Critical Notes on Designing Fashion: The Ironic Relationship between Authorship and Responsibility

In the contemporary society where fashion designers no longer dictate the creation of fashion, what they create embrace both material clothes and immaterial fashion regardless of their intentions. However, a contradiction is found while considering the relationship between what fashion designers desire to create (fashion) and what they actually create (clothes). Clothes become fashion through a social process; thus, fashion has shared authorship. Meanwhile, the process of making clothes have been overshadowed by selective designers and their imagemaking tendency for creating immaterial fashion. Moreover, the making of clothes requires involvements of multiple actors beyond the designers. Thus, this explorative presentation intends to call out fashion designers for taking a fuller responsibility of their creative practices while acknowledging co-authorship and being sensitive to their sociocultural and environmental impacts.