Hier - Valentina Qin Shen - MFA Fashion Design and the Arts '25

According to the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, the world is interpreted as a body of infinite folds that weave through compressed time and space: “Everything folds, unfolds, refolds”. Though the folds he defines refer to more abstract concepts, it is interesting to notice that this point of view may be intuitively interpreted by the folds in the physical world. If we stop to look at the everyday textiles we interact with —— the gathered sleeves every time we bend the elbows, the creased bedsheet after being slept overnight and the draped jacket on the rack —— the folds are records of what we have done and proofs of our existence. Or we may even say, as Deleuze has suggested, “the outside is not a fixed limit but a moving matter animated by peristaltic movements, folds and foldings that together make up an inside: they are not something other than the outside, but precisely the inside of the outside”, those folds, the outside, as the garments and textiles usually cover or go around our bodies, are somehow another form of us, the inside. The folds also suggest time. The folds on the bedsheet this morning will be smoothed after we get up or transform into new patterns when we get into bed. The creases at the back of the knees on the jeans, though deeply imprinted by the repetitive actions of walking and sitting down, will eventually disappear after being washed or ironed. The folds remember and forget, like how we remember our yesterdays and forget, and how we are rem