Expanded Materiality in the RHITA Ecosystem: Towards a Manifesto for Intra-Active Fashion

Abstract

This paper analyses the RHITA (ResHaping made in ITAly) project, presenting it as both a theoretical and operational laboratory for structurally rethinking the fashion system through the paradigm of expanded materiality. Drawing on Spinoza’s immanentist materialism and Barad’s agential realism, the essay describes fashion as an interactive system in which matter, bodies, technologies, and territories are interconnected and constantly evolving. In this perspective, the fashion product is no longer a stable object but a temporary assemblage of heterogeneous forces and dimensions, both physical and digital.
The visual identity of the RHITA project is based on broader reflections arising from two phenomena observable in quantum physics – the entanglement and the gravitational field - used as metaphors for the ability to attract and connect elements that appear distant or unrelated. Digital technologies are not understood as tools of dematerialisation, but rather as devices that enrich matter by multiplying its levels of existence. Sustainability, instead, is reinterpreted not only as a necessary condition for the project’s existence and for optimizing a drifting system, but also as a form of systemic friction.
The paper concludes with a draft manifesto of ten principles proposing an intra-active fashion approach oriented toward ecological co-responsibility, co-evolution with the digital realm, and the construction of sustainable plural futures.