Braiding As Research Method: Building Relational Understanding for Fashion

Abstract

This article introduces “braiding” as a process of enquiry for fashion concerned with deepening understanding through writing, dialogue, and participation with others. It sets out a step-wise process for bringing together people’s experiences about a theme and generating insight from this joint place, a point of relation. The article explores the potential of braiding to diversify knowledge production in fashion research and to bring forward understanding that emerges from interdependence. Examples of braiding-as-enquiry are interwoven through the piece.

Keywords:

• participative research methods
• plurality
• autobiographical writing
• relationality
• new knowledges

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kate Fletcher

Kate Fletcher (PhD) is a Professor at the Royal Danish Academy, Copenhagen and at Oslo Metropolitan University in Norway. Her work, including that on systems change, post-growth fashion, fashion localism, decentring durability and Earth Logic, both defines and challenges the field of fashion and sustainability. She has written and/or edited eleven books available in eight languages. Kate is a co-founder of the Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion. [email protected]

Anna Fitzpatrick

Anna Fitzpatrick is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, University of the Arts London. Her research explores what political agency in fashion means when we challenge ideas of the rational, autonomous and independent individual and think about our vulnerability, interconnection, and capacity to affect and be affected in order to enable collective and political ways forward through the crises we are in. [email protected]