I. Getting Dressed

A. Bourdieu: dilemma of too much or too little specificity
B. Woodward, Why Women Wear What They Wear: daily moments of getting dressed

1. Choices
2. Feelings
3. Bodily assessment

C. Getting dressed scenes in movies

1. Clueless, 1995
2. American Gigolo, 1980
3. About Time, 2013

D. Dressing = daily creation of the self in a social context through intimate engagement with material items
E. Fitting in and being unique
F. Trying on a self: "When a woman's idealized image of who she could be gives way to uncertainty when she sees her actual image, this questioning of the self continues, and the woman goes back to the wardrobe to reimagine herself, and the process continues" (153).
G. "How women choose what to wear is a pivotal moment in how their identities are constructed" (29).
H. Routine acts of getting dressed, not fashion magazines' ideal images, shape how women see themselves
I. Methods

1. 15 months in London and Nottingham
2. Snowball sampling: 15 women in London, 12 in Nottingham. Woodward was present often at the private moment of getting dressed
3. Repeated interactions
4. Learn whether outfits worked

J. Theoretical framework: "how women see themselves in the eyes of others (social psychology), how the materiality of clothing allows women to construct their identities (costume history, anthropology), how clothing feels on their bodies (sociology), and the importance of wider cultural contexts (anthropology)" (29).

 

II. Facing your Wardrobe

A. Wardrobe = collection of clothing, physical storage location
B. Organization systems: hung vs. folded, sorted by function, occasion, category, aesthetics, frequency of use
C. Try on an outfit, try on a self: "defining their identities through specific items of clothing" (13).
D. Self is created, not pre-existing or stable: "something women question, try on and construct through a material, embodied practice" (15).
E. Habitus is patterned, but permits shifts
F. Clothing that is kept but not worn materially encodes our memories: biographical ruptures, youthful subcultures, past jobs, Theresa's stretched dress
G. Link to future: Mumtaz's saris
H. Biographical shift: Emanuela after battling cancer
I. Keeping clothing = managing your biography by making memories tangible; clothing can enact transformations in your biographical self; this can often involve juxtapositions of past in present to make new identity

 

III. Intentions and Outcomes

A. Wearers' intentions
B. Secondary agency of objects (Gell 1998)
C. Rosie's leather MaxMara skirt
D. Mumtaz's outfit for a wedding in France
E. Borrowing: like kula objects, clothing retains traces of owners
F. Constraints on dress

1. Limited domain of the wardrobe items
2. Agency of clothing, material and ideological
3. Internalization of how others will view us

G. Dressing is anxious, contingent, exciting

 

IV. The Gaze and the Mirror

A. How does an "I" see a "me"?
B. Sadie's elaborate preparation to go out

1. Ideal vision of her "natural" self
2. Gaze can be welcome or unwelcome

C. Rules

1. Rules don't just constrain; lack of rules isn't liberating
2. Younger women more prone to particular looks
3. Older women can "compromise and recombine diverse facets of clothing" (121).
4. Too many possibilities can be paralyzing

D. Proximity

1. Seeing items on others allows one to interpret it
2. "In my ethnography, women's participation in fashion was always rooted in women's existing clothing, friendship groups and relationships" (133).

E. In Style magazine, What not to Wear: "Rather than hampering creativity, following fashion rules is often the very domain for the generation of innovatory looks" (134).
F. Habitual clothing: jeans

1. Introduce new items into wardrobe
2. Mold the body
3. Ubiquitous, yet personal

G. "Clothing, as a material form, gives women the sensation of having a self, including a self with agency" (150).