Fashion Ontology: Researching the Possibilities for Knowing through an Expanded Fashion Practice

Undefined borders between artistic practices dominated the XX century. The need to name and organise arts was perpetuated not only due to methodological reasoning but also to perpetuate the status quo and associated hierarchies. The inevitable dialogue between Fine Arts and Applied Arts was redefined and inevitably changed. It is through the subordination of fashion to a Post-Duchampian understanding of what fashion practices are, that this chapter will concentrate on discussions surrounding definition of fashion.

The aim of this chapter is to voice the concerns of fashion practitioners/researchers in the early 21st century, testing the boundaries of the discipline. Interdisciplinary and wide ranging, this ‘paper-as-installation’ fills a gap in practice-based-research, bridging practice and theory. The research methodology developed within the practice extends the potential of film, communicating between practice and theory in order to explore the possibilities for knowing through expanded fashion practice, in a context of heightened concerns about climate change and environmental issues induced by mass-production, fast-fashion, and global fashion distribution and consumption. Therefore, challenging the understanding of fashion, not just as accomplished garments, but instead as the production of new philosophical and theoretical conditions in which the discipline can further adjust, evolve, and challenge in socially and environmentally responsible ways. Deconstructing underlying assumptions and exposing the limitations of current market-driven fashion design processes.