CAMILLA WELLTON · DIARY
By Camilla Wellton
You love the dress in the mirror. At dinner, you keep adjusting its edge against your skin. You are pleased with how it looks and distracted by how it feels. Asked whether you like it, you say yes, then realise the answer needs another sentence.
That extra sentence interests me. The garment can be beautiful, the evening enjoyable and some part of the experience still need attention. Finding words for the detail gives you something to work with.
I founded Sensual Institute in 2024. Its work grew out of my interest in how we experience and enjoy being alive, including the material things we choose to live with. Clothes make this question wonderfully close. They touch us for hours, participate in our movement and become part of how we meet the world.
Perhaps you enjoy the weight of a coat but find its collar distracting. Perhaps a sleeve feels generous while standing and awkward at the table. A colour may delight you each time you catch sight of it, even on a difficult day.
Describing these differences helps you recognise what you actually enjoy. “Beautiful” can lead you towards a piece. “I love the weight, and I need more space here” gives you a more useful relationship with it.
The Sensual Encyclopedia offers language for exploring experiences across the body, materials, relationships, culture and place. A detail such as texture can lead to questions about preference, memory and the circumstances in which something feels welcome. You begin with an ordinary sensation and discover how much information it contains.
My yoga and meditation practice has kept returning me to this kind of attention. It has been central to making clothes because the body is where material becomes an experience. A photograph gives you an outline; wearing brings you into contact with its qualities over time.
The Sensual Capacity Framework develops the sensuality domain within the Swedish Institute of Inner Technology’s broader Human Capacity Framework. Its thirty-six capacities sit within nine families, giving different aspects of sensual experience a practical focus.
You can explore noticing and distinguishing sensations, recognising a preference, adjusting the pace or intensity of an experience, and expressing what would help. Other capacities concern pleasure, imagination, material engagement and responding to another person. The framework gives you routes into practice through something you already encounter in daily life.
With clothing, an experiment might be simple. Wear a piece for a few ordinary activities and pay attention to what changes. Notice the texture, temperature and points of pressure. See what remains pleasant and what asks for an adjustment. You are learning about a relationship between yourself, the garment and the day.
Finding words for your experience also makes it easier to share. “I would love to come, and I need to dress warmly because we will be outside” gives another person useful information. So does asking for a quieter table when you want to hear the conversation.
Other people bring their own needs. Someone loves the music; someone else feels cold. Giving those differences language helps you find an arrangement together. Pleasure becomes something you can consider with care for everyone taking part.
This is part of the movement in my work from my own self to other people’s selves. When I make clothes, I hope the wearer will feel more in love with herself. As that interest expands into the institutes, it includes how we make room for one another’s experience and what our choices help shape around us.
Return to the dress. You might adjust it, wear it for a different occasion or decide you enjoy it best as an image. You now have more than a verdict. You have the beginnings of a conversation with the things you choose, and with the life you want to feel at home in.