How does clothing reflect identity?
Moody et al (2010, p. 162) argue that “clothing can be used to reflect the inner self of the wearer”, however what happens when it is not just the clothing revealing who a person is, but what is appended to it? Tasked with designing a garment to survive a social breakdown, we defined the situation as overcrowded living conditions, seen on a local basis as a lack of privacy, a mixed community, and nowhere to express your personality. This projected circumstance led us to a design a garment which attempted to mitigate these conditions, fashioned from offcuts and second-hand pieces.
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The project raised questions of how identity is expressed and recognized a need to better understand the connection between dress and identity. Negrin (1999, p.109-110) asserts that you are being defined by your clothing, and there is an inability to separate yourself from how you are dressed. This paper argues that as well as the physical connection with clothing that Negrin discusses, garments carry experiential and performative associations.
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Safdar et al (2020, p. 36) maintain that dress is a universal form of expression and go on to describe the areas of life dress can affect, including personality, group or cultural membership and context of social situations. O’Connor (2005, in Hansen, 2004), on the other hand puts forward the compelling argument that there is also an experiential dimension to the “wearing and viewing” (p. 373) of clothing. Therefore, it is not only the wearer who experiences the impact of dress choices. Hansen (2004) also argues that assembling an outfit is a performance and an embodied practice (p.373). However, “experience is not simply given to us” stresses Monaghan and Just (2000, p.53), as we see the world through the context of our culture. This is key in understanding how our prototype will be received.
The “shielding garment” we devised would use a fabric ‘wing’ to create space for self-identity, and space for sharing personal items such as photos, tickets and book covers that embodied values, moments in time or memories from life events.
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Image 1 and 2: The shielding garment. Photo Credits: Qibin Cheng, Carlotta Montanari
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Bringing O’Connor and Hansen’s theories to our studio practice, what we generated was experiential and performative. However, in reflection I question whether our design was about clothing as the fabric was partially used as a vessel on which we placed the personal items.
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Woodward (2005, in Hansen, 2004) speculates that there is ‘lived experience’ within our clothing choices, built from both our own and others’ opinions on how we dress. This will influence what we choose to wear, I argue this would extend to the people in our hypothetical situation, and their choices on what artefacts to display within their ‘wings.’ Furthermore, reviewing the design against Monaghan and Just’s statement, the artefacts chosen would have a cultural context too, which would result in a wide variety of wing assemblies.
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Dress and identity are complex, and our project investigates only a small window into how these intertwine. Safdar et al (2020) reference several studies which found that “younger individuals are more fashion conscious and are more likely to conform with social norms than older individuals (Lascu & Zinkhan, 1999; Manrai et al., 2001)” (p. 45), which suggests that age affect who may feel most strongly about the identity their clothing reveals. There are also the aspects of immigrants whose clothing choices may be influenced or motivated by the need for acceptance (Safdar et al, 2020, p. 37), as Niinimaki (2010, p. 153) affirms, noting that clothing is part of a ‘dynamic social process’, touching upon the ideas of trends and culture.
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There was not enough time or space to investigate each one of these research areas; we had merely assumed that the people we were designing for would require and/or accept the garment we proposed. This means the outcome was not enriched with data from theoretical or first-hand research or testing. Our experience was lacking the ‘make it real’ element and given an opportunity to revisit this, we would extend our study to include age, acceptance, trends, and culture. However, uncovering within this paper that there are multiple layers around the experiential and performative actions of the way we dress does apply to the wing design, and offers an answer that clothing can reflect identity in more than just the garments we wear.
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References
Chattaraman, V. and Lennon, S.J. (2008) 'Ethnic identity, consumption of cultural apparel, and self-perceptions of ethnic consumers', Journal of fashion marketing and management, 12(4), pp. 518-531. doi: 10.1108/13612020810906164.
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Hansen, K.T. (2004) 'The World in Dress: Anthropological Perspectives on Clothing, Fashion, and Culture', Annual Review of Anthropology, 33, pp. 369-392. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25064858 (Accessed: 10 March 2023).
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Lok Lam, M.M., Hung Li, E.P. and Liu, W. (2021) 'Dissociative fashion practices and identity conflicts: local resistance as a response to clothing acculturation in the context of rural–urban migration', Journal of fashion marketing and management, 25(4), pp. 723-747. doi: 10.1108/JFMM-07-2019-0150.
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Monaghan, J. and Just, P. (2000) 'Bee Larvae and Onion Soup: Culture' Social and Cultural Anthropology. 1st edn. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, pp. 11-21.
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Moody, W. and Sinha, P. (2010) 'An Exploratory study: Relationships between Trying on Clothing, Mood, Emotion, Personality and Clothing Preference', Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, 14(01), pp. 161-179. doi: 10.1108/13612021011025483.
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Negrin, L. (1999) 'The Self as Image', Theory, culture & society, 16(3), pp. 99-118. doi: 10.1177/02632769922050638.
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Niinimaki, K. (2010) 'Eco-clothing, consumer identity and ideology', Sustainable development (Bradford, West Yorkshire, England), 18(3), pp. 150-162. doi: 10.1002/sd.455.
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Safdar, S., Goh, K. and Choubak, M. (2020) 'Clothing, Identity, and Acculturation: The Significance of Immigrants' Clothing Choices', Canadian journal of behavioural science, 52(1), pp. 36-47. doi: 10.1037/cbs0000160.
