Borderless fashion practice : contemporary fashion in the metamodern age : a thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, School of Design, Toi Rauwhārangi College of Creative Arts, Massey University, Wellington, Aotearoa

Abstract

Twenty-first century fashion practice has become increasingly borderless and pluralistic in the technetronic era, calling into question the very boundaries that define fashion in the Western cultural context. This doctoral project responds to this statement in light of contemporary fashion practices under what I call borderless fashion. Borderless fashion is a term that I conceptualise and use in this study to define contemporary fashion practitioners who work across disciplines through collaborations and communicate their work in a multitude of cross-platform ways. Borderless fashion practice describes practitioners whose work intersects with other creative disciplines and fields, such as art, technology, science, architecture, and graphic design. This is established through collaborative projects and conceptual fashion collections manifesting in the way in which they communicate their practice. This involves a movement from the physical to the metaphysical, transcending conceptions of the traditional runway catwalk show. It is fashion produced, communicated, and consumed in an expanded field. These practices are expanding the definitions of fashion as both material object and experience. As such, this thesis is driven by the following questions: Why are fashion designers working in this way? How has the consumer/audience’s relationship with fashion changed? To illustrate these claims I have conducted a critical visual and textual analysis through four case studies of fashion designers including Iris Van Herpen, Aitor Throup, Virgil Abloh, and Eckhaus Latta. The textual analysis is not that of material garments but rather that of the communication materials of the designer’s brand, which has been influenced by the democratisation of digital technologies. These designers work collaboratively with practitioners from other disciplines and utilise multi-disciplinary design principles themselves. They were chosen because they move between the commercial and the non-commercial fashion arenas through project-based fashion. I have mapped their practices against the philosophical and theoretical framework of metamodernism, a set of emerging frameworks that construct narratives and meaning around contemporary aesthetics and fashion design respectively.