What lies beneath the clothes we wear
Since her third birthday, when she was teased for wearing a highly revealing party dress, Justine Picardie has been aware of the power of fashion to expose hidden emotions
And they’re off. New York, London, Paris, Milan – the fashion industry’s biannual world tour, where next spring’s trends will be revealed, revered and reviled in equal measure. Passionate adoration will quickly be made evident – the waiting lists for whatever is held to be the new bag of the season; the lovingly documented lists of which Hollywood actress is wearing which designer dress.
But there will be an equally emotional counterbalance in the current fi erce disapproval of fashion, which expresses itself as a stern, intellectual Puritanism. You will already know how the argument goes: fashion is frivolous. Anyone who cares about what they wear cannot be serious. An interest in clothes is akin to narcissism and empty-headed vanity. It’s why some women hide their newly bought clothes at the back of the wardrobe, like shameful secrets. And why others claim the moral high ground because they always buy the cheapest pieces, even when they could afford to do otherwise, as if there were nothing at all ambiguous in wearing a pair of £4 jeans, manufactured on the other side of the world in a hellish sweatshop that pays its workers less than a living wage.
here are many rational
reasons why fashion
might make women feel angry (sometimes it’s unwearable, or overpriced, or uncomfortable, or ludicrously out of touch with our bodies and daily lives). But that doesn’t necessarily explain the more generalised rage it can evoke. I was talking about this last week to Professor Elizabeth Wilson, from the London College of Fashion, while we were waiting to be interviewed on Radio 4’ s Woman’s Hour
about a new book I’ve written, My Mother’s Wedding Dress, which explores the connection between our clothes and our emotions; between what we wear, and what lies beneath. She told me a story about a chance encounter with a friend she hadn’t seen for years, a woman who, upon hearing that Prof Wilson’s career was based on the study of clothes, exclaimed: “I hate fashion!”
It seemed as oddly extreme a reaction, I remarked, as someone declaring that they hated architecture, or landscape design. “I wonder,” said Prof Wilson, “if it might have something to do with the association between clothes and nakedness? That some people feel uncomfortable with the idea of fashion, because of what it uncovers, as well as covers up?”
Certainly, we can probably all recognise an episode in our past when clothes have become associated with shame or humiliation, and their design a reminder that life is un-designed, that we may be ill fi tted to meet its unexpected twists. Mine was my third birthday party, when I wore a winged fairy dress sewn for me by my mother,
Tand was teased for not having any knickers on beneath. I loved the dress, but loathed myself, for what had been revealed.
And if fashion, in its broadest definition, is about what we choose to wear – about desire, as opposed to necessity – then it is hardly surprising that it can evoke such a powerful yet equivocal response. As the Freudian psychoanalyst J C Flügel observed in 1930, “Clothes serve to cover the body, and thus gratify the impulse to modesty. But, at the same time, they may enhance the beauty of the body, and indeed, as we have seen, this was probably their most primitive function… in fact, the whole psychology of clothes undergoes at once a great clarifi cation and a great simplifi cation, if this fundamental ambivalence in our attitude be fully grasped and continually held in mind.”
That our feelings about clothes and fashion are, therefore, far more than skin-deep, was clearly recognised by Freud himself, who took a keen interest not only in his own wardrobe, but also those of his patients. (“Freud all his life set store on a neat appearance, and, indeed, stressed its close connection with self- respect,” wrote his friend and biographer, Ernest Jones.) He also investigated the symbolism of what we dream of wearing, or not wearing, identifying the widespread nightmare of being inadequately or improperly dressed as typical to most of us, at some point in our lives. “This is why in Paradise human beings are naked and feel no shame in each other’s presence,” wrote Freud, in The Interpretation of Dreams, “until a moment comes when shame and anxiety awaken… and the work of culture begins.”
It is also the moment, perhaps, when the work of fashion begins. And if that sounds fantastical, remember that fashion is all about fantasy. Take a look, for instance, at Tommy Hilfiger’s 20th-anniversary show which kicked off New York Fashion Week last Friday. One hundred models strode along the catwalk in an all- American celebration of triumphant, preppy privilege. It was America the beautiful in nautical stripes and seersucker and anchor logos, America on the crest of the wave, despite the disaster that had engulfed its shores a few days earlier.
Of course, you don’t have to like or admire this particular show (I didn’t, though I’m still curious about Hilfiger’s evolution from hip-hop clothier to upholder of East Coast traditionalism). And if you absolutely hate it, or others in the coming weeks, then feel free to go ahead and say so. After all, fashion has always thrived on argument and reinvention, subversion and challenge. But don’t be too quick to dismiss fashion in general, because there is far more to it than meets the eye. There is more in its clues and nuances than one might, at first, suspect; more locked inside our wardrobes than ever comes out into the light. Þ ‘ My Mother’s Wedding Dress’ by Justine Picardie (Picador, £12 · 99). To order a copy for £11 · 99 plus £1 · 25 p&p, please call Telegraph Books Direct on 0870 428 4112.