Fashion Technology : What Are the Limits of Emerging Technological Design Thinking?

Abstract

Designing intelligent technologies is a multidisciplinary process. From this perspective, fashion has continued to be an under explored dimension of technology design. While there persistently are connections between the term fashion and the clothing design industry, an historical and sociological approach to fashion reveals a much deeper and permeating understanding of the notion and its implications across the technological world. During recent popular developments, the interrelationship between fashion as a concept and technology as components and proponents of fashion – technology as fashion promoter (think of Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook and even LinkedIn for example), and technology as fashion constituent, come to light. To stand back from social media and examine not only technology branding and culture building as seen in Apple and Google for instance, but also user interface design, system logic and algorithms as constituents of fashion, a more profound comprehension of the interplay between culture, technology, emotions and cognition may be developed. This paper seeks to lay the grounding of a semiotic, social-experiential understanding of fashion as technology. It draws on recent technological examples, which are then enriched with theory from fashion research and cognition and provides insight for how fashion thinking can enrich the design of intelligent technology.