Connections
The link between a person and a garment can never be planned for, but has lasting impact when a garment becomes a life-long companion. It reveals the potential for change in each individual and often marks that in the associations with a piece, for single, small actions can have big effects.
Maternal maternity wear
"I am wearing a dress that I haven’t been wearing for a little while, but I wore it when I was pregnant. It’s a maternity dress that my mum also wore when she was pregnant… It was sewn by my grandmother…
So, when I was pregnant last year my mum kept turning up with various dresses that she had kept in storage, that she had been wearing when she was pregnant. And she would just keep turning up at my house with a different dress each time… And I liked that’s it’s very 1970s style, so It is really baggy and loose, and that was really nice because all of the maternity stuff at the moment’s all very body conscious and It’s about having the best bump that you can have and wearing really tight clothes. And I kind of liked wearing something that was very loose and layered and just covered everything…
It was weird to put it on [now that I’m not pregnant] because everything that I wear at the moment is chosen so that I can breastfeed in it, so this is probably the first day in three months that I haven’t put something on with a thought of “can I breastfeed my baby in this dress?” (laughs)…"
Melbourne - March 2013
Photograph by
Paul Allister
