Sensing the spirit of fashion: A provocation

This paper presents a provocation to existing conceptions of the lived sensory experience of dress and fashion, moving beyond the 'western bounds of sense’ towards the notion of a ‘sixth (or more) senses’ (Howes 2009) and an evocation of the intangible ‘sensory atmospheres of dress’ (Chong Kwan 2020). The holistic intermingling of the corporeal, sensory, material, mindful, cultural, and social within dress practices produce affective atmospheres which may result in feelings and experiences that appear to exist out with of western science and logic. Approaching the practice and materiality of body adornment from this expanded position offers the potential to radically shift perceptions and research focus. In crossing sensory boundaries and exploring the ‘uneasy spaces’ that clothes bridge between the ‘biological body’ and the ‘social being’ (Wilson 2003 [1985], Von Busch 2018), the dressed body is re-positioned within much broader cultural ecologies of sentient matter, enabling intriguing questions to be posed. What might constitute the 'sensory magic' of fashion, what role does ritual, imagination, ecstasy, and spirituality play in everyday experience of the dressed body, and what can such an approach contribute to fashion studies, sensory studies, and more broadly, the pressing need to critically re-evaluate our relationship to the world?