Phenomenal dress! A personal phenomenology of clothing

Abstract

The principle aim of this article is to contribute to the development of a phenomenology of fashion through an analysis of my relationship with clothing using Heidegger’s phenomenology of Being as outlined in Being and Time (1997) to provide the study’s methodological foundations. I say ‘a’ phenomenology; however, I will argue that it is only through engagement with the ‘partial perspectives’ and ‘situated knowledges’ (Haraway 1988: 583) offered by individual Beings-in-their-worlds that small but significant intersubjective truths can be identified.

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“…Through autoethnography, the researcher creates transitional spaces by applying multiple layers or lenses (Ettore, 2017, p. 3;Boylorn, 2016). Franklin's self-reflexive autoethnography provides a useful vehicle by which to study personal clothing choice (Franklin, 2014), and is highly applicable to this study. In combining personal phenomenology with autoethnographic method, self-reflexive autoethnography seeks to capture a moment in time, the sweet spot where memory interacts with history, written from the perspective of hindsight.…”

“…To capture this moment, I have held a mirror up to myself as a young woman in my late teens and early twenties, as recollected from the vantage point of myself as a mature woman in her early sixties. By teasing out the small intertextual moments that have manifested around specific garments (Franklin, 2014), I confine my discursive field to five items of clothing, and thus I am only offering a partial perspective on those times. My approach is justified by the notion that objective vision can only be achieved through a partial perspective (Franklin, 2014).…”

“…By teasing out the small intertextual moments that have manifested around specific garments (Franklin, 2014), I confine my discursive field to five items of clothing, and thus I am only offering a partial perspective on those times. My approach is justified by the notion that objective vision can only be achieved through a partial perspective (Franklin, 2014). Overlaying this is my relection on the lens of contemporary texts that reflect on the fast-moving social and cultural environments of the times that had an influence on me, thereby situating my experience in a wider context.…”

“…With this in mind, this article focuses on five items of second-hand clothing that I owned during this period. It has also been well documented that what you wear is more about social relations than aesthetics (Franklin, 2014;Polhemus, 1994). In my discussion, I consider whether my inspiration and choice of dressing correspond with Foucault's six elements of heterotopia (Foucault & Miskowiec, 1986) in order to argue that personal clothing choice can be used as a signifier of heterotopia.…”