Through the Wardrobe: Women's Relationships with Their Clothes

by Ali Guy (Editor), Joanne B. Eicher (Series Editor), Maura Banim (Editor)

Relating to clothes is a fundamental experience in the lives of most Western women. Even when choice is fraught with ambivalence, clothing matters. From considerations about dressing for success, to worries about weight, through to investing particular articles of clothing with meaning bordering on the sacred, what we wear speaks volumes about personal identity - what is revealed, what is concealed, what is created. This book fills a gap in the existing literature on the ambivalence of fashion and dress by drawing on a wide range of women's experiences with their wardrobes and providing empirical data noticeably absent from other studies of women and dress. Navigating what is clearly a contested realm in feminist scholarship, contributors provide rich case studies of the reality of women's relationships with clothing. While on the surface concerns about fashion or dress may appear to reflect gendered patterns, in fact clothing may be used to challenge ascribed meanings about femininity.

Genres: Nonfiction, Fashion

300 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Z · Rating 3 out of 5]

The central theme running through this collection is no doubt fascinating. I am not a sociologist but I take special interest in the evolution of notions of appropriateness in clothing and appearance. Some of the essays, for instance Sussanne Friese's examination of the cultural and sociological value of the wedding dress, the essays on evolving workwear for women in academic culture, and of course the final essays on the female image subsequent to physically destructive experiences like cancer (what runs through the minds of women who do / do not opt for prosthetic breasts, breast reconstruction etc?) were edifying; others seemed superficial and unreliable, for instance Abbott et al. on young women and their wardrobes, and particularly, Cahill and Riley on body art. I found it hard to accept or value conclusions when they were based on answers given by very small groups of women. Cahill and Riley, for instance, based their essay on the interviews with 13 women with some kind of body art, some of whose answers seemed perfunctory at best.

Nevertheless, this is a worthwhile read and a well-intended examination of the subject, perhaps even courageous (as Efrat Tseëlon says, "To engage in research on dress is to place oneself at the fringe of academic
respectability").