Monthly Archives: March 2018

Wardrobe Memories

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L.Gomezdelatorre

Reading the book “Craft of Use” by Kate Fletcher made me think about the strong emotional attachment that I have developed toward some of my clothes. It is funny how sometimes, this aspect of people’s life remains overlooked. As we add more and more items to our wardrobe, we tend to forget about the stories of each one of those pieces, which are part of the chapters of the big book that our life history. Whether our clothing collection is large or small, each one of the pieces that we have acquired through time has the power to evoke a special feeling, a treasured memory, or perhaps just even the sweet feeling of pleasure that we felt the moment that, acting on impulse, we bought a garment directly from the front window of a store.  For me, each one of the clothes that I keep has such a strong emotional value.

I believe that Fletcher’s book intends to remind us that each skirt, t-shirt, jacket or dress that we have hides a beautiful story to remember. Therefore, throwing them out without acknowledging this would be as though we were deleting that special part of our past. That is why is so important to make a recollection of those meaningful moments with love and some added nostalgia as we go through our drawers and closet at the end of each season. For example, a dress that we bought for our prom party when we were in high school is full of memories of a night in which we celebrated the great achievement of finishing school and starting a new chapter of our life as adults. However, for many people, it is not easy to learn to appreciate their clothes since we live in the era of globalization and fast-fashion, in which the marketing strategy of the industry encourages customers to constantly buy new things and throw out the old ones. I think taking the time to let memories resurface through our clothes is a key concept to understand that fashion is more than shopping. Thus, associating our garments with our personal history could encourage us to recycle and find new and interesting ways to wear the items we already have.

In my case, I would say that one of my favorite garments is a beautiful pink mini trapeze ruffle dress that my sister gave me as a birthday present a couple of years ago. This was my first retro classic dress, and I love it because of its soft and smooth texture. It features a flat collar embellished with silver rhinestones that combine perfectly with its elegant long sleeves. The dress is made of light pink chiffon, which is a very delicate and beautiful fabric. In addition, this dress reminds me of the trapeze line created by Yves Saint Laurent during the late 1950’s, and I can say that fell in love with it the very first time I saw it. It is funny though that as much as I liked it, I couldn’t get it before it was sold out online. I was totally disappointed about it because knowing that my birthday was getting closer, I thought it was the perfect occasion for me to wear it. Having lost all hope to get it, I was greatly surprise when I got a box in the mail containing the same trapeze dress I was so desperately looking for along with a sweet card from my sister wishing me a very happy birthday. Months later, I asked my sister how she knew I wanted that dress, and she told me that she ordered it weeks before my birthday thinking I would like it. Thus, whether it was a very fortunate event or coincidence of fate what brought this dress to into my life, it was also an act of appreciation and love, which makes it even more meaningful for me.

Fashion aide-mémoires

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I often ask myself this rather rhetorical question: How random is this? I remember the time when I was a little girl and my grandma used to show me the old postcards from New York that belonged to my great-grandmother… Recently my grandma also gave me a brooch that my great grandma brought from her duty journey to New York when she was a member of the official delegation of the Soviet Union to the United Nations back in 1970’s. I instantly fell in love with this vintage accessory, as it held a value inestimable in dollars. For me, this brooch is a constant reminder of my great granny and her achievements as one of the first women diplomats.

Furthermore, this sweater is another piece of memory left from my great grandmother. She knitted this wool sweater some 60 years ago. It was passed to my grandma, then to my mother and eventually, it ended up in New York, as now I am the one proudly wearing it. I am currently doing an internship at the United Nations and hoping to follow my great grandma’s steps in the field of international affairs. Therefore, this sweater not only reminds me of her but also inspires me a lot, as my great granny was and always will be my role model. It is incredible how clothes and accessories have an ability to become the keepsakes or in the language of diplomacy, the aide-mémoires that we associate with people, places, experiences and times.

Wearing clothes that have an emotional value while looking and feeling great, makes me wonder if we actually need to constantly seek for new stuff in department stores or wherever it is possible. In fact, the materialistic output is not important, it is not even satisfying. We can be satisfied by things we already have, by giving them a new life, by learning the extremely satisfying craft of use. But the question is rather, whether there is a way for fashion to existing without being so connected with consumerism in the economy based on materialism?.. The economy that is fueled by consumerism making people spend money they don’t have for the things they don’t need. From this point of view, what such economy needs is actually a revolution of values.

“Understand them – demand them less”: Understanding Ownership and Value

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When does ownership transfer from owner to object? To explore this question, I engage a story about one of the oldest pieces of clothing I have, that I bought and purchased, that has redefined the idea of “ownership”. To start, I want to quote Kate Fletcher’s book “Craft of Use: Post-Growth Fashion”:

Have lots of them – don’t know them.
Know them – enjoy them, be charmed or frustrated by them,
love them, change them, understand them.
Understand them – demand them less.

Fletcher, Kate. Craft of Use: Post-Growth Fashion (p. 141). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

The sweater above in the photos is one of the only pieces of clothing I can truly say that I have cherished for over 6+ plus years. It’s not a long time, but it has a story behind it.

To escape the small town I grew up in, I first started going to college in downtown Los Angeles at FIDM. I was a Fashion Design major, and needless to say I made no money while I was working 60 hours a week on homework and considering all the expenses my parents and I paid for me to move across the country. And by the second set of roommates I had, and one of the few days I ventured out of my apartment, I ended up on strolling down Sunset Boulevard looking for Halloween costumes. And if you have visited, Sunset Blvd was nothing I had ever seen before: it was bizarre and raw with people and places of fashion that I thought I would never see in person. It was individualized and almost un-kept (ripped jeans, shirts cut in half, beanies falling apart). It was street wear, but it was more than that: it reminds me of Kate Flecher’s quote in Chapter 4:

There’s a certain amount of personal bravery required to gain this understanding, for we need to trust our own instincts and judgement about the things we have in front of us. We have to overcome the fear (after Thoreau’s Walden and the story of the Broken Pantaloon, p.250) that showing ourselves in the same, well-worn clothes is worse than weak moral character.

Fletcher, Kate. Craft of Use: Post-Growth Fashion (p. 141). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition

Clothes were worn and worn out, and that type of ownership was something entirely brand new to me. I observed this and continued walking. I saw that white and red lip-symbol button-down sweater on the corner of a street, on a rolling rail with a “Sale” sign. The owner of the store, a boutique of bought and resold clothes came out and bargained down the price of that sweater to about $30.00, which I knew I shouldn’t have been spending. But something about the abstract Warhol-appeal of the sweater was something I never had in my possession before I paid for the sweater, and therefore I owned it; and I owned it proudly. I wore it all the time to school to show it off like I was a new woman: which is irony in the fact that it was a resold garment. But my ownership of the garment made it valuable in the way I wore it with pride.

I felt fashionable. I say that meaning for the first time, I didn’t look like “a small town girl from Connecticut” and I felt like a part of California was being worn on me through this sweater. And in turn, I cherished the sweater so much and as Fletcher says above: I overcame the fear of wearing the same clothing because it meant something more than just a piece of clothing. I never washed it. I only wore it when I wanted to show it off and took care of it more than any other clothing I owned.

Moving out of California and back to my home town, I not only kept this sweater, but the sweater turned around to own me in a way; after years of cleaning out my closet, this sweater has never been taken away from me. So, this sweater now holds it’s ownership on me and more that that: it holds my first college memories and the times I spent as a naive teenager in California. It holds the memories of the compliments it gave me from people that made me feel special; the care I took for the garment allowed for the garment to take care of me. Even in practices of laundry, as Fletcher explains with the washing of wool, can be applied:

In some of the ‘never washed’ stories, wool’s properties in the physical realm are augmented as holders of meaning and memories – and together fibre and sentiment influence the practices of use.

Fletcher, Kate. Craft of Use: Post-Growth Fashion (p. 145). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

Although this sweater is a cotton-blend, I have the same “never washed” practice that keeps the garment’s meaning of use: it’s value is higher than other pieces so it is used less, but used with more purpose. It is washed less not because I want it dirty, but because those fibers hold the memories of my experience at FIDM, the people I wore it around, and how I felt when it covered me: that sweater gave me an identity of strength and determination that I need at the time. It was a used sweater, brightly colored on the side of Sunset Boulevard, but now it has en-capsuled a time in my life I may never get back: it’s not a sweater, it’s a piece of my history.

Carolyn J Cei

The Wearer, the Worn, and the Conscious

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As a former classmate of mine, and someone I consider an influence in my classes, Chy Sprauve’s “Dress(ing) as Self-Help: Power, Aesthetics, + Pedagogy” is still a powerful read from the catalog. So, when thinking of her inspiration from Richard Sennett, and how the body is transformed by the wearer, I am struck by this quote in particular:

“Though many of us do not make the clothing or design patterns ourselves, the act of dressing is still a “collective” process because we are curating items on our bodies that other people have created and designed. The act is also many times, anonymous, because, in many cases, the people who make the clothing work in factories miles and miles away. Many times, unnamed labor creates our clothing. This is how the act of dressing is both “collective” and “anonymous” (Sprauve 63).

Fabric of Cultures Class – Fall 2016 Semester

This reminds me of Jane Schneider’s “Out of Polyester” article where Didier Ravin makes a similar, yet more aggressive claim, in terms of social class and polyester emergence in the 1970’s; Ravin attacks elitist companies like Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein for using “natural” fibers in their materials where Ravin asserts: “I am sure that most customers who followed Mr. Klein’s view of ‘back to nature’ would be surprised that the tiny Mexican village serving as the backdrop of his recent campaign is today still mired in abject poverty…” (Schneider 7).

So, with both quotes in mind, I am drawn on this idea of the “collective” as a layered experience between multiple people. For example, the clothing itself can be an entity and its transformation of cloth to clothing makes it an object that can stand on its own. When placed on the body, the clothing is an actor in the ways we move and our body language transforms by how the clothing hits, wraps, and as Chy says: how the clothing is curated to the body. We make the choice of choosing what clothing we wear, where we are actors in decision of our clothing selection, but when the clothes are placed on the body, the clothing becomes active in determining our demeanor. The “anonymous” is still present, though, even after this “collective “process between “wearer” and “what is worn”. The “anonymous”, as Ravin would argue, is only anonymous to the consumer; the companies, elite or not, know the creators of the clothing whether it is a Mexican village or lawful laborers. So, how does the “anonymous” part of the clothing we wear truly affect us as consumers?

As Manolo Blahnik says: “People walk differently in high heels. Your body sways to a different kind of tempo” so that the shoe designer agrees that’s clothing can transform our body and its language; the question still is: if we are feeling the clothing against our bodies and reacting, would our emotional response change with knowledge of how the clothing was made? I believe that the initial reaction of wearing a pair of high heels or slipping into your favorite pair of jeans, as Eco as stated, is a very personal and instant reaction that cannot really be controlled: it is part of our unconscious to how we react when the skin touches the clothing and the clothing changes us.

Fabric of Cultures Class – Fall 2016 Semester

Our conscious understanding of how clothing is made wouldn’t necessarily interrupt that very instant reaction of how we feel when clothing and skin touch, but it would produce an emotional feeling afterwards of either regret, disgust, confusion, etc. So, the process of allowing our demeanor to change is a very intimate experience that needs to be free of conscious afterthought of where the clothes came from to keep it intimate, and almost romantic. The consciousness of the creation is powerful knowledge, but it may prevent our desire to shop to certain places where our unconscious would benefit in the desire of having such clothing. I by no means think we should be unaware of where our clothes come from, but I do wonder if that romantic bond between the wearer and the clothing would be broken, and less magical, if the mind was conscious, or too aware, of the “anonymous” in creation. While creation, in terms of safety and legality, is beneficial morally, how is beneficial for our relationship with clothing in how we feel, react, and bond when we wear them?

Best,

Carolyn J Cei