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Remember Me? Creative Conversations with Clothes

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Clothes are great conversationalists; “If dresses could talk, what stories might they tell?” (Weber and Mitchell 2004:3). Every garment tells a story: who made it, who wore it, what marks and alterations map its history. Clothes have great memories and just looking at a favourite item can transport us to another time, another place. Conjuring memories associated with personal items of clothing can really allow one to ‘collapse time’ (Benjamin, 1999) and move backwards and forwards within one's life history; to “move through time, tardis like” (Stanley, 1992:54). I never tire of using garments to express stories, through taking them apart, embellishing them with print and stitch, creating images of them, writing about them and even writing on them; any method which gives them a voice. The dress I'm working on might reveal something of itself, perhaps a worn-out hem or ghost stitch marks, which in turn inspires me reveal something previously unexposed about myself. “Our clothes are full of memory and meaning. That's why we all have garments … that we haven't worn in years but just can't part with” (Spivak, 2004:6–7). Dresses are my confidants, they are who I pass on my family sayings and traditions to, who I tell my stories to. Perhaps they will stand in for my own descendants – passing on my stories to others after I'm gone.

Let me take you on a dress story journey to explore the ways in which dresses help give voice to some of my own most revealing narratives, no matter the risk to self and “that engaging in the autoethnographic process itself can constitute an emotionally painful and potentially self-injurious act.” Sparkes (2018:208). Specifically I will tell the story of The Daughter's Dresses my ‘real/ not real’ daughter as I imagine her growing up through three children's dresses representing three key milestones in her life. The project was prompted by an event in my own life and addresses my own childlessness playing with alternative futures, collapsing time (Benjamin, 1999) through prospective nostalgia (Boym, 2001).

Keywords: Autoethnography ; Daughter ; Dresses ; Embroidery ; Family ; Garments ; Hand-stitching ; Loss ; Memory ; Mother ; Nostalgia ; Stories ; Textiles ; Time

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Remember Me? Creative Conversations with Clothes
Intellect , 108 (2024); https://doi.org/10.1386/9781835950166_8
/content/books/9781835950166.c06
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References

  1. Ashes to Ashes (2008–10, UK: Kudos Film and Television and Monastic Productions, in association with British Broadcasting Corporation).
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References

  1. Ashes to Ashes (2008–10, UK: Kudos Film and Television and Monastic Productions, in association with British Broadcasting Corporation).
  2. Behar, Ruth (1996), The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart, Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Boym, Svetlana (2001), The Future of Nostalgia, New York: Basic Books.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Collins, Peter and Gallinal, Anselma (eds) (2012), The Ethnographic Self as Resource: Writing Memory and Experience into Ethnography, Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Epp Buller, Rachel (2020), ‘Writing maternal futures through epistolary praxis’, University of Brighton, Centre for Arts & Wellbeing, 13 November.
  6. Felkin, Denise (2018), ‘Mum's not the word. Childless childfree’, http://www.denisedenise.co.uk/mums-not-the-word.htm. Accessed 28 June 2021.
  7. Hirsch, Marianne (2012), The Generation of Post Memory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust, New York and Chichester: Columbia University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. King, Nicola (2000), Memory, Narrative, Identity: Remembering the Self, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Liu, Ken (2016), The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, USA: Saga Press; UK: Head of Zeus.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Sontag, Susan (1979), ‘Introduction’, in W. Benjamin (ed.), One Way Street and Other Writings (trans. E. Jeffcott and K. Shorter), London: NLB, pp. 7–28.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Sparkes, Andrew (2013), ‘Autoethnography at the will of the body: Reflections on a failure to produce on time’, in N. Short, L. Turner and A. Grant (eds), Contemporary British Autoethnography, Rotterdam: Sense, pp. 203–11.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Stanley, Liz (1992), The Auto/biographical I: The Theory and Practice of Feminist Auto/biography, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Thompson, Paul (2000), The Voice of the Past: Oral History, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]

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