Looking for a post about fashion as conversation

February 1, 2025 9:31 AM

Years ago I came across an article (possibly a blog post) arguing that clothing constituted a conversation. It particularly criticized t-shirts as breaking that conversational mode. It may have led with "fashion" rather than "clothing" as the key term.

I've Googled this and found all kinds of design studios and scholarly research, but not this one yet.

posted by doctornemo to Clothing, Beauty, & Fashion (4 answers total)

conversation. It particularly criticized t-shirts

"A typical T-shirt is expected to produce 6.75kg of carbon during its production and sale"

https://theconversation.com/what-your-t-shirt-reveals-about-carbon-colonialism-and-the-global-economys-vast-hidden-emissions-177956
posted by HearHere at 1:17 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]

Clothing As Conversation ?
posted by tiny frying pan at 2:48 PM on February 1

Response by poster: Good article, HearHere, yet not what I was looking for. The criticism of t-shirts I foggily remember wasn't about their production but that their images were a different thing than what other clothing represented.

tiny frying pan, that's a good example of the design studio/research angle. Interesting, but not the piece I'm scratching my head over.
posted by doctornemo at 5:41 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]

This paper

William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition: Finding Human Agency in a Commodified Techno-Culture has some interestingly-named references like:

Konstantinou's 2009 The Brand as Cognitive Map ..

search on google was:
"pattern recognition" clothing human communication -""HCI"
posted by unearthed at 12:55 AM on February 2 [1 favorite]