Fashion is more than just clothing—it’s a dynamic visual culture, an archive of embodied social practices, and a playground for cutting-edge technologies. My work in fashion theory explores this rich interplay between tradition and innovation, focusing on how fashion reflects cultural memory while pushing the boundaries of digital technology.

Fashion has long served as a medium of cultural memory, drawing from historical patterns, textiles, and narratives. Yet, with the rise of artificial intelligence and digital tools, this material archive is transforming into a virtual one. Digital archives and AI-driven design tools like CLO3D and generative algorithms are making fashion history more accessible than ever, allowing designers to interact with past forms in entirely new ways. This shift opens up exciting possibilities for creative expression, while also posing challenges around context, authorship, and the sensory experience of materials.

At the same time, fashion remains deeply tied to the body and the material world. While digital models, smart textiles, and NFTs are reshaping the industry, processes like haute couture fitting and traditional crafts like crocheting continue to resist full automation. This tension between the digital and the embodied is central to my research, as I examine how fashion negotiates the interplay between human creativity, technological innovation, and cultural identity.

In this evolving landscape, AI is not just a tool for optimization; it becomes part of the creative ecosystem, influencing everything from trend forecasting to sustainable design. Through my work, I aim to highlight how fashion, as both an artistic and technological practice, anticipates future cultural shifts while remaining grounded in the tactile realities of human life.

Images courtesy of Jaime del Val with his project Metabody.

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fashion, art and media

I am excited to connect with researchers, designers, and innovators in the field of digital fashion who share an interest in exploring how new technologies can shape a more sustainable and inclusive fashion industry. By combining philosophical insights with cutting-edge digital tools, we can uncover new possibilities for creative expression, rethink material practices, and address the ethical challenges posed by rapid technological change. If you’re interested in collaborating to push the boundaries of fashion theory and practice, I’d love to hear from you!

PUBLICATIONS

New edited volume:

(2019) Moden der Kleidung – Moden des Geistes, Hubertus Busche, Yvonne Förster (Eds.), Berlin: Springer.

Articles:

(2021, forthcoming), The Cycle of Seasons: Temporality in Fashion, in: Luke Fischer, David McCauley (Eds.): The Seasons: Philosophical and Environmental Perspectives, New York: SUNY Press

(2019) Art and Technology: Exploring Aisthetic Dimensions of the Life-World, in: Yearbook for Eastern and Western Philosophy, de Gruyter.

(2019) Körpermoden: Optimierungsstrategien und Zukunftsvisionen, in: Hubertus Busche und Yvonne Förster (eds.), Moden der Kleidung – Moden des Geistes?, München: Fink, 103-116.

(2019) Überlegungen zu einer Philosophie der Mode, in: Christoph Jamme, Kristin Drechsler (Eds.), 10 Minuten Philosophie, München: Fink, 29-36.

(2018), Mode, in: Georg Simmel Handbuch, Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.

(2018), Mode zwischen Kultur und Kunst – Ein Grenzgang, in Busche, Hubertus et al. (eds.), Kultur – Interdisziplinäre Zugänge, Wiesbaden: VS Springer, 511-524.

(2018) From Digital Skins to Digital Flesh: Understanding Technology through Fashion, in: Popular Inquiry (2/2018), Aalto University Helsinki (PDF available).

(2017) Long Live the Immaterial! Corpo e Arte al Tempo della Virtualizzazione, in: Francesca Iannelli, Gianluca Garelli, Federico Vercellone and Klaus Vieweg (eds.), Fine e nuovo inizio dell’arte, Edizioni ETS: Pisa, 335-370.

(2016) The Body as Medium – Fashion as Art, in: Irina Deretic, Stefan L. Sorgner (eds.), From Humanism to Meta-, Post- and Transhumanism? Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 321-332.

(2015) A arte nos limites da arte – Hegel em tempos do Neuroturn, in: Rapsódia, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil, no. 9, 97-110.

(2015), Long Live the Immaterial! – Körper und Kunst in Zeiten der Virtualisierung, in: Iannelli, Francesca, Vieweg, Klaus (eds.): Von Hegel bis heute. Entwicklung deutscher und italienischer Ästhetik nach dem Ende der Kunst, München: Fink, 323-338.

(2012) The Modern Concept of Fashion and its Origins in Romanticism, in: Franz-Josef Deiters, Axel Fliethmann a.o. (eds.), LIMBUS. Australian Yearbook of German Literary and Cultural Studies, Freiburg i.Br., Berlin, Wien: Rombach, 141-157.

PRESENTATIONS

(2021) TV interview on the concept of fashion, Hessischer Rundfunk, Alles Wissen, 25.03.2021

(2020) Radio interview on Simmel’s Theory of Fashion on WDR

(2019) Transcending the Human – Technology and the Liberal Arts, invited lecture at Luther College, USA

(2019) Invited lecture series at Grinnell College, USA:

Beyond the Anthropocene: Technology, Innovation and the (Post-)Human Condition

Degrees of Freedom: Embodiment, Plasticity and the Need for a Critical Neuroscience

Designing Future Bodies: Fashion and Technology

(2019) Invited lecture series at Shanxi University, Taiyuan, China:

Changing Life-Worlds: Non-Conscious Cognition, Affect and Experience

The Future of Human-Machine Relations: Embodiment and Disembodiment in     Contemporary Cinema

Fashion and Critical Thinking: Bodies, Sensors and Digital Skins

(2019) Fashion and Technology, invited guest lecture at Aalto University Helsinki, Finland

(2019) Embodiment and Future Technologies, guest lecture at TU Darmstadt, Germany

(2018) Von Körpern, Zeichen und Listen, invited talk at the conference Das Herz thesaurieren, Leuphana University Lüneburg

(2017) Technology through the Lense of Art: Exploring Digital Life-Worlds, invited talk at The 2017 Annual International Conference of the Ewha Institute for the Humanities “Ecology and Technology: the New Condition of the Humanities”, Seoul, South Korea

(2017) Fashion in the Digital Age: Toward a New Phenomenology of Perception, invited talk at the international conference Philosophy between Past and Future, Sungkyunkwan University Seoul, South Korea

(2017) Fashion and Technology, public lecture at the festival A Summer’s Tale, Luhmühlen, Germany

(2017) Fashion and the Posthuman: From Digital Skin to Digital Flesh, invited talk at 9th Beyond Humanism Conference, Rome, Italy

(2017) Körpermoden: Optimierungsstrategien und Zukunftsvisionen, invited talk at the interdisciplinary conference Moden der Kleidung – Moden des Geistes?, FernUniversität Hagen, Germany

(2016) Art and Technology: Exploring Aisthetic Dimensions of the Life-World, invited speaker at the conference Aesthetics and Life-World, Chengdu, China

(2016) Art, Technology, and the Body, in cooperation with Metabody, invited talk at Universidade de Brasilia, Brazil

LET’S TALK