No. 6 (2025): Fashion Technology
Essays

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

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  • 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.

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