Ellen Sampson

Fiona Johnstone

Dawn Woolley

Paula Chambers

This book explores the intersections between wearable objects and human health, with particular emphasis on how artists and designers are creatively responding to and rethinking these relations. Addressing a rich range of wearable artefacts, from mobility aids and prosthetics to clothing and accessories to digital health tracking devices, its themes include care and cure; wellness culture and the commoditization of health; and the complex interactions between (human) bodies and (non-human) objects. With a theoretical framework inspired by the work of materialist thinkers including Sherry Turkle, Bruno Latour and Jane Bennett, and bringing the disciplinary fields of fashion studies, art and design practice, and medical and health humanities into dialogue for the first time, this volume draws attention to the complex agencies entangled in the things we wear, and situates fashion and art in relation to broader cultural and historical contexts of health, illness and disability.

Materialist Approaches to the Intersections of Fashion, Art, Health and Medicine

Wearable Objects and Curative Things

In a culture preoccupied with newness and a fashion system predicated upon it, what is our attachment to clothes which are marked through use and why do they have the power to affect us so deeply? How are our relationships to footwear produced and maintained through the embodied practices of wearing, maintenance and repair? Through a focus on a single garment, the shoe, this book seeks to explore broader questions about the embodied experience of wearing and the affect of the worn. Originating in an experimental practice-based methodology which placed wearing at its centre, the project is extended through the author's practice of making, wearing and photographing shoes. The book presents the act of wearing as a tool for developing knowledge, of 'being in' or 'being with' rather than observing from the outside, and calls readers to reconsider the value of the marks of wear at a time when fast fashion reigns supreme and interest in damaged garments quietly increases.

Footwear, Attachment and the Affects of Wear

Worn

In a culture preoccupied with newness and a fashion system largely predicated upon it, what is the significance of worn clothes and why do they have the power to affect us so deeply? How are relationships to clothing produced and maintained through the embodied practices of wearing, maintenance and repair? Through a focus upon a single garment, the shoe, this book calls on readers to reconsider the value of the marks of wear at a time when fast fashion reigns supreme and interest in damaged, or worn, garments quietly increases. Originating in an experimental practice-based methodology which placed wearing at its center, this book presents the act of wearing as a tool for developing knowledge, of 'being in' or 'being with', rather than observing from the outside. Bringing together anthropological and psychoanalytic theory with practices of handmaking, wearing, and photography, this book asks what is the embodied experience of wearing and the affect of the worn? Beautifully illustrated in full color throughout, Worn is the first book to focus exclusively on the significance of imperfect garments as important aspects of our material world and culture.

Kiera Vaclavik

Patricia Mears

Colleen Hill

A conceptually innovative and visually stunning investigation of the interconnected worlds of high fashion and fairy tales

Ellen Sampson

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