Not Just Any Dress: Narratives of Memory, Body, and Identity

Front Cover
Sandra Weber, Claudia Mitchell
Peter Lang, 2004 - Art - 298 pages
If dresses could talk, what stories might they tell? This compelling collection of short stories, essays, and poems features dress as the structural grounding for autobiographical accounts from women's lives in Western society. Often personal in nature, these «dress stories» point unfailingly to matters of social and cultural import. Some of the dresses described inhabit the popular imagination: the little girl dress, the communion dress, the school uniform, the prom dress, the wedding dress, the little black dress, and the burial dress. Beyond the semiotic, tactile, and visual aspects of the dresses themselves, the narratives delve into what dresses reveal about fundamental aspects of human experience: identity, embodiment, relationship, and mortality. Bought or made, then worn, forgotten, remembered, re-constructed, and re-interpreted, each dress offers a new glimpse into how we construct meaning in our daily lives, and how dresses serve to reinforce or resist social structures and cultural expectations.
 

Contents

Boxedin by My School Uniform
61
Tunique Desires
67
Addressing the Academic
73
Was It Something I Wore?
83
Scholae Personae
89
Curse You Descartes My Academic Gown
99
A Wardrobe Primer for Seasoned Academic Women
105
A Credit to Her Mother III
111
Corsetry Control and Comfort
145
Woman Time and Mother Sins
157
Thick Description
163
Made in China
183
Scarf Signatures
207
At the Ugly Ducklings Anonymous Meeting
223
Elsie Never Wore a Prom Dress
239
References
273

The Maternity Dress in Clothing Catalogues
127
The Christmas Doll
137

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