Body Styles: Redirecting Ethics and the Question of Embodied Empathy in Fashion Design

Abstract

The activity of designing fashion is intimately connected to the bodies of others. While the garments designers conceive enclose wearers’ bodies in direct physical contact, those garments also create opportunities for participation, social connection and inclusion as well as possibilities for amorous encounter, novelty and self-expression. Drawing on the outcomes of a research project investigating somatic experiences in fashion, this article examines the notion of embodied empathy in design practice. The article addresses the potential for fashion designing to be understood and enacted as an empathic practice; one that is grounded in a sensitivity to the embodied experiences of others. In doing so, it advances the notion of body style, a dynamic design lens for fashion that foregrounds movement and somatic experience, based in the unfolding interaction between fashion garments and bodies in co-creative acts of wearing. The article argues such an embodied orientation for fashion design provides an opportunity for designers to redirect their design practices beyond appearances to enable and support bodily comportments. This article raises the question of embodied empathy in the context of current discourses on ethical fashion and responds to the following questions: How might an increased sensitivity to the embodied experiences of wearers shift fashion design practice? And following that, what might be the outcomes of such a shift in orientation?