The dressed and styled human body is irresistible to analyse. Framed by the idea that people’s dress and engagement with Fashion is a fundamental component of how we all conceive, create and convey personal and shared histories, the following ‘mini-essays’ are my attempt to unpick the cultural threads that hold our wardrobes together. Aide-mémoires, tongue-in-cheek, discursive, works-in-progress, I began writing them in 2013 in the spirit of Roland Barthes’ Mythologies and Umberto Eco’s Travels in Hyper Reality, although rarely with the same perspicacity, precision and pace.
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11. The Triumph of Death
There is a close connection between art and clothing, as scholars like Anne Hollander have shown.[i] Both are forms of creation that provide people with the potential to alter perceptions of themselves and their environments. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it was cheaper to pose for a portrait and dress in the fine fabrics…
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10. The Christmas Jumper (1)
(Or the Sociological Significance of the Christmas Jumper) A friend of mine recently bought a Christmas jumper. It is navy blue with a red and white embroidered pattern running horizontally across the chest. He is very excited. My friend is slight, but the jumper is large, which apparently makes it more comfortable. This was…
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9. A pair of glasses
If the eyes are truly the windows to our soul, it is surprising that spectacles have generally suffered from a bad press in the West. Eyewear is currently in vogue, regardless of whether corrective lens are necessary, but it has not always been so, especially for men. …ASOS The current popularity of eyewear has undoubtedly…
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8. The Badge
A few weeks ago, I went along to an interview with the children’s author Lauren Child, which had been organised as part of the Sherborne Literary Festival.[i] The discussion was meant to focus on text and image, two topics of personal interest. Instead, it focused on Child’s life and her new book, two topics of…
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7. The Accessory
The social stakes in making a sartorial statement There are certain items of clothing within the male wardrobe that are widely considered taboo; they are worn, but rarely, by the bold or the sartorially uneducated. The walking cane is possibly the most dangerous of these risqué items, but there is an array of objects that…
Dr Benjamin Wild 