Here's my dirty little secret, I love clothing. I love getting dressed in the morning. I love costumes and how we construct ourselves for our own pleasure and possibly the perception of others. Last Autumn I heard an interview with the editors of a book called Women in Clothes. The interview thrilled and astounded me, it got me thinking, oh it inspired. The book is more or less a conversation among women on the subject of clothing, how and why we dress and how these choices define and shape who we are in the world. At the core of the book is a survey that 639 women completed asking them to explain their dressing philosophy and habits. Some of the questions: Can you say a bit about how your mother's body and style has been passed down to you, or not? Was there a point in your life when your style changed dramatically? What happened? What are some things you admire about how other women present themselves? When do you feel at your most attractive? The interview really got me thinking. Are there rules that I abide by when I get dressed in the morning? Who or what am I attempting to conjure when I don my garb? Do we as women dress for comfort? Oooo how do we define comfort?
This morning when I walked my girls to school we passed gaggles of middle school girls and all but a very few had on black leggings or tight jeans and Ugg boots or boots with fur topped cuffs. There was the one goth girl dressed in black tights and a whispery black skirt and the girl in what looked like a hand-me-down trench coat and rain boots that couldn't have offered much warmth on this winter's day, but really and truly all the others were dressed alike from the confident ebullient pretty girls to the awkward acne struck girl who shuffled along with her head down. The majority of the girls, in their self inflicted uniform, were dressed for comfort seemingly on a fabric meets skin level, but also on a deeply social level that maybe conveys status or conformity. The goth girl, she perhaps has rejected the herd mentality, rejected the collective we and is finding herself through unique clothing choices, and the girl in rain boots, I suspect she possibly might not have had the luxury of options, the resources to conform whether she wanted to or not. And so this question of dressing for comfort becomes expansive. Comfort with the social norms of disposable fast-fashion trends? Comfort with the extravagance of having options of what to wear based on your given mood? Comfort of mobility and sensuous fabrics? Comfort with the messages you convey with any item you choose to wear?
Strangely enough, prior to hearing the above mentioned interview, I don't think I realized how much of my psyche might be bound up in the act of dressing. That each question of the survey used to start this conversation could inspire a thin volume of explanation from me defies logic. It's not like I spend hours contemplating what to wear...
All of this being said, I dress my best for the everyday. Dressing up for a special occasion, happy or sad, always puts me in a quandary. Somedays I dress up, but when I have to dress up I almost always feel awkward, uncomfortable or out of place, like my "style" isn't made for occasions other than the every day. I love the love worn, the comfortable, the tried and true. My closet overfloweth and yet I continually reach for that same black cardigan. And so in the repeated wearing of the favorite bits or the fragile bones, threads break, buttons pop, knees fray, bottoms tear, moths eat and holes form. The love worn becomes unwearable, although I can often be found wearing something long after it's gone to shreds. For many of us accustom to our culture of disposal, tossing a favorite piece of clothing after it has busted-up is a sad act, but one of non-attachment that we have come to know far too well given that the majority of clothing today is poorly made.
Over time I allowed all those love worn pieces to pile up in a corner of my studio and when the pile became to daunting I shoved the whole lot of it in the attic, lost but not forgotten. Every now and then I remembered a favorite item lost to the abyss of the mending pile and wished for it, but never quite took the time to sit down with needle and thread to repair the poor garment. Sure I'd done a quick fix with the sewing machine or put a button back on a child's coat, but really taking the time to re-inspire a garment with mending was a passing thought rather than an intentional act. Oh I remember the winter I sat on the couch patching a pile of SmartWool socks that had worn through at the toe or heel, and I still wear those socks, patched and hole-less...and then there are the ones with holes that I continue to wear, but the commitment to repair has come and gone, it has wavered. I think it is high time for a re-commitment to all the clothes that have served me well and made me so much myself, to take a vow of repair, of revitalization.
If you were a favorite item, regardless of quality, if I have worn you through, I owe it to the plants that were grown and harvested to make you, to the workers that stitched, the designers that conceived to take the time to mend what others might cast off.
When I "mend" flowers on a page I am attempting to bring the essence of what they were back, but also to inspire a slightly new angle of engagement, a conversation between stitch and petal that wasn't there before, a new level of reflection. When we love so fiercely that we destroy, that is when the work begins. Well, it's hard for me not to wear my favorite clothing hard, I can't tell you how many times I have split the seat of my pants, but perhaps there is something in the act of taking the time to examine that split, to taking the time to lovingly repair it that will teach me about the way that I move and why it is that that split occurs repeatedly in different pairs of pants, to bring a new level of awareness. With this renewed commitment to clothing of the past, I vow to at least attempt repair to those items that once were favorites and to the ones that weren't favorites, maybe with repair I can make them more lovable.
To repair any given item is a commitment that requires the gift of time, since time is not always abundant for such tasks I am attempting to carry mending with me wherever I go. Then when the opportunity arises I can whip out these frail bits of fabric and stitch out in the world. It is the finding of time in between where mending will happen. These mendings won't be perfect. They will contain rough asymmetrical stitches, some haphazard and in different directions, some stitches layered on top of others, a little crude perhaps. Despite the rough shod stitches, new life will be breathed into old garments and new opportunity to wear something that has a storied past.
Alabama Chanin skirt project.
Amidst all this mending I am also totting around an Alabama Chanin skirt project in my bag, one that I can hopefully wear the heck out of and is being mended forward, stitched with love, uber enforced, such that it won't require more stitches down the road, and if and when it does, well it will have proven to be a favorite and worth the work.
Do you have many items in your wardrobe that you have loved and torn or lost the love for? Perhaps they just need a little mending. Perhaps you'll take up your needle and thread and darn those cloth wounds into a new bit of delight to brighten your day. Let's wear our mendings as a badge of honor, an act of loving, a commitment to the past and belief in the future, token and small as it might be.