Queering realities: Design workflows and interfaces for a more-than-human virtual fashion production

This paper discusses virtual fashion norms through the lens of queer ecology, a theoretical framework recognizing human diversity and proposing nuanced ways of being, loving, and expressing (Muir, 2022). As artists and designers currently explore expansions of the human body and meander the fine line between creature and avatar, they intentionally or unintentionally are moving beyond binary thought patterns, dissolving normative human representation in virtual realms. Through research-based practice, the paper situates professional methods and techniques of designing bodies and fashion for the experience age and highlights opportunities and challenges that arise from working in virtual realities through a comparison with the multimodal and tactile origins of fashion. As a set of parameters different from common fashion making workflows arises, the paper will in a first step convey observations, learnings and performance-studies from a workshop series titled ‘Queering Reality’, bringing together XR designers, staff and students. It then will go on to draw attention to the ‘tool- aesthetic’ (Surman, 2024) inherent to the use of certain software and platforms of virtual production and its homogenising characteristics. Although often classed fundamentally different to the traditional fashion experience, the bridging and knowledge of both worlds is demanded from practitioners in any fashion discipline today, bringing about the question of specialism and skilled production and the scrutiny needed to craft fashion experiences that consider the philosophical and technical context of both worlds. By giving insight into the production, development and planning of a fashion experience with focus on audience interaction and participation, the paper will contribute to the understanding and value of developing and exhibiting fashion in a digitally expanded and enhanced format and examine how cultural meaning is crafted through new technologies, shared with and made accessible to audiences.