Touched by Fashion: On Feeling What we Wear

Abstract Fashion is immediately associated with looks. Its popularity and its most consumerist sides thrive in our current culture of image, further highlighting the connection between fashion and an aesthetic that is quintessentially visual. While it is impossible to deny such a connection, this paper explores the relationship between fashion and touch and fashion and “feel”, two terms that, albeit related, deserve independent consideration. I will begin by emphasizing the importance of seeing fashion in relation to a performative understanding of identity, which is experiential, embodied, situated, and, quite simply, “in movement”. Such an understanding, crucial for a better grasp of sartorial design, is inevitably linked to a tactile understanding of fashion: from the selection of fabrics to the silhouettes and cuts that allow a sketch to move to a garment in three dimensions. But, crucially, a performative understanding of identity is also the starting point for a reflection on touch and fashion in our everyday tasks and judgments, judgments that often move from the aesthetic sphere to other value areas and the broader socio-political context. To further cement my arguments, I will conclude the paper with two case studies: sportswear and maternity wear.