Author : Mindy Meissen
Release : 2020
Genre : Design and technology
Kind : eBook
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Book Synopsis Material Conditions by : Mindy Meissen

Download or read book Material Conditions written by Mindy Meissen. This book was released on 2020. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through an exploration of the history of fashion and computing and its materiality in software and hardware, this paper argues that fashion has been profoundly altered by the digital environment. Computing and networks serve as creative tools, aesthetic inspirations, and sites of memory through which fashion is expansively recorded, disseminated, and shared. Multiple facets of the fashion industry are examined, from textile and apparel production, design and communication, to cultural techniques and personal style. Beginning during the Industrial Revolution in the mid-nineteenth century, the history moves into the twentieth century with computing’s trajectories in apparel: automation in production; the retail industry’s use of early computers; and the evolution of computer labor as it moved from manual computation to electronic devices. Practices enabled by the personal computer in the 1980s are explored, in which unprecedented intimacy and interactivity afforded creativity in computer-aided design and fashion communication. In the mid-1990s, the instantaneous connection of internet culture and online virtual display uniquely affected clothing and identity. The research argues that fashion’s existence in the digital environment has fundamentally changed its materiality. Often rendered with software prior to its creation in textiles, garments may be reproduced instantaneously in emailed file attachments or shared as working files and digitized designs, downloaded copies, or posts on social media. The paper explores the materiality of fashion in the digital age, showing that computing environments—and their changing specifications over time—have profound implications for how fashion is remembered and preserved, in archival practices and in cultural memory.