Body/Dress Praxis: Embodied and Interdisciplinary Methods through Practice Research

This chapter reflects on the impact of undertaking a practice-led PhD in conceptual fashion design during the late 1990s and early 2000s, a period when practice-based research in fashion and costume was still in its infancy (Bugg, 2021) and research on dress was largely dominated by cultural-historical and sociological approaches. It examines how pursuing doctoral research through practice within this context has shaped the author's interdisciplinary career and research trajectory. Extending practice beyond disciplinary boundaries and the fashion and performance industry, this work has developed a dress- and body-based praxis that employs embodied methodologies across a range of creative disciplines and research contexts.

The chapter examines the enduring tensions between fashion and costume practice research and the more established fields of historical, cultural, material, and sociological dress studies (Titton, 2022, p. 31; Jenss, 2016, p. 2). It highlights the continuing challenges surrounding the status and positioning of practice within dress research, as well as the hierarchies that persist between disciplines researching dress and the body in context. Against this backdrop, the chapter argues that it may be limiting to position practice research merely as a subfield of established theoretical domains, such as fashion studies or performance studies, and that this may perpetuate hierarchies and limit opportunities.

Finally, it advocates for greater permeability between dress-based disciplines, including design, historical, cultural and material studies, and the social sciences. It argues for the methodological and interdisciplinary value of activating practice through embodied and multimodal research approaches to connect diverse forms of situated dress-and body knowledges. In doing so, it demonstrates how practice research can in tandem with other approaches generate new interdisciplinary insights and extend the impact of dress and body research beyond the cultural and creative industries.