Abstract
The purposes of this study are to review the status of dress material in the contemporary fashion design by examining the intertextuality of many materials other than textiles used in the contemporary fashion and to show that the development of new fashion materials is a factor for designing competitiveness. The results of this study are summarized as follows: First, foods and natural objects are used as fashion materials to reveal natural beauty, and at the same time new formative elements are expressed in combinations of life and fashion. Second, common paper and luxurious jewelry are presented as a formative element symbolic of an aspect of the contemporary society or embodied in elaborate handicraft techniques. Those materials boost the luxuriousness of costume and create a strong futuristic image according to how they are expressed. Third, plastics available for a variety of objects in different shapes and colors offer such formative features that could be shaped with textiles, as high-end technology is introduced to fashion. Fourth, metallic materials have added freedom to design formality due to their qualities of convergence and displacement and by the introduction of brand-new technology, suggesting a new future for the fashion industry. Fifth, using a variety of anti-fashion materials including semiconductor chips, mirrors, vinyl, wires, and rubber makes a change in the existing points of view regarding the formality of things and helps create a special aesthetic effect in a visual respect to develop a strong intertextuality of materials.
