Dressing Up and ‘Wardrobe Moments’

Abstract

In this chapter and the next, I examine the tactile, aesthetic, and creative relation that the participants have with their clothes. Much has been written about how clothes provide the first information about people (Davis 1994; Craik 1996; Holland 2004; Mackinney-Valentin 2017). Studies of fashion and clothing examine, for example, cult dress and subcultures (Williamson 2001), constructing particular cultural identities linked to ‘Britishness’ (Goodrum 2001), women growing older (Twigg 2012), and home-made clothes (Twigger Holroyd 2017). Alison Goodrum (2016, p. 145) argues for a recognition of ‘the richness and relevance of dress research to, and for, leisure studies (and viceversa)’. Finding, hunting, identifying, repairing, restoring, cleaning, and storing garments—and matching garments which were authentic and era-specific—were the major activities for the participants, mostly as a daily practice and mostly for years, if not decades. They weren’t able to just go out and easily buy clothes they liked as most people do simply by going to the high street, although of course they did that to a lesser extent if they attended vintage events or fairs. Davis (1994) and Wilson (1985) describe anti-fashion as styles of dress that are explicitly contrary to fashions of the day—which would make them more difficult to find. The participants had to find clothes that were authentic, affordable, rare, randomly available, one-offs, and in various conditions from ‘good vintage condition’ to ‘wounded bird’. Amy Twigger Holroyd (2016) talked to a small sample of women about their activities shopping, sorting, making, and mending clothes, and whether they viewed those activities as leisure or chore, or a crossover of the two. Holroyd found, as I did in my own study (Holland 2013), that women often conflate leisure activities and domestic/work activities. By this I mean that activities such as cleaning an item of used clothing could take hours or days but was seen to be part and parcel of wearing vintage, and worth it for the emotional engagement which ensued. Material culture can evoke or create memories; so second-hand clothes and homewares are perceived as witnesses or survivors of the past, what Heike Jenss (2015, p. 1) calls the ‘materialization of time’ and ‘fashioning memory’ (ibid. p. 8) which is a good way to describe the participants’ relationship to their clothes, and the history of their clothes. Jenss (2004, p. 398) also notes that clothes can ‘combine sensual closeness and actual presence with historic distance … They are open for imagination, interpretation and fantasy.’ We know that the participants enjoy the stories and value the provenance of second-hand items. Old clothes have another layer of meaning which new clothes do not: they have traces of other bodies in/on them, but also represent other times. Old clothes represent multiple temporalities, in which lay their appeal to the participants. Second-hand clothes represented to them the memories of other people, as well as their own memories. ‘Through the porosity of things and of people, things such as our clothes are not entirely separated from us as they externalize memories, former selves or relationships’ (Woodward and Greasley 2015, p. 2), for example, Joan and Lucille explained how their memories and their relationships had influenced their choices:

Joan::

I loved watching old movies when I was growing up, but since no one is creative in their fashion where I live, I never thought I could wear clothes like the women in these old movies. I ran across a blog of a vintage-wearing girl in college, and I was blown away! I could wear those clothes! I love the 1930s and 40s the best. The idea of ‘making do and mending’ goes very well with my smaller budget and value for adaptable creativity. It was also a time of strong women that got their families through difficult times. Lastly, I’m married to an American military man, and there’s lots of Americana and patriotic pieces from this era that I love.

Lucille::

[My mom, born in 1935, has] absolutely shaped my fashion view as I have evolved to where I am at … She’s 80 now, and still completely involved in my life, my fashion and its assorted activities.