After conducting the dress practice interview with a friend of a friend, I noticed some reoccurring themes that dictate the way in which she chooses to dress everyday. I think Ann is an embodiment of how “the dress and the body exists in dialectic relationship to one another”[1], as said by Entwistle in “the dressed body”. Her body and its needs dictates the way in which she dresses; somewhat similar to my own habits as well. When I say body, I mean it in both a physical and a mental entity. In one way; she dresses how she feels on a surface level that day; if she wakes up feeling bloated from the night before, it’s less likely she’ll dress the same as if she woke up feeling refreshed after a long nights of sleep. Therefore, one of her habits is that she really lets her day to day activities determine how she feels and in turn, that dictates how she dresses. Another key theme I noticed is whenever I ask her about keeping up with trends or having knowledge about the fast paced industry, she pretty much disregarded them and suggests that she would much rather stay authentic to her own style which is again reflected by what she feels comfortable in her own skin. Although this mentality is quite similar to mine, I do have some differences when it comes to dress compared to her. First of all, we have world’s different style. Being interested in menswear, I always tend to lean towards the mens section of apparel, whether its shopping or dressing. Much of my closet consists of blazers and oversized dress shirts or jeans in a palette that consists of a mix of muted and flashy. In this case, what determines my style is more affected by my interest and my education compared to how her style is more or less affected by her daily routines or what she is used to. I am definitely one to experiment and when I asked her about tapping into drastically different styles of dress, she was less likely to drift from what she knows on a bodily level. I think the major subject position that affects this is our profession or our college majors, so to speak. Being a fashion design major, I am constantly surrounded by information and news of fashion compared to her being a communication design major, she is much more surrounded by commercial and functional ways of design. This more or less explains her need for functionality and casualty compared to my need for experimentation with new styles of fashion that rose this season. I think this interview helped me understand the relationship between clothes and the body through just how much she told me her daily life affects the way in which she dresses. I think her personality and life habits affect her body too and to fulfil her bodily needs, she dresses accordingly. Our bodies function as an expressive tool to fulfil what we feel mentally and clothes in a way, play a big part in this fulfillment.
[1]Evans, Mary and Lee, Ellie. “Real Bodies, A Sociological Introduction”. New York City: Palgrave. 2002.
