Do corpo ao corpo: Design de Moda e Moulage dialógica

Abstract

This research investigates the centrality of the body in creative processes in fashion and has the general objective of answering the following problem: how, from the questions about how the body and its image materialize in contemporary culture, fashion designers can enhance their creative processes. For this purpose, we built this research path guided by the methodology of strategic design, from a transdisciplinary and dialogical character, which began in the investigation of the body (physical and discursive) and culminated in the projection of the proposed creative scenario. Along the way, we investigate issues related to the body and fashion such as, for example, body metamorphoses, floating signifiers, sign-transducing body, gesticulation, body and communication, creative process and body (moulage - creative process of molding fabrics directly on the body or simulacrum of body), and fashion system. Through the connection of collected data, scientific knowledge and project practices in the field of strategic design (metaproject, scenario and innovation), we shape this investigation by the dialogical articulation between the theoretical bases (body, fashion and creative processes in fashion), the methodological operations (data collection: photographs, filming, interviews, recording of creative experience, workshop) and the consequent analysis of the inputs. In the end, we propose a creative and inspirational scenario for the fashion designer: the resignification of moulage to broaden the understanding of the fashion’s body from a new aesthetic reference: the ‘polybody’ - a mutant, polysemic and polymorphic body. We intend to potentiate the creative processes of these designers through a creative process arising from the scenario design and here called 'Moulage Dialógica' - a more comprehensive process in the shaping of the body by considering both physical and symbolic aspects in a mutant 'polibody' that, interpreted from a transdisciplinary creative process, it can respond to the oxymoron that we face in the research path: how to dress the bodies that consume fashion without considering them only from the idea of a tall, slim and lean body.