Fit to a T: Spray-On Clothing, Craft, Commodity Fetishism, and the Agency of Objects

This article considers how spray-on clothing made by Fabrican Ltd. might illuminate and complicate our understandings of craft, commodity fetishism, and object agency. Fabrican is a chemical substance that is sprayed onto the body to create a garment. I am interested in the ways this fabric appears seamless, self-made, and organic; it ostensibly removes the labor and skill associated with handcrafted and machineproduced textiles and, when worn, resembles a second skin, both concealing and revealing the body underneath. In so doing it brings into sharp focus the complex ways we relate to clothing as an object of production and consumption.