Wearable art

Pieces of clothing are often made with fibrous materials and traditional techniques such as crochet, knitting, quilting, but may also include plastic sheeting, metals, paper, and more.

Carefully handmade clothing was considered as a device for self-articulation and furthermore, a strategy to avoid the disempowerment of fashion users and designers by large-scale manufacturing.

[1]: 22  An artistic movement primarily based in the United States due to a combination of financial and educational support, it found echoes in fiber and feminist arts around the world.

In the late sixties, a group of students at Cranbrook Academy of Art and the Pratt Institute[5]: 2  began integrating textile techniques in their design projects.

[1] Wearable art declined as a distinct movement in the late 1990s due to competition from industry, which enabled customization at scale, the migration of artists towards haute couture or the production of small series, and the broader availability of handcrafted garments from around the world.

[13][14] While wearable art may use any materials or shapes that is worn, and an there are trends in the techniques and types of pieces produced due to their affordances for artists.

Low-power mobile computing allows light-emitting and color-changing flexible materials and high-tech fabrics to be used in complex and subtle ways.

Some practitioners of the Steampunk movement have produced elaborate costumes and accessories which incorporate a pseudo-Victorian style with modern technology and materials.

For instance, Electric Dress is a ceremonial wedding kimono-like costume consisting mostly of variously colored electrified and painted light bulbs, enmeshed in a tangle of wires, created in 1956 by the Japanese Gutai artist Atsuko Tanaka.

[18] Similarly, in Nam June Paik's 1969 performance piece called TV Bra for Living Sculpture, Charlotte Moorman played a cello while wearing a brassiere made of two small operating television sets.