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.

Archetypes vs. Stereotypes

Archetype - original model: something that serves as the model or pattern for other things of the same type


Stereotype - oversimplified conception: an oversimplified standardized image of a person or group


There's something about the tactile quality or paper and the sheeny gloss that makes looking at a picture in a magazine much more satisfying than staring at a screen.  I love Stern's Fotografie series, which focuses on a different photographer each issue, and is mercifully spare with words, because my grasp of German is pretty dismal.

The next issue, out on June 7th, focuses on Karl Lagerfeld and Claudia Schiffer's collaborations over the past 20 years and will include never seen before self portraits, polaroids and reminiscences that will probably have me breaking out my secondary school German-English dictionary and wondering what the hell der Dudelsack is.

There will be six different covers of Claudia, shot by Lagerfeld in a series of costumes (see them at the ASVOFF site here).  The price is pretty steep, but I'm looking forward to getting mine in the post.

But wait, what's this?



Is it just me or is controversy over blackface in fashion editorials the new, er, black?

Hmm, something's not quite right here but I can't put my finger on it...

Granted, someone probably thought that the only fitting way to accessorise classic 80's power shoulders was with an electrocuted expression and a convoluted Diana Ross tribute.

Maybe someone thought that this was delightfully satirical (though off the top of my head can't think of a satirical connection between blackface, 80's Chanel, Lagerfeld or Schiffer).

Maybe this is supposed to be incredibly post-modern and the intention is to somehow reappropriate blackface as a non-racist form of expression (though that's virtually impossible due to the deeply entrenched racist vein of blackface and no such declaration of reappropriation has been made).

The other covers that I've seen are broad archetypes; Claudia the businesswoman, Claudia the 18th century aristo, Claudia the Muscle Mary.  In this case Claudia is the person and the clothing is the archetypal template she fits into.  However, by disguising the things that signify Claudia Schiffer (like her blonde hair or the colour of her skin) she stops being a person in costume and starts to portray a stereotype.  Which isn't necessarily a good thing.

Photo - Stern Fotografie

I Heart De Geuzen

There's not really much that I can say about De Geuzen, because when I try to explain it I end up going in circles and confusing myself  The website itself is a bit like peeling an onion, but with much less crying. Every time I click into a section, there's something within it to explore, then another thing, then another thing...  But I can say this much:

 - They are three women working together on a project basis and can be found at www.geuzen.org .
 - The Geuzen website is a smorgasbord of interesting, interactive bits and bobs that engage and encourage people to think about feminism, fashion, art and communication.
 - My favourite part of the website is the DIY section, where you can find instructions for such useful things as popcorn cones to your own temporary library.
 - My favourite item in the DIY section (see why I keep getting so confused?) is the paper dress.  This isn't your average paper dress though (if there is such a thing as an average paper dress).  This is part of the De Geuzen Uniform Series.  According to De Geuzen;

"The Uniform Series is a developing line of identity apparel uniquely tailored for De Geuzen. Negotiating the border between guise and disguise the garments suit a plethora of identities and a multitude of occasions. Seen as a whole, the outfits constitute a set of Geuzen vows.

Made in collaboration with fashion designer Margreeth Olsthoorn, this uniform is constructed from a paper pattern. Accompanied by step by step sewing instructions, the pattern requires a knowledge of subtle engineering and basic handy craft. The uniforms come in three different styles (Model Femke, Model Renée, and Model Riek) and promote a 'do-it-yourself' work ethic.

Crisp and tailored, all three garments combine amazon armor aesthetics with origami know-how."

This is the third effort in their Uniform Series.  Keep it white and it's an austere, clean uniform.  Scribble over it with felt-tips however, and it's a different proposition - an ability to subvert a uniform into a totally different thing altogether.

Maybe when I have the inclination and resources to do this DIY* I'll take my cue from last year's Grayson Perry collaboration with Liberty on their series of art fabrics. Maybe spice up a floral print with some dolls, gravestones machine guns, and damned-soul-ish face-type scribblings.

Grayson Perry for Liberty - images from Clothkits 

*Which is never, because I'm one of those people who makes all sorts of grand crafting plans but never ever gets around to sticking Tab A to Fold B.  It's a curse.

Ritualism

So last month, two things happened. Someone in my family died and I bought a book. These two things might not seem connected now, but it will make sense soon, I promise.

The book was 'Isms... Understanding Fashion ' by Mairi MacKenzie. It's a pocket-sized book with two-page spreads explaining every major fashion wave from the sixteenth century to present day. From Baroque to blogging, it's all there in concise, clipped paragraphs. Precursors, related trends, even lists of where you can see costume archives of a particular trend are organised according to country at the end of every list.

But I'm jumping ahead. A month ago my grandmother passed and I found myself in my hometown with a duffel bag full of glittery dresses, army boots and coloured tights that I must have packed in a peyote trance. The crumpled clothes in the bag look like something a Care Bear would puke up after overindulging in too much sunshine and rainbows.   I went into town to try to look for something appropriate. I picked the first black dress I saw and went home. I didn't want to make a statement, I didn't  want anyone to admire my taste, I didn't want anyone to look at me.

So, for the last month or so I haven't really cared about anything fashion-y. Last week I bought a dress for my sister's 21st birthday party to find that I was no longer a small size 10 (6 to you US readers) and that I couldn't fit into my pre-picked party dress. That was what snapped me out of it. Until then I was wandering around feeling a bit sad, looking very sloppy and totally unsure of what to do.

There are dress guides for weddings, for dates, for job interviews. But no-one seems to set out a dress code for funerals anymore. It would be so much easier if all the hard stuff was done for us. All the worrying about whether you look respectful and proper (probably the only occasion that worries me in that way).  Mourning is so hard that worrying over a trivial thing like what to wear while doing so makes it all the harder. And if only there was a way of letting people know before they bound up to you in the street and breeze 'How are you, any news?', with the inevitable awkward, 'Well, my Nan died there last week'. And then the terrible silence...

L-R Plate of a child's mourning dress from an Ackermann's catalogue c. 1809,  Middle class family in mourning dress, 1913 (analysis here ), Queen Mary in Mourning Dress, 1913.  Jordan take note - homegirl liked her bling.

This is where I tie in with 'Isms..'. One of the fashion movements the book covers is called Ritualism - the strictly regimented system of mourning during the Victorian era. Women had to jump through a seemingly never-ending set of hoops to show that they were mourning properly and not to do so was a source of public shame. Books and women's magazines pored through the subject much in the manner of Trinny and Susannah, with less emphasis on Spanx and droopy boobs. One of the American books I found, The Art of Dressing Well (1870) is viewable in full online and is full of bon mots concerning heavy mourning, half mourning and non-fat, sorry, 'light' mourning.

Think of it like a school uniform - universally hated, but still useful in deflecting the dilemma of what to wear in what could be an emotionally fraught situation.  I don't think that we should go back to the days of mourning for women at the threat of losing their social respectability by any means (because that means so much in this day and age...).

I suppose it would just be nice to not have to tell people that you're mourning, not to feel like a shallow idiot when you can't decide what to wear, to have something to make you look ok and like you're holding it together for the first couple of weeks when all you really want to do is wear pajamas all day and watch The Jeremy Kyle Show.