Prospering Dress

Dress cultures are more extensive than Fashion (Niessen, 2022), and their diverse dimensions are conceptualized here as situated_fashions and textile_knowledges. Drawing on Haraway’s concept of situated knowledges (Haraway, 1988), such dress enables rich belongings with more-than-human worlds, grows interdependent prosperity and sustains intra-active relationships (Barad, 2007). The paper presents and discusses the results of the seminar NatureCultureFashionStudies – Autoethnographic Field Research, which took place in spring 2024 at the Institute of Material Culture, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg. The aim was to find a certain language for the relations between nature, culture and fashion that expresses the vibrant materiality (Bennett, 2004) of these fields. During the research-based learning other functions of textiles became important, and with them the material, the cut, the processing. On this mental, sensually perceptible and fertile soil, textile literacy grows, and other fashions prosper.