Digital video-based research in fashion: Visualizing affect and sartorial vitality

Abstract

This article examines the role of digital video in fashion research. It makes a case for the use of digital video as a valuable tool within the suite of research methods typically used in the field of fashion and dress. Its aim is to demonstrate that digital video can enrich studies of fashion, specifically in its capacity to assist the capture and analysis of visual material unavailable to unmediated perception. Central to this is the technology’s ability to document the dressed body in movement. The article discusses outcomes of a video-based methodology with reference to participatory research activities termed ‘sartorial sessions’. The approach used digital video technology to make possible the collection, analysis and manipulation of embodied material for a close interpretation and analysis as well as for others to encounter. The article demonstrates the way digital media, when used in conjunction with practice-oriented methods, opens up new ways to understand and research the body in fashion. It concludes with reflection on how revelation of a background sartorial vitality opened up by digital technology can shift understanding of fashion from commodities or signs involved in the transmission of messages about wearers, or aesthetic propositions to powerful tools shaping our encounters in the world.