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We Are What We Wear?

September 09, 2004

The catwalk glamour of London Fashion Week may not be a reality for most of us, but the designers could benefit if they took more notice of how we wear our clothes, according to an Arts and Humanities Research Board-funded researcher. Fiona Candy, of the University of Central Lancashire is about to start work on a project that will help us understand more about how our clothes can develop and express our personal identities, and believes top fashion designers could learn a lot from researchers like her.

Fiona worked extensively as a fashion and textile designer before turning to academic research, and her combined experiences have changed her views of the fashion industry.

"My research is increasingly making me aware that fashion designers have found themselves in something of a cul-de-sac, having relied for too long on reinventions of the past", explains Fiona. "They don't interact with the people who are actually affected by their work. Often, they don't see how, as consumers, we have learned to navigate our way through a huge range of styles initiated by developments on the street, and by celebrities in the entertainment media rather than directed only from exclusive catwalks. I hope that my project will begin to develop ways in which designers can start thinking about clothes as lived garments which affect our sense of our own bodies. I hope to better understand clothing's influence on the way we feel alive"

Building on a 'body dictionary' developed from photographs and videos created in previous research, Fiona will develop a set of characters which reflect the different ways in which our clothes affect the way we move and interact.

"I've been looking at archive footage from the North West Film Archive to see people in their clothes from the 1900s right up until today. It is extraordinary to see how different people seem but also how much the same in so many ways. I find myself wondering: if I could travel back in time would I look and feel just like one of the people in the films if I wore their clothes? It's also quite clear that the same clothes are worn very differently by different people. Our clothing influences both our inner feelings and the outward appearance of our bodies, defining and generating styles of stance, gait and gesture."

This work will also form the basis of an installation, artworks and workshops at the Liverpool Biennial in October.


Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRC)