The themes that emerged from my dress practice interview was the organization of the wardrobe, the types and the weight of the external influences (culture, age, environment, event, gender, etc) my interviewee received when buying garments and dressing up. I noticed that she has so much more garments than what she wears (more of her wardrobe was inactive). I also found garments in the style that she normally would not wear which was interesting because these garments contrasted with her style completely. Her dress practice is similar in that we both have a vague idea of what we would wear the day before but we decide on the garments the next day depending on the weather, the activities of the day, the type of people we would meet. Also, the way we dress around different people are very different depending on the culture, class, age and gender of the people.

“How does one represent the formation of national, as well as transnational, subjectivities? Let’s consider a rather extreme example. Before being crowned as Miss Universe in 2010, Miss Mexico (Ximena Navarrete) explains the significance of her choice of a red gown for the evening gown competition: “I chose red to represent the 200th anniversary of Mexico.” (The year 1810 marked the beginning of Mexico’s war for independence from Spanish colonial rule.) For the Best National Costume competition, Miss Mexico wore an elaborate gown and headdress that celebrates the Kukulcán Pyramids of Yucután (see Figure 3.1). In these two garment choices, Navarrete not only consciously represents her national subject position; she also expresses her subjectivity through a link between her own body and the larger “body politic” (Parkins 2002). After she is crowned, she says in an interview that she wants “the whole world to know about my country and my people.”

Kaiser, Susan B. Fashion and Cultural Studies. London: Berg Publisher, 2012.

The interview confirmed my understanding of the relationship between clothing and the body in that people wear different clothings depending on the 5Ws (Who, what, where, when, why), and whilst comfort plays a factor in the way we dress, the fit and the overall look is so much more important than ultimate comfort in general.