NOTES ON METABOLISM

Clothing is not a fixed form, but a living process. It unfolds through exchange – between body and material, surface and depth, intention and residue. What seems stable is sustained by constant change. Clothing acts as an interface that absorbs traces of movement, use and contact, allowing layers to form that carry time rather than conceal it, assembling into a palimpsest of use and alteration.

Metabolism understands fashion as relational. Materials and garments do not exist on their own; they take shape through interaction, circulation and dependency. Functional layers gain visibility, secondary surfaces acquire presence, and meaning emerges through accumulation rather than singular authorship. What serves to protect also records; what is meant to remain unnoticed becomes legible through use.

Fashion, in this sense, is not a final statement but a temporary state – adaptive, permeable and continuously rewritten. It remains open, shaped by process rather than resolution, and understood as an ongoing transformation in which form is always provisional.

Lena Kvadrat, 2026