MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Any garment we wear will, at some point or another, have been actively thought about and designed for use. Inherent in any given object is an underlying idea and a process that brings that idea into reality. How, precisely, are these ideas translated into a final product? What revisions do they undergo? More importantly, how do creative impulses and lived realities interact and inform one another throughout the design process? This project examines the mechanics of the creative process by observing the work of three graduate fashion design students as a first step toward understanding the nature of the design process and the symbiosis between object and process, using ideas borrowed from modern linguistic theory as the starting point for investigation. Cholachatpino et al. (2002) have already proposed that the micro-subjective order of the fashion process—the individual’s process of adopting, wearing, and moving on from trends—would be better considered “a dynamic process and not a linear continuum.” Extending these findings to the practice of garment design and merging them with Ingold and Hallam’s (2009) notion of cultural improvisation and related theories from the field of linguistic anthropology, this paper argues that the design process is open to the kind of improvisation inherent in any ongoing lived experience, the final product representing a culmination of the ideas, desires, decisions, obstacles, and other circumstances shaping its production. Ideas are not translated into their material form in a fluid and uncomplicated manner; in fact, there are many intervening forms of disruption, diversion, reformulation, and rearticulation, not unlike our everyday use of language in conversation. Reconsidering the design process with an eye toward explaining its collective, nonlinear, and experimental nature allows us to recognize that design has the potential to inform us about society and give us the tools to actively change it.