No. 6 (2025): Fashion Technology
Essays

Sympoietic Assemblages: From Biomimetic Toward a More-than-Human Ecology of Fashion

Pdf
  • Michela Musto
Michela Musto
Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”
cover of FH issue 6
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/fh-3745

Published 30-05-2026

Keywords

  • Fashion ecologies,
  • Sympoietic design,
  • Material Agency,
  • Biomimicry,
  • More-than-human practices

How to Cite

Musto, M. (2026). Sympoietic Assemblages: From Biomimetic Toward a More-than-Human Ecology of Fashion. Fashion Highlight, (6), 156–166. https://doi.org/10.36253/fh-3745

Copyright (c) 2026 Michela Musto

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Fashion has long engaged nature as both a formal and material field, a reservoir of forms through which the discipline negotiates its relationship with matter and time. This contribution investigates the progressive transformation of this condition, tracing a shift from an initial conception of nature as a formal referent to be imitated, toward the operationalisation of biological principles and behavioural logics, until nature itself emerges no longer as a passive referent, but as an active co-agent within contemporary design processes. Through the analysis of selected fashion practices, the contribution traces a trajectory from digitally mediated forms
of computational biomorphism to functional biomimesis, and toward post-anthropocentric forms of ontological design in which non-human agencies increasingly participate in the constitution of the project itself.. The concept of Sympoietic Assemblages serves as a critical lens through which these developments are interpreted. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of assemblage and Donna Haraway’s theory of sympoiesis, the contribution outlines the emergence of a relational ecology of design in which form, meaning, and agency emerge through processes of co-constitution.

Pdf

References

  1. Arthur, W. B. (2009). The nature of technology: What it is and how it evolves. Free Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
  2. futures.2010.08.015
  3. Akama, Y., Light, A., & Kamihira, T. (2020). Expanding participation to design with more-than-human concerns. In Proceedings of the 16th Participatory Design Conference 2020 (1), 1-11. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3385010.3385016
  4. Bar-Cohen, Y. (Ed.) (2006). Biomimetics: Biologically inspired Technologies. CRC Press.
  5. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press.
  6. Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant Matter: A Political ecology of things. Duke University Press.
  7. Benyus, J. M. (1997). Biomimicry: Innovation inspired by nature. William Morrow.
  8. Berzowska, J. (2005). Memory rich clothing: Second skins that communicate physical memory. In Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Creativity & Cognition, 32-40. https://doi.org/10.1145/1056224.1056231
  9. Bolton, A. (2016). Manus x Machina: Fashion in an age of technology. Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  10. Carpo, M. (2011). The Alphabet and the Algorithm. MIT Press.
  11. Collet, C. (2012). BioLace: an exploration of the potential of synthetic biology and living technology for future textiles. Auckland University of Technology. http://www.materialthinking.org/papers/71
  12. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1980)
  13. Dawson, C., Vincent, J. F. V., & Rocca, A.-M. (1997). How pine cones open. Nature, 390(6661), 668. https://doi.org/10.1038/37745
  14. Escobar, A. (2018). Designs for the pluriverse: Radical interdependence, autonomy, and the making of worlds. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822371816
  15. Evans, C. (2003). Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, modernity and deathliness. Yale University Press.
  16. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972-1977 (pp. 194-228). Pantheon Books.
  17. Gould, S. J., & Vrba, E. S. (1982). Exaptation, a missing term in the science of form. Paleobiology, 8(1), 4-15. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2400563
  18. Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press.
  19. Hensel, M., Menges, A., & Weinstock, M. (2014). Emergent technologies and design: Towards a biological paradigm for architecture. China Architecture & Building Press.
  20. Ingold, T. (2011). Being alive: Essays on movement, knowledge and description. Routledge.
  21. Keune, S. (2017). Co-designing with plants: Degrading as an overlooked potential for interior aesthetics based on textile structures. The Design Journal, 20 (Suppl. 1), 4742–4744. https://doi.org/10.1080/14606925.2017.1352977
  22. Ulargui Escalona, P. (n.d.). Loewe Menswear #SS23 show. Retrieved March 8, 2026, from https://paulaularguiescalona.com/LOEWE-SS23
  23. Melis, A., & Pievani, T. (2022). Exaptation as a design strategy for resilient communities. In N. Rezaei (Ed.), Integrated Science: Transdisciplinarity across the different disciplines, 307-327. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94651-7_15
  24. Moussavi, F. (2014). The function of form. Actar. No Kill Mag. (2023). Paula Ulargui Escalona: Caring garments and living plants. Retrieved August 17, 2025, from https://www.nokillmag.com/articles/interview-with-paula-ulargui-escalona-the-fashion-designer-who-grows-living-plants-on-clothes/
  25. Oxman, N. (2010). Material-based design computation. MIT Design and Computation Group, PhD Dissertation.
  26. Pigliucci, M., & Müller, G. B. (Eds.). (2010). Evolution: The extended synthesis. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262513678.001.0001
  27. Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2017). Matters of care: Speculative ethics in more than human worlds. University of Minnesota Press.
  28. Quinn, B. (2002). Techno Fashion. Berg Publishers.
  29. Schmitt, O. H. (1969). Some interesting and useful biomimetic transforms. Proceedings of the third International Biophysics Congress, 297-307. Academic Press.
  30. Seymour, S. (2009). Fashionable Technology: The intersection of design, fashion, science, and technology. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-211-79592-7
  31. Stengers, I. (2005). The cosmopolitical proposal. In B. Latour & P. Weibel (Eds.), Making things public: Atmospheres of democracy, 994-1003. MIT Press.
  32. Tsing, A. L. (2015). The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton University Press.
  33. Ulargui Escalona, P. (2022). Paula Ulargui x Nature. SS23 Collection, Paris. Retrieved March 8, 2026, from https://paulaularguiescalona.com/PA-X-NATURE
  34. Vincent, J. F. V. (2009). Biomimetics, a review. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part H: Journal of Engineering in Medicine, 223(8), 919-939. https://doi.org/10.1243/09544119JEIM561
  35. Vincent, J. F. V., Bogatyreva, O. A., Bogatyrev, N. R., Bowyer, A., & Pahl, A. K. (2006). Biomimetics: its practice and theory. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 3(9), 471-482. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2006.0127
  36. Weinstock, M. (2010). The Architecture of emergence: The evolution of form in nature and civilisation. Wiley.
  37. Zwieglinska, Z., (2021). Biomimicry and fashion, a new chapter of a long story, the case of Auroboros. Lampoon,
  38. 18. Retrieved from https://lampoonmagazine.com/article/2021/05/08/auroboros-digital-fashion-collective/

Similar Articles

<< < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 > >> 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.