An Ode to Clothing and the Validity of Cultivating Personal Style(which I consider a feminist issue)

By Zola Gray(she/her); Photos by Zola and Ellison Gray

My room at home has been barren since I moved to college. I took all my posters with me, all my favorite books, all of the trinkets necessary to make the room feel like my own. I consider myself to be of strong tastes, and any room without dramatically exclaimed elements of personality feels neglected. Thus, I expected to feel an acute strangeness walking back into my little blue bedroom to see none of the elements that make it particular to me. That concern turned out to be misguided, however, as on the first day of Thanksgiving break I entered into what looked like a storage room strewn with the clothing I had left behind. Chain belts with lion heads, 50s pinup dresses, balloon skirts that have weight and spin. Vintage box bags and quilted jackets. Carpenter pants and ascots and block-heeled shoes. My brothers know better than to touch my clothing even in my absence, and what resulted was a preservation of my wardrobe as I interact with it everyday at home. I have spent a lot of time thinking about the significance of my affinity for clothing when looking at the superficial angles, the environmental angles, the capitalistic angles. This has evolved into A Lot of thought about the significance of clothing as a form of feminist expression, and the ways in which an embrace of the outward resignifies how I think about my body and my individuality.

In half of my classes during my first semester, we took up the body as a vessel into the tangible world and separated it from its inhabitant (the self). We characterized it, the body, as a primarily public entity, meaning that it is the thing in our possession that is the most subjected to the scrutiny and observation of others. It is not something we can hide from perceptions or bias of any kind, as it is a visual medium, and is something we all possess. This can be an alarming thing to reckon with, but was something I realized I’d already been thinking about through the advent of accessorizing: to rectify the human desire for some sense of individualism, there are clothing brands and types and trends. While it is not something we often give much thought to in philosophical terms, clothing is explicitly tied to the perception of our bodies as a public object. While our bodies communicate stratifications that are out of our control, clothing acts as a marker of personality that is divorced from the audible voice. It is a means of identifying yourself in a situation where not every person will have the chance to know what makes your quiddity your quiddity, what makes you your you. That situation happens to be always, as we meet most of the people we will ever meet in passing. Regardless of whether you want it to or not, your clothing creates a statement that is internalized by others.

Historically, these statements were meant to restrict gender. Members of western. aristocracy (ah, the lasting power of aristocracy) incorporated new elements with every passing century, such as the hoop skirts of the 18th century, the corsets of the 19th century, the cinched waists of the 20th century, so on and so forth. It served to distract rather than to stimulate; it served to reinforce the leisure economy that deemed idle women markers of status. One cannot divorce clothing from its capitalistic, classist, and sexist history, but it also cannot be divested of its power and significance when viewed on the body itself, as it is a physical representation of the self. Because of where it has been most notable in history, an affinity for clothing has always been linked to womanhood. Naturally, this makes it easier for society to dismiss it. It is viewed as frivolous, as is often true of habits ascribed to women. The powers that be now agree that the restrictive nature of women’s clothing is outdated, and have pivoted to dismiss attention to clothing as superficial and superfluous. The negative perception of a passion for fashion is perpetuated by our old nemesis, the patriarchy, and the instinct to denigrate such passion should therefore be examined. It is not subversive to undermine things that are “feminine” when the only reason they are deemed lesser is because the aforementioned powers have decided it is so. It is an equally radical act to designate attention to clothing as something specific to and defined by oneself more than decided by society. For me, I place value in creating different combinations, trying new things, collecting new ideas. I place value in going to thrift stores and unearthing the history discussed earlier in this essay, and reclaiming them as articles of choice. Nobody is prescribing me to wear corsets in my day to day life; in fact, many would think that a touch ostentatious for our contemporary social standards. I see the curious looks I get around my midwestern campus and am proud to say that most of my clothing has a history that I know. I wear my treasured cow-print corset and think of the no-waste seamstress I supported in buying a piece of her art. I tote around my decoupaged Anton Pieck box bag, and I remember researching its origins and Pieck’s career as a painter, further expanding my cultural vocabulary. I wear my newly acquired cropped pink corduroy blazer, and I think of the intimate act of trading clothing with my friends and understanding that we will build on each other’s stories in the items. Clothing is as multifaceted and interpersonal as the body itself. It is something that is reinterpreted and added to with every consideration of individual style; it is a creative pursuit. It externalizes your youness for the world at large, unifying the outward and the inhabitant. I feel the most in-bodied when my outer self reflects my inner self, complicated and ever-changing and always aging, and those moments of synthesis could never be frivolous. (First Written in December of 2019, Revised in June of 2020)