Contemporary fashion design not only engages with the forms, styles and materials of clothing, but is simultaneously a significant vehicle for rethinking global human futures. Digital fabrics are renderings of cottons, linens, wools and other textiles, with properties of movement, light, colour, and sound programmed into them as software, which are then used to produce various digital garments. This talk is based on design anthropology work undertaken as a part of the four-year Business of Fashion and Textile Technology (BFTT) research cluster,. The research explores the experience of clothing in the home, the ways people use their wardrobes to broker complex fashion economies, and the ‘user-testing’ of new digital fashion technologies. Focussing on the emerging sensorialities of digital fabrics, how they ‘feel’, the paper argues that this work opens a conceptual space between two extreme kinds of future imagination, one frictionless and the other intensely sensorial. It offers a model for how to understand devices such as ‘wardrobes’, as ways for people to negotiate the many possible social futures they face.

About the speaker:

Adam is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at UCL (University College London), where he is part of the material culture section. The Chinese translation of his book Design Anthropology in Context was published by Phoenix Press in 2024. In his teaching, he convenes postgraduate design anthropology research projects in the Studio of Material Life. Previous work includes working as a design researcher at HP Labs and Intel, researching cultures of care in Romania, and on the implications of the smart materials revolution. His current work looks at the design and experience of digital fashion.

📅 Date: Tuesday, 14 April, 2026

🕑 Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pm

📍 Venue: CJT-9.29

🗣️ Language: English

🔗 Register here: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=105824