodology.
Esmay Wagemans (Wed,) studied this question.