About some clothes

[kate_schaefer]

I have sewn two brides into their gowns.

One was my own damn fault. I miscalculated, had to stay up all night before the wedding, sewed her into her gown. She looked great. It was a terrific party. I had a wonderful time. They had a good marriage, too.

The other was someone else's mistake, and I fixed it. Does this dress make my butt look funny? asked the bride, and I said, yes, yes, it did. Made her butt look like she had a prehensile tail, only the tail was kinda broken beside being inappropriate. I took the boning out, put flannel padding in, and sewed her in just before the photographer got there. Had to sew her into her longline bra, too, while her maid of honor steamed the wrinkles out of the wedding gown. She looked great.

I swore a mighty and completely unsustainable oath that I wouldn't ever sew another person into her dress at the last minute. So far, I have managed to keep that oath, but it's been a close thing. A week ago yesterday, I sewed the last bead onto Nisi Shawl's jacket about twenty minutes before she put the jacket on.

She looked fabulous when she made her guest of honor speech at Wiscon. The outfit did what I wanted it to do. It looked dignified and formal, with its dancing underside hidden for the moment. It said, This is a special occasion. It fit Nisi properly. The colors looked good on her. The style suited her. At the same time, the clothes weren't the thing one noticed first on looking at Nisi that evening. Somewhat surprisingly, the crown wasn't the thing one noticed first, either. The first impression (I think) was just that Nisi looked well and happy, and her festive clothes supported that impression.

Luke McGuff took a picture of Nisi with her niece and nephew (you have to imagine the other niece, who was across the hall at the time) at the Photobooth party that night. I need to get tgether with Nisi later this summer so I can take some pictures of details I like: the beading at the yokes, the pieced charmeuse in the yokes (Nisi's mom particularly liked that detail and said it looked African to her; that wasn't my model, but since how I piece comes out of American patchwork, which is strongly influenced by African patchwork, that influence is definitely there), and the way the pockets work. I wish I had seen Nisi dancing, because while the jacket was designed for the speechmaking part of the evening, the skirt was designed for the dancing part of the evening, with two hidden layers of brighter orange and pink chiffon under the visible formal gold top layer.

Comments

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Oh, my, yes. It's a major part of my identity in this later part of my life. I find it hilarious that I do this, because I spent a lot of time being contemptuous of fashion in my youth, but now I think of it as language. I am fascinated with the way humans express and conceal information about ourselves through the things we put on our bodies, and mystified about why we do this, when very few other animals have ever done so. Orangutans in captivity will put on pieces of fabric and wear them around for a while; I haven't heard of any other animals that voluntarily wear clothes, though I wouldn't be surprised to learn that other primates do so from time to time.

I know that people generally think of clothing as an invention that allowed us to move into more difficult climates, but I think that's a side benefit that came after we started wearing clothes. All human cultures seem to have invented clothing, even if they live in completely benign climates, which suggests strongly that we have some other reason for clothing ourselves. My guess is that we wear clothes because it makes us sexy; that's generally the reason for any otherwise inexplicable animal behavior.

Whoops, you got the isn't-clothing-weird? speech rather than the simple, straightforward response. I know you'll be more entertained by the convoluted answer than the simple one, so I'll leave it.

[singingnettle.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's not weird. I've had very similar thoughts about clothing and the way we use it to send messages and express things about how we want to be perceived in the world. Humans don't have much in the way of color, pattern, or very spectacular sexual dimorphism (face it, mating plumage is much more compelling than a dangly bit between the legs or enlarged mammary glands), so I suspect we took to ornamenting ourselves very early in our history.