Designing the void: activating the garment–body in-between

Abstract

This paper reframes the garment–body in-between not as a residual gap but as a generative spatial condition central to contemporary fashion design. Conventional approaches to dress construction often privilege surface and silhouette, treating the void between fabric and skin as technically necessary but conceptually silent. Drawing on deconstructivist philosophy, phenomenology of embodiment, and spatial theory that recognizes the agency of thresholds and interstices, the research reconceptualizes absence as a locus of presence, relation, and memory. A qualitative, practice-led methodology integrates expert interviews, thematic mapping, and iterative prototyping within a Method-to-Strategy Framework that links conceptual inquiry to material decision. The central research question asks: How can the in-between space between garment and body be activated as a communicative, transformative, and mnemonic medium within fashion design? The study identifies four design strategies that render the void operative. Interaction treats sound and air as communicative media. Boundaries reframe seams as negotiated thresholds. Transformation addresses temporality through motion, delay, and projection. Memory positions absence as an intimate archive of trace and care. Situated in the Sri Lankan design-education context, the paper offers studio-ready formats, an assessment rubric, and curricular implications, inviting designers and educators to work with absence rather than against it.