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  • Garments of Paradise: Wearable Discourse in the Digital Age by Susan Elizabeth Ryan
  • Jill Walker Rettberg (bio)
Garments of Paradise: Wearable Discourse in the Digital Age. By Susan Elizabeth Ryan. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014. Pp. x+ 336. $37/ebook $26.

The earliest example of wearable technology discussed in Susan Elizabeth Ryan’s book Garments of Paradise is Atsuko Tanaka’s Electric Dress from 1956. The artist dressed herself in a kimono made from pear-shaped and cylindrical lightbulbs, all connected to a power source by a multitude of wires that drape down from her like the skirt of a dress. This quite dangerous dress is a performative piece of clothing, and so are many of the other examples of wearable technology Ryan writes about. The “wearable discourse” [End Page 502] Ryan discusses in this book is dress that uses a power source with some kind of controller and circuitry (which could be thread or fabric) in order to make something happen (p. 4). Garments of Paradise aims to present “a combined historical and critical view” of such wearable technologies.

The book is certainly overflowing with descriptions and illustrations of clothes that use electricity and circuitry to make something happen. If you are looking for an overview of literally hundreds of ways in which designers and artists have used technology in dress, this is a work you will love. However, the many examples often read as a list that almost obscures the overall argument. The idea of understanding dress as a speech act is interesting (see p. 139 on), but is rapidly overtaken by descriptions and discussions of individual works with little connection between them.

There are many other interesting points in the book, though, for instance the exploration of two divergent schools of wearable technologies: “cultural mask and technical function” (p. 29). The historical context Ryan offers here is useful to a scholar interested in understanding the contemporary drive toward more technological clothing in a larger context. Electrically heated overalls, patented in 1925, are an example of a very functional purpose for wearable technology, whereas the many explorations of fashion possibilities, such as the “Man of the future” spreads in Vogue in 1939 (p. 30 on) are examples of wearable technology as a cultural statement. In general, Garments of Paradise shares extensive knowledge of high fashion’s approach to wearable technology. More recent examples of function-focused wearable technology include clothes that augment human emotions, for instance by using music (p. 97) or scent (p. 125) to improve moods or to counter sweat, or electrostatics to encourage relaxation (pp. 114–16).

Another intriguing discussion is that of the split between mind and body that Ryan identifies in what she calls “the technological view of wearable computing,” which she sees as “anti-dress and essentially modernist in its cultural viewpoint, in accordance with traditional science” (p. 103). Clothing should be neutral, almost invisible, in this view: “the invisible body is the corollary of reason, or mind” (p. 107). Obviously this view is in conflict with the idea of fashion, and with the performative idea of wearable discourse. Ryan’s analysis of wearable technologies that deny the performative aspects of clothing is valuable.

A perspective on wearable technology that does not come from high fashion or from commercial technology companies is that of makers and amateurs who sew technologies such as Arduino’s LilyPad into their clothes. Ryan gives this kind of do-it-yourself wearable technology a fairly dismissive treatment (p. 222), which seems rather patronizing given the strong turn toward fabricating in tech and crafting communities alike.

While the book is richly and indispensably illustrated with almost 100 figures showing what the projects described look like, I did find myself wishing for color illustrations. There are also many useful endnotes, and [End Page 503] the notes, bibliography, and index take up more than seventy pages of this 336-page volume. I appreciate the extensive opportunity to find more information, and in the print book this works very well. However, in the Kindle version the endnotes are not hyperlinked, which makes reading them very cumbersome.

Overall, the book is a treasure trove for somebody looking for specific examples...

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