Related #5: Clothing as Memory

If you read yesterday's post, then you'll know what this photo is about.

This photo was restored by one of my aunt's friends after she posted the picture on facebook - a really nice gesture.  My grandfather would have been 85 last week.  He was born on the same day as Marilyn Monroe.  Truefax.

I'm usually fine with people reblogging my pictures, but this is a family photo, so please don't copy and paste this. If you like it, then share the link. Thank you.

Licentiate Column 09/06/11: Clothing as Memory

How do you remember people? Do you use mnemonics, or acronyms or mind mapping? Or are you one of those people who has an eye for the little details? Is it the face you remember, or the voice, or the perfume?
Memory is a funny thing. Anything can trigger a once-buried picture into either painful or joyous resurrection from the deepest, darkest regions of the hippocampus or temporal lobe.

In a hens-teeth email from my father (as in ‘as rare as..’) he wondered what images of him were built in the minds of close friends and family.

We had just been sent a picture of my grandparents when they were both very young. My grandfather is impossibly chiseled in white tie and tails. My grandmother is radiant in floor length chiffon, blissfully unaware of just how many children she’s going to have. It is Christmas Eve. She is sporting a brand new engagement ring. They are both very happy.

They are not the parents my father remembers. He remembers my grandfather with a perpetual cigarette in his right hand. I barely remember him, because he died when I was very small.

It’s the little details that you remember, the trivia that acts as infill and enriches the bigger pictures. You might remember a person’s filthy anecdotes, you might remember their grating verbal tics. All of it adds up to a memory. I remember a person’s clothes.

It might seem shallow to see the world through material things (in both the literal and figurative sense) but your memory glues itself to the aspects of a person to which you pay the most attention. It seems that I’ve been a clothes monomaniac since conception.

My father? Shirts. Floral shirts form Liberty, stripes by Paul Smith. My mother? Black Agnes b and rows of jersey wrap dresses hanging in their dry cleaning bags. My brother is tracksuit pants occasionally tucked into socks, my sisters are cocktail dresses and bright, Alexander Wang-ish vests, the collars slightly blemished by the odd dab of foundation. My mother’s mother is a pair of neatly ironed slacks in stone and olive.

It’s this way of thinking that leads me and many others to believe in the importance of vintage clothing. Every piece tells a story. It might mean nothing you you, but that tie belonged to a father, a brother. Even though they may have discarded it, it can still hold some powerful and distinctive memories for another person (if not a powerful and distinctive odour). That Penneys top may be super-cheap and on-trend, but is it really that special? Is it the stuff that memories are made of?

This isn’t a diatribe against cheap clothing and for designer goods, it’s a call to realise how important old clothes are. Because, when a loved one leaves you, what are you left with? There’s you. There is a full, yet empty wardrobe. And there are your memories.

Licentiate Column 19/05/11: What's Your Time Period?

Everyone has their time period. This isn't a nod to mortality - although, in the fashion world, trends only live for a few months and some careers at fashion houses, even less. Death isn't really relevant.

When a trend dies or fails to get out of the starter gate it is instantly forgotten about, until a designer runs out of ideas and decides to revive it in lieu of actual creativity. Lest we forget, bulky 70's rainbow crochet and macrame are going to be huge this winter. Apparently.

Some trends never die out. That's because they have more meat and room for maneuvering than the average twice-yearly expelling of stress-induced creative juices from a frazzled designer's brain.

The trend is synonymous to a way of life, a philosophy, a musical style or is a vital part of a rich vein in art or literature. It was not gestated by a figure in the fashion industry, but was definitely popularised by several. It doesn't belong to one person, but is eternally tied to young people - all in their teens and twenties, all growing up in one time period.

Everyone has their time period. Whether it's the one you grew up in or one you wish you were there for, everyone has one. It's half misguided nostalgia, half style inspiration and a liberal seasoning of fantasy.

One friend would have fitted in perfectly with the dying days of the debutante balls, in peach satin and white gloves, one foot in the old world and one foot looking towards a different and wholly brighter tomorrow. Another's anarchic spirit wouldn't be out of place in the Manchester of the early 80's, listening to Joy Division and A Certain Ratio, wearing forest green donkey coats and severe buttoned-up shirts.

Once, my father and I were watching a segment on a current affairs programme about 70's punk in Dublin. "You should have been alive then, Sarah", he said to me. " You would have really fitted in."

It was an observation that stuck with me, because up until then I was unaware that my father was any different at twenty than he was at fifty. In my mind he always wore suits and worked in an office and reserved his best terrible floral shirts on holidays. I never contemplated that he could have gone to see The Clash or worn drainpipe jeans or perhaps even taken some pride in looking a little bit like Paul Weller (yes Dad, I know this is conjecture, but your haircut at the time had a definite Modfather vibe).

Everyone has their time period. If clothes maketh the person, then who are you? Are you a punk? A Fab Fourophile? A 30's screen siren? A make do and mend Blitz babe? Are you into the grunge look? Or your time period the one you live in today?

What will it look like to the next generation? We only have to wait and see.

Licentiate Column 14/04/11: Royal Wedding Mania

A few weeks ago I was chatting to my mother on the phone. This is not an unusual occurrence, but I always look forward to our chats because my mother is, often unwittingly, the source of both the divine and the absurd inspiration when it comes to the writing of this column.

She’s convinced that I take artistic license, that she can’t possibly be the person that’s described in (very) brief terms every few weeks. She just hasn’t come to deal with that fact that, like every parent I have ever met, under the fragile veneer of normality, she is totally bonkers. Deal with it Mom. You’re an inspiration to us all.

This chat was a doozy. ‘Who do you think will be designing Kate’s wedding dress?’ she said. ‘I hear Alexander McQueen will be doing it’.

‘No... I don’t think so. You do know that Alexander McQueen is dead, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do’, she trilled, (this is the point where my mother puts down the paper and thinks ‘I never trill! What are these filthy lies!’. This is all true, by the way. Scouts Honour) ‘I mean the person that’s taken over at McQueen’.

‘I don’t know Mom. It’s possible. She’ll probably pick a British designer’.

‘And what do you think the dress will look like? Won’t it be lovely! I’m going to have a garden party to celebrate the day.’

I feel at this point that I should reassure you that my mother has more than two brain cells to rub together. She is just suffering from an unfortunate affliction that reaches epidemic proportions whenever a famous person gets married. Double symptoms if said famous person is a member of a royal family.

This affliction revolves around one thing and one thing only; the dress. Not the ceremony, not the honeymoon, not the guestlist. It’s all about the dress. The dress, the dress, the dress.

This year we have two Kates getting married. Kate Middleton. Kate Moss. One wants her dress to be a surprise for her husband to be. The other asked John Galliano to design hers, but now she’s having second thoughts. Send answers in on a postcard, but don’t expect a prize. Either way, both are leading the media and the terminally curious on a merry dance around the bridal shop.

We want to be a part of these weddings. We want to be in on the bride’s secrets. I think the reason that the dress is the nexus of all our obsessions is that it’s a common denominator. Every woman who wants to get married has, in theory, the option to wear a white dress. It’s simple, it’s reliable and it’s a shared experience between you and every beautiful woman who ever said I do.

You may not marry a prince, or be a famous model. The guest list may not include Elton John and the honeymoon may not be in St. Barts - but the dress will always be there. That’s something that you and my mother and Kate Middleton will always have in common. ‘Til dress do you part.

Stylish Blogger Award/ Seven Things... eh... thing.

So, this week  I've been given a Stylish Blogger Award by the lovely Jessica of Enchanted Vintage Clothing, whose blog I genuinely love, and not just because she tagged me in a post.  I really enjoy reading her educational, funny and promdress-filled posts, so check out her blog quick-smart. 

For no reason other than I like this, here's my and the boyfriend's feet

The point of these posts are to give a bit of blog love and get some in return, but I won't be tagging anyone in these.  If you like this post and want to do one like it, leave me a link in the comments.  I don't want to exclude anyone or make them feel like they have to do it.  I have to share seven things that you might not know about me.  I'm not much of a sharer, so these seven factoids were hard to come up with.  I hope you like them.

At a family party, note my super-smooth face.  Computers can do great things these days.

1)  My mother has had a formative influence on my life.  She works part-time in a library, where she heads up the county book club.  She's half the reason why I grew up in a house full of books.  She taught me the value of a Burberry trench coat.  I tell people who have never met her that she's a cross between Delia Smith and Audrey Hepburn, but I don't think that I've ever told her that.  She makes excellent scones and pate and bread and butter pudding (but not together).  She wants to go to India.  She has a rail full of Diane Von Furstenburg dresses in her room.  Anything she has, she'll give to one of her children without them having to ask.  She is one of the most tolerant, gentle and considerate people I have ever felt the good fortune to meet and I love her to bits.  Happy Mother's Day, Mom.

2)  My mother is from England and I have a lot of relatives there, but she was born to Irish parents.  Technically, I've got dual nationality and I do feel a bit British.  It's a really hard identity to reconcile when you consider the fraught relationship that England and Ireland have had.  Existential crises aside, I do enjoy a nice cream tea and an elaborate Royal Wedding.

3)  My dream is to edit and publish my own magazine.  I also want to write a novel, if only to prove to myself that I can do it.  And I will do it.  I will.

Looking pensive and hoping for a tomorrow without nocturnal corner-shop visits

4)  My boyfriend is freakishly supportive.  He goes to the shop in the middle of the night to get biscuits for my tea and sleeps on the couch when I'm sick (got strep throat at the moment). He's a very nice guy.

Bumper prize to the person who can name the most books on this shelf...

5) Of all the things I am proud of, I'm probably proudest of my bookshelf...

Disgraceful

6) ...but in every other aspect, I'm a massive slob.  In reality, my bedside drawer has this on it - plus five or six mugs, a pair of glasses, bottles of nail varnish and an even bigger pile of unfinished books.

7)  There's no food I won't try.  Bushtucker trials have got nothing on me. 

My Family Portrait

I'm totally contravening the laws of blog here but, inspired by this post from Diamond Canopy,  I'm reposting some photos that I already put up on the blog some months ago .  May I incur the wrath of Blog for my sins, but these pictures are way too nice to hide.

These are of my maternal grandmother's family.  A few months after she died, I found a plastic bag stuffed with her falling-apart address book and a ton of photos that she always had by her side.  My nan was a formative influence on my life.  I miss her a lot (even if she wouldn't let me close the door whenever I had boys in my bedroom).

I won't tell you which women is my nan, because my mother already thinks that having a blog means handing out my cup size and bank account details to strangers, let alone revealing who my family members are.  But I will tell you this - pick the most stylish woman below and you'll probably see her.