Wearing Metamorphosis: Fashion as a Living System Between Body, Code, and Culture
The talk “Wearing Metamorphosis: Fashion as a Living System Between Body, Code, and Culture” approaches fashion not as an aesthetic or commercial practice, but as a living system of communication that develops at the intersection of body, culture, technology, and environment. Clothing is understood as a “second skin”: a material interface where biological, social, and symbolic processes interact and transform.
Drawing on systems theory and the concept of autopoiesis, fashion is presented as a dynamic system that produces meaning through repetition, differentiation, and adaptation. In an era of ecological fragility and digital mediation, garments function as carriers of memory, social norms, and cultural narratives, while simultaneously opening up possibilities for reconfiguration and resistance.
Within the thematic framework of Metamorphosis, the talk explores how fashion mediates between Being and Becoming, showing how bodies, materials, and cultural structures are transformed through the act of dressing.
Georgia Chioni GR
Georgia Chioni is a fashion designer, author, legal scholar, and postdoctoral researcher at the University of West Attica. She holds a PhD and two master’s degrees. Her work is interdisciplinary, operating at the intersection of social systems, cultural practices, and emerging technologies.
She is also the Head Designer of the high fashion brand SKiN iT. Her research approaches clothing as a system of communication and social action, fashion as an autopoietic system, and the dressed body as an interface between individual experience, collective structures, cultural memory, and non-verbal communication.
In parallel, she is engaged in academic teaching and has published monographs and scientific articles. In 2018, her research was honored with an award from the Academy of Athens.