Ways of Wearing
In recent years, driven not least by the global pandemic, virtual dress has become increasingly visible, whether as Instagram filters that allow us to accessorize digitally, as skins in video games, or as virtual collections from both new and established fashion houses.
Both online virtual clothing stores and augmented and virtual reality applications provide instructions that advise users on how to ‘put on’ the digital garments. Though some might find it intuitive, it seems as if many will have to learn a new skill. The ways in which we will wear virtual fashion in a future that appears continuously more digitized may change successively. Therefore, we have collected questions about these new ways of wearing.
With fashion finding its way into the digital realm, new practices come to light.
We know how to wear physical garments, how they make us feel, and in which ways they alter and influence our movements. But what if these clothes are digital, not physical? How do we wear them? How do we and others perceive our digitally fashioned selves?
In our talk at the Responsible Fashion Series conference in 2021, we attempted to establish a trifold differentiation of the ways of wearing digital dress: assembled, simultaneous, and omni-virtual. These terms describe different ways of dressing virtually, all with different implications and technical structures working in the background, but all with the same outcome—being dressed in virtual garments.
“Examining the way of wearing virtual dress is therefore not limited to questions of aesthetics or trends. It rather establishes new notions of embodiment, habitus, and virtual tactility.”
The first term, assembled, describes the way a virtual piece of clothing is subsequently applied as an additional layer to a preexisting digital image, may it be a photo or a video.
The second approach to dressing virtually is the real-time integration of virtual clothes.
Instead of two consecutive operations—taking the photo/video and applying the digital garment layer—it is possible to wear the garment through a camera filter or a prosthesis like Augmented Reality glasses. This allows for a simultaneous perception, combining both the physical and virtual view.
The third way of virtual wearing is to completely dismiss the physical realm and constitutes an all-virtual encounter. Instead of a photo, a video, or a physical live situation, the virtual garments are donned by our avatar, making this form of wearing omni-virtual.
Within this framework, new techniques of vestimentary embodiment occur. While we are used to feeling the physical garments we are wearing while being perceived by others, virtual garments make us our own perceivers. Examining the way of wearing virtual dress is therefore not limited to questions of aesthetics or trends. It rather establishes new notions of embodiment, habitus, and virtual tactility.
The latter is informed by reminiscences of physical tactility. While virtual wearing lacks an immediate haptic and tactile sensation, the perception is able to evoke a sensation of touchability due to memorized sensual experiences. [1] [2]
“While we are perceiving our omni-virtual, assembled, or simultaneously fashioned selves, we try to make sense of the embodiment we are experiencing. When virtual—or partially virtual—bodies are extensions of ourselves, rather than merely virtual objects, virtual dress plays a significant role in the ongoing construction of our identities. ”
The difficulty of distinguishing layers of physical body and physical dress is described as a trompe l’oeil effect by Gertrud Lehnert. [3] This immersive experience is enhanced when physical and virtual layers blend, or when all layers are virtual. Synchronous wearing and perceiving may lead to uncertainty, obscures what is virtual and what is not, and shifts outside and inside perspectives.
While we are perceiving our omni-virtual, assembled, or simultaneously fashioned selves, we try to make sense of the embodiment we are experiencing. When virtual—or partially virtual—bodies are extensions of ourselves, rather than merely virtual objects, virtual dress plays a significant role in the ongoing construction of our identities. [4] While fashion is often thought of as an envelope or a cover for the body, clothing the body should rather be seen “as an active process or technical means for constructing and presenting a bodily self.” [5] To what extent will vestimentary identity construction change in a more digitalized future?
The idea of our entry into virtual spaces ranges from representationalist simulations of our reality to medial extensions of our habitats. [6] The mixed reality paradigm “treats [the virtual] as simply one more realm among others that can be accessed through embodied perception or enaction,” focusing on how it comes to be perceived by us, rather than what we perceive. [7]
The more we move into the virtual sphere, the more important the extended versions of our bodies become. Distinctions between physical and virtual become less important and the practice of dressing for the virtual becomes more and more habitualized. While in the physical, body and dress are seen as in a close relation to each other, virtual embodied dress could be a literal way of omni-virtual wearing. Why should our virtual bodies be clothed in garments, when they can become the garments themselves? Will our virtual fashion and our virtual selves remain distinguishable from one another?
When creating an avatar as an extension of our body, it does not need to resemble our physical self. Therefore, our dressed embodiment may vary, leading to new forms of movement. The reciprocal influence of physical bodies and physical dress is at times complicated. Limited sizing systems and the focus on binary gendered retail leads to exclusion and restricted potentials of wearing. Virtual fashion can be worn by physical and virtual bodies that are not part of the fashionable excluding norm. Fit, size, and virtual materiality can be altered to the way our bodies want to wear virtual dress, rather than forming our physical bodies to be able to fit into fashionable physical garments. Will this lead to new forms of selecting clothes? And will garment sizes disappear entirely?
“The performative patina that dressed bodies seem to inherit may vary in regards to virtual dress. ”
But it is not just sizes, it is the dressing itself that affects our bodies. Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus has been explored in relation to physical clothes. [8] As ingrained knowledge, we habitualize ways of wearing clothes. This knowledge mostly remains unconscious, yet allows us to navigate social situations and to present ourselves as dressed bodies. [9] Like Bourdieu, the anthropologist Marcel Mauss considers the body to be shaped by culture. [10] And rather than inhabiting or covering our selves, the body “is the means by which an individual comes to know and live in a culture.” [11] Techniques of the body place us as individuals in a social context. According to Mauss, these techniques are also gendered.
But what if there are not enough techniques to fall back on? What happens when a completely new habitus is formed? Both physical and virtual bodies do not yet have unconscious techniques that allow them to move in or interact with clothes in certain ways. Will we incorporate our physical vestimentary habitus in the virtual?
The performative patina that dressed bodies seem to inherit may vary in regards to virtual dress. The visual sense here surpasses the other senses that can be linked to wearing practices. This leads to the circumstance that in order to experience virtual clothing, it must be constantly perceived visually.
With the possible creation of physically impossible garments in digital spaces, more questions on how to wear dress virtually occur. How do we adorn our bodies with a cloud or a flowing dress out of water? How does a body—the physical or its virtual extension—react to ever-changing materials, sizes, or fits? How can we talk about the reciprocal influence of moving bodies and potentially self-moving garments?
On top of that, graphical processing power plays a key role in depicting the garments the way they ought to appear. When failure occurs, the appearance can change drastically. These distorting glitches are not only to be seen as flaws or technical shortcomings, but as phenomena of wearing virtual dress in this specific time of digitalization, as they will most likely vanish with increasing computing power.
“How are virtual ways of wearing influenced by glitches? Can glitches constrain our movements? ”
How are virtual ways of wearing influenced by glitches? Can glitches constrain our movements? Does a glitched shirt lead to the same reactions as an ill-fitting real shirt? Can virtual extensions of our corporeal selves get stuck while getting dressed, like we get stuck when we try on clothing that is too small?
What will presumably vary the most is our intention of wearing. While physical garments,besides being aesthetically pleasing, grant the fulfillment of basic needs like shelter from cold, heat, and shame, there is nothing physical to shelter us from in the virtual realm (yet). Will we only wear our fashioned personalities, rather than clothes that are practical?
Will we change our way of wearing from day to day? And will we try to find ways of wearing that are more inclusive and less restrictive than the physical fashion system?
Notes
[1] Clarke, S. B. E. & Harris, J. 2012. Digital Visions for Fashion and Textiles: Made in Code. London: Thames & Hudson.
[2] Böhme, H. 1996. Der Tastsinn im Gefüge der Sinne. Anthropologische und historische Ansichten vorsprachlicher Aisthesis. In Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn. Tasten (pp. 185-210). Göttingen: Steidl.
[3] Lehnert, G. 2013. Mode. Theorie, Geschichte und Ästhetik einer kulturellen Praxis. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.
[4] Liao, C. 2011. Virtual Fashion Play as Embodied Identity Re/Assembling: Second Life Fashion Bloggers and Their Avatar Bodies. In Childs, M. & Peachey, A. (Eds.). Reinventing Ourselves: Contemporary Concepts of Identity in Virtual Worlds (pp. 101-128). London: Springer.
[5] Craik, J. 1993. The Face of Fashion. Cultural Studies in Fashion. London & New York: Routledge.
[6] Hansen, Mark B. N. 2006. Bodies in code: interfaces with digital media. New York: Routledge.
[7] Hansen, Mark B. N. 2006. Bodies in code: interfaces with digital media. New York: Routledge.
[8] Bourdieu, P. 1997. The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press.
[9] Craik, J. 1993. The Face of Fashion. Cultural Studies in Fashion. London & New York: Routledge.
[10] Mauss, M. 1973. Techniques of the Body. Economy and Society 2(1) (pp. 70-89).
[11] Entwistle, J. 2015. The Fashioned Body. Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Authors
Judith Brachem’s focus of research lies on the intersection of art and dress. She currently writes her master’s thesis in Art History at the University of Hamburg on the virtually fashioned body after a one year long research project on virtual fashion funded by the University of Hamburg’s Excellence Strategy, that culminated in the exhibition “virtuelles beiwerk”, which took place in Hamburg in 2021. Furthermore, she works as a freelance journalist and develops apps and digital projects for museums and fashion brands.
Lucas Stübbe studies art history (MA) at the University of Hamburg and curates exhibitions. His scientific research focuses on contemporary art and digital phenomena. He was part of the “virtuelles beiwerk” research project, an investigation of virtual dress and fashion from an art-historical perspective, funded in kind by the University of Hamburg’s Excellence Strategy.
