Oftentimes, there’s no reason for us to extend the lifespan of a garment by repairing it. We have embraced the fast fashion business model based on constant replacement. Despite shocking campaigns and documentaries that are trying to awaken our sense of duty by highlighting environmental and social problems, at the end of the day, humans remain selfish. Selfishness is an inherent characteristic of humans as consumers. We make decisions based on what seems the most convenient or useful for us at a given moment. Altruism and caring are social mechanisms, but they also function mainly in cases where they provide a certain benefit to the individual or group. Therefore, it is not possible to solve environmental or social problems by appealing to the conscience of consumers.

As the philosopher Olli Lagerspetz has pointed out, humans discern various forms of entropy in their surroundings and then start to tirelessly tame them. Humans perceive their relationship with their environment as something they can have control over and as something that depends on them. That is why we use words like ‘broken’, ‘messy’, or ‘dirty’.¹ But when it comes to taming our environment, our surroundings are more like a cat than a dog – with little interest and a great amount of self-awareness. Their taming can only be apparent and temporary, as they will always have the last word.

Western society provides us with especially extensive opportunities to organise our environment. We no longer simply throw things away, but “let go of them,” as if giving them up were something noble and beautiful. People no longer ask whether something is useful or durable, but whether it brings joy. And if it doesn’t, you ‘let go of it’. It’s no longer just cleaning up or throwing things away, but therapy.

The ease of throwing things away is also related to our detachment from objects. Making things with our own hands has become alien to us, rendering the objects anonymous, easily replaceable and less joy-inducing. In modern production systems, even those who make the objects remain distant from their creations – they are no longer qualified craftsmen, but machine operators. If the nature of the material becomes unfamiliar to us, it also becomes easy to see the objects around us as static and lifeless. But materials are not dead. They are fluid and changing over time; they cannot be moulded into something permanent and controllable no matter how much we would want that.

Drawing on Aristotle, the design expert Cameron Tonkinwise distinguishes between man-made objects (techné) and natural objects (physis). A man-made object, such as a sweater, is considered complete only when its making has ended, while natural objects, such as trees, are complete and constantly changing at every stage of their life. They don’t have categories such as ‘new’ or ‘worn’. Tonkinwise emphasises that seeing objects as static and finished is erroneous; he advocates for ‘continuous design’ – an approach that values ​​fixing, adjusting and modifying objects over time.²

If even humans are never truly ‘finished’, then why should their things be? Artificially produced objects also deteriorate and gain a temporal dimension, distancing themselves from the technical environment they were originally forced into.³ Unlike nature, which decays with a melancholic beauty, the wear and tear of man-made objects feels disturbing – it contradicts the order and discipline we would like to impose on our surroundings. Designers have not given enough thought to how to let materials deteriorate and decay naturally and beautifully. They wear and tear, but they do not decay – they are unable to dissolve back into the environment from which they originate. Therefore, they remain – broken, unwanted, indefinable.

The modern Western affluent society has often been criticised for its excessive emphasis on material values. But as the 20th-century thinker Alan Watts notes, true materialism lies instead in deep respect and gratitude for the material itself, enjoying its qualities and trying to find the best possible use for it. From this perspective, our society is not materialistic enough. Watts argues that we live in an abstract world that is detached from material reality.⁴ Therefore, our choices in clothing are dictated by trends and brands, not by the material or manufacturing process of the garment. We discard clothes not because they have been worn out or become damaged, but because they are no longer fashionable.

Alienation from the material expands to the relationship we have with our bodies. It is here as well that we have distanced ourselves from true materialism. The modern consumer culture uses the body as a commercial object. We sculpt, clean, conceal and enhance it according to the prevailing ideals about beauty. But we also feel ashamed of all the bodily processes that ensure our material existence. Metabolism, sexuality, disease are phenomena that are usually kept secret.⁵ Similar to mass-produced objects, we also wish to forget about our own temporality because the changes that come with aging are perceived as frightening. Nonetheless, the root cause of both death and decay is birth, as taught by the Buddhist religion, which Watts also follows.

The dualism of body and mind prevalent in Western culture has placed the mind above the body. The philosopher Mark Johnson describes this as the illusion of disembodied thinking – a common belief according to which we should set aside our bodies in order to reach pure, unadulterated thinking.⁶ The desire to detach oneself from the material body reflects disgust toward the human as a carnal being. Even atheists find comfort in the promise of many religions that the soul exists also after the death of the body.

This leads me to perspiration – a natural and inevitable bodily process that reflects our ambivalent attitude towards our own materiality. Perspiration, which reminds us of our corporeality, is considered something unpleasant and dirty. But what actually is dirtiness? Similar to metabolic processes, all substances released from the body – saliva, blood, urine, vomit, hair, nails and sweat – make us insecure. According to Mary Douglas’s idea of ​​‘matter out of place’, the matter becomes dirty when it is not in its right place.⁷ While hair on the head is natural, it feels unpleasant when it turns up on the dining table. What about sweat, one of the most difficult bodily secretions to hide? Is sweat considered dirty already when it emerges on the body, or does it only become dirty when it leaves stains on our clothes?

Dirtiness can be seen as a deviation from the ideal state of an object.⁸ But what does an ideal person look like? While an object can be judged on the basis of how well it fulfils its intended purpose or function, people cannot be compared like this, as an ideal person does not exist. Modern medicine also fails to define the ideal degree of cleanliness.⁹ Which allows us to conclude that dirtiness is not an objective characteristic, but a category invented by humans.

But where does the boundary between our body and soul lie? I agree with the Estonian philosopher Eik Hermann, who says that the idea of ‘the clear-cut oppositions between mind and matter, mind and body, mind and space, but also theory and practice, has outlived its time’.¹⁰ The same is stated by Johnson, who argues that abstract thinking does not exist independently, but grows out of our physical, emotional and sensory experiences. We need metaphors based on physical experience to grasp abstract concepts.¹¹ For example, the expression ‘time flies’ is based on the human experience of fast movement and how we perceive this emotionally. Similarly, dirtiness has also taken on the abstract meaning of moral corruption. A sweat stain on a T-shirt can become a sign not only of uncleanness, but also of the fact that we have crossed an invisible boundary set for us.

In 2022, as part of my master’s thesis, for two weeks I kept a sweat diary, consciously monitoring when and in what circumstances I sweat. In the process, I began to think that sweat is the embodiment of my emotions. Emotions seep out of the body, turning into sweat as they emerge on the skin. Are my hidden thoughts and feelings ultimately similar to sweat; that is, dirty? I have always sweated when I feel anxious in social situations, new environments, or when I am being judged professionally. I sweat when I eat spicy Asian food. I sweat when I wake up at night feeling panicky about the future. I sweat when I feel ashamed.

Hermann describes how craftsmen have traditionally preferred materials that are easily manipulated and exhibit little resistance. Since the use of such materials is very limited, then working with them doesn’t offer much meaningfulness. Based on this, Hermann asks whether materials that display character are more valuable than previously thought, materials that put up ‘a devious resistance to any interference that goes against their grain’.¹² In my opinion, one such material is also often our uncontrollable body.

As I wanted to work with the human body as a material, I knitted three identical sweaters from water-soluble PVA material – garments that could belong to any of our wardrobes and therefore feel anonymous. I provided the right setup to invite our bodies to further design the sweaters, to transform them from anonymous to personal. I wanted to see how sweat develops on different bodies and what kinds of traces it leaves. To do this, I divided the experiment between three bodies – one of them was mine, the other two belonged to my friends. I sweated in the sauna, one of my friends worked out, and the other ate spicy Asian food. While intentional and purposeful exercise or eating Asian food are rather new trends in Estonia, the tradition of going to the sauna has long historical roots. Sweat has always found different ways and practices for leaving our bodies.

Wearing the sweaters was for me a study that combined different emotions over time, in various environments, practices and bodies. Life itself took over the design process, guiding the already intuitive design to a new level. The perspiring bodies of the people wearing the sweaters continued the design process, which was both an unconscious and conscious activity, as pushing one’s ego to the background is not only impossible, but also unnecessary. The contemporary human, alienated from materials, keeps on making the garment they wear through perspiring. The slow journey of the sweaters towards transience is not death, but the imperceptible transmission of life. Vulnerability and decay are not final.

Could garments provide us with the opportunity to see in which situations we sweat most aesthetically? Or might wearing a delicate and fragile texture help us to better embrace our anxiety? Most human activities stain us in one form or another. A person who tries to avoid getting dirty altogether also rejects their own physicality. Dirtiness is genuine, authentic, and revolutionary, cleanliness on the other hand imposes limitations.¹³

I wove the sweat marks that were left on the sweaters into a wearable form. As I followed the idea that materials are in constant flux, I left the sweat holes untied. In this way the knitwear will never be finished – and when something is not finished, it cannot be broken either. So, the moment to truly let go of something never arrives. We can only try to comprehend the chaos, as if trying to unravel a tangled bundle of yarn. Comprehending and disentangling are both (mind-)expanding activities, far from decay.

What if the garments and their wearers grew together? What if ageing – both on a human and object level – would not be perceived as something negative, but rather as an exciting and dynamic part of life? The designers could provide the necessary conditions but it would be up to the users of the garments to guide the process, doing it intuitively and uncontrollably, by moving through different environments in their clothes. New objects would form through the interaction of materials, designers, wearers and the surrounding environment. It would be impossible to plan what they would look like.

I do not assume that my speculations about the values ​​and beliefs people hold fully encompass them. Nonetheless, the question ‘what if?’ encourages and provokes me to keep on dreaming and thinking critically. If that makes me a wannabe fashion philosopher, then so be it.