Taking the concept of 'seamlessness' as her starting point, Yeseung Lee offers an innovative practice-based investigation into the meaning of the handmade in the age of technological revolution and globalized production and consumption. Combining firsthand experience of making seamless garments with references from psychoanalysis, anthropology and cultural studies, Lee reveals the ways that a garment can reach to our deeply superficial sense of being, and how her seamless garments can represent the ambiguity of a modern subject in a perpetual process of becoming. Richly illustrated and firmly rooted in the actual work of creation, this daringly innovative book breaks new ground for fashion research.

Surface is one of the most intensely debated topics in recent arts, humanities and social science scholarship. The changing technologies which manufacture the actual and virtual surfaces of today are radically altering our perception of thresholds and borders. In contrast to the responses to preceding industrial revolutions, contemporary concerns with surface seem preoccupied with its function of mediation or passage, rather than with that of separation or boundary. In Surface and Apparition, each chapter explores a different meaning and function of the material and immaterial qualities of 'surface'. Case studies include various surfaces from computer screens, 'artisanal' engines and glass architecture to gauzy veils, the planetary surface of supply chain capitalism, and spatial embodiment in street markets. International scholars of design, architecture, film, media, fine art, fashion, textiles, silversmithing, woodworking and archival practices account for how the material and the immaterial draw attention to each other in both their everyday and artistic practice. Each chapter addresses particular systems (from the human body to manually operated tools and machines); materials (for instance cloth, wood and light); modes of attention, movement and engagement. 'Surface' therefore functions in this book as a multidisciplinary method for attending to critical issues concerning human creative and technological endeavours.