The textures of touch: A study of a sensory journey into creativity, fashion, and entrepreneurship

Abstract

The article enquires into the entrepreneurial, creative, and more broadly semiological practices that underwrite the work of a ‘critical fashion’ producer in contemporary Slovenia. The detailed ethnography describes the entrepreneurial ambitions, values, and presumed virtues of a couturier, exploring how she conducts her life and business as an expression, in some form, of her sensory and tactile experiences. Nati, an activist for and promoter of ‘responsible’, ‘conscious’, and sustainable fashion, understands her work as sensitising her clients (and industry) to the dangers of (over)consumption. The study’s analysis reflects on what happens when an artistic and commercial producer sensorially addresses her customers in ecologically uncertain and socially distanced times. A central claim of the article is that an anthropological analysis of a set of business ethics and creative practices may become more textured and productive when an ethnographer refrains from immediate judgments of their authenticity or provenance. Instead, an analytic focus on how ethical and creative claims emerge and grow together and how they are spoken of, lived, and felt, may reveal more about a human situation. This gives us a chance to think about how sensory modes of address – when used by interlocutors and among anthropologists – enable (and disable) practices and experiences of mutuality and proximity in life, both in the field, and in analysing ethnographic material. only a few hundred metres away from the of capital, is oddly low-key. Green trees run along the Gradaščica river, together with two-storey cottages, communal outdoor tables, and the allotment gardens known as Krakovski vrtovi, examples of urban agriculture that date back to the Middle Ages. 1 Most of the fieldwork for this research was conducted in an atelier attached to one of those peaceful Krakovo backyards and in the garden itself. The studio and garden belong to Nati, a woman in her mid-forties, founder of a Slovenian circular fashion brand.