Introduction

Slater, Alison ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2005-2169, Atkin, Susan and Kealy-Morris, Elizabeth ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2843-1916 (2023) Introduction. In: Memories of Dress: recollections of material identities. Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 1-20. ISBN 9781350153790 (hardback); 9781350153806 (ebook); 9781350153813 (ebook)

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Abstract

Memories of Dress: Recollections of Material Identities critically investigates auto/biographical memories of past sartorial practices from multiple standpoints with a theoretical underpinning. It combines approaches from dress history, fashion studies and material culture to explore ways in which dress is remembered and how narratives of personal dress practices fit into or subvert wider concepts of fashion and style locally, nationally and internationally. The volume recognizes the value of material culture approaches but focuses on the immaterial meanings contained within and around clothing at the time it was worn and the time of recollection. Termed ‘material identities’, this approach encourages discussions of personal sartorial motivations and tensions with collective understandings of public appearance to be articulated and explored. Memories of Dress brings together multiple voices to encompass and contextualize different circumstances and experiences under four themes: Concepts, which frames autobiographical memories in relation concepts of self; Histories, which focuses on personal experiences of dress contextualized in the social and cultural circumstances where the clothing was worn; Objects, which explores memory through the lens of material culture, surviving garments, and associated ephemera; and Practices, which frames practice-led approaches to memories of dress including autoethnography, autobiography, and making. At the heart of the volume are auto/biographical narratives of everyday dress and life. The exploration of material identities through theories of memory offers a unique perspective by articulating, examining, and contextualizing the meanings and motivations, both collective and public, personal and private, behind the clothes we wear in different times, places, and life stages.