Jigsaw-Puzzle is an adaptable and transformable form that is developed to accommodate the wearer’s needs in a day-to-day and moment-to-moment environment. The textile is created to answer the research question: how can a garment allow people to be functionally and emotionally adaptable when making their own stories through bodily interaction? Jigsaw-Puzzle enables women to feel, move, and configure a garment for their own body comfort. In this sense, the garment is not centred on the functional mechanics of comfort, but the emphasis is placed on narrative use, that is, how the form is performed, felt, and configured and how its meaning of comfort is experienced by individual bodily interactions. The textile is designed to be highly experiential, so that it may enrich, inspire, and strengthen an individual’s identity, sense of self, and personality. Accordingly, the function of the garment is designed to be rich and intellectual, existing not in a final material form, but as a garment open to experience.

 

The design of Jigsaw-Puzzle is based on the idea of less matter but more experience, and less designing but more interaction with the body through movement and space. The garment is a geometrical drawing within a rectangular shape, mounted on felted wool. Multiple cut Jigsaw-Puzzle pieces can be used to create various forms — such as a hat, long or short sleeve jacket — or can be transformed to provide an entirely new function, becoming, for example, a chair. The interlocking geometrical shapes are cut to fit together and can form a big rectangular shape like abstract art. The created form is abstract, malleable, and incomplete. The form is ongoing and changeable to suit the physical and interactive needs of the body. However, the form requires the wearer’s bodily interaction, since it is only through a process of manipulation that the wearer is able to fully use and enjoy the piece. The form is only considered to be a complete form, once the wearer has determined its shape and size.

 

In addition, while the garment is designed to be very abstract it means the wearer is able to bring to bear her basic perceptual capabilities. These abilities mean that she is unconsciously drawing on her experiences and thoughts of wearing, by responding spontaneously with the garment in the space. The garment evokes imaginative experiences, where the wearer creates an ideal form through feeling, thinking, and intuitively through bodily movement. In the observational study the participants had a clear idea of what, when and how they required for comfort and they and their bodies became idea generators in the design development process. As a transformable garment, Jigsaw-Puzzle performs an experiment with space and construction. It allows the wearer to refine and maximise the wardrobe beyond its usual wearable potential, by transcending established boundaries and challenging the conventions of fashion. The garment becomes enriched with interaction and becomes garment-less as it moves beyond traditional forms.