Fashion and Phenomenology

In a Theory Lab course, Master's students were asked to explore phenomenological connections in fashion. Ann-Christine Vilhelmsen took the following quote by Maurice Merleau-Ponty from The Visible and the Invisible and gave it a fashion treatment:

“Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it is caught in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that of a thing. But, because it moves itself and sees, it holds things in a circle around itself. Things are an annex or prolongation of my body; they are incrusted in its flesh, they are part of its full definition” (1964: 163). 

With a nod to Elsa Schiaparelli, Ann offers a playful take on the notion that our bodies are caught in the fabric of the world and that fashion in turn can be seen as a prolongation of our bodies.