Alternative Dress Codes
The choices we make about what we wear are influenced by life present, lives past and our ideas about our future selves. Expressions of values, aspirations, heritage, understanding and the physical shape of our bodies build a rationale for dress that transcend narrow commercial views about fashion. Instead they give us broader perspectives that honour our reality as well as our aspirations; and connect our psyche with our fibre and fashion choices.
Dress to honour all parts of my life
“My god daughter lived in India so I got the material for the red dress in India and then I had it made up by a Sardinian dressmaker back here [in the UK]… It’s red because I’m a socialist. I wear red a lot. But I’m also wearing my grandmother’s engagement ring, earrings made for me by my brother-in-law, ring made by my sister-in-law and a necklace given to me by my husband. And because I’ve got nothing from my mother because she died when I was young I’ve got tights with seams up the back because that’s all I can remember about my mother was that she used to have seamed stockings.”
London - March 2011
Photograph by
Kerry Dean
