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| The 1924 photograph of Virginia Woolf taken for British Vogue. |
It is accepted that in the 1970s, her work helped to inspire feminism. I know Woolf's work had a big impact on my friend, Sandra, when she studied her at Otago University during the latter part of that decade.
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| Knole |
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| Vita is on the left. |
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| Henri Matisse 'The Yellow Dress' |
Faces in the Water by Janet Frame (The Women’s Press Ltd,
1980)
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Pg.19 |
These excited people in their red ward dressing gowns and long grey
ward stockings and bunchy striped bloomers which some took care to display to
us…. |
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Pg.20 |
…And there was my own face staring from the carriageful of the
nick-named people in their ward clothes, striped smocks and grey woollen
jerseys. |
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Pg.21 |
….a pair of grey woollen socks |
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Pg.44 |
And occasionally we glimpsed these same people in their dark blue
striped smocks, their skin sun stained and wrinkled. |
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Pg.48 |
..when she would take off her red cardigan |
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Pg.49 |
A rope clothesline sagging with their striped ward clothes was
stretched between two poles at the back door. |
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Pg.50 |
..beyond the shabby appearance of their braces hitching their pants
anyhow, their unbuttoned flies, their flannel shirts bunched out, hanging
loose. |
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Pg.53 |
Keep on your nightgown and dressing gown, your nightgown and dressing
gown… |
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Pg.55 |
My mother wore new clothes which I did not trust. For years, ever
since she had been married, her main article of clothing had been what she
called “a nice navy-blue costume”. But lately she had sent her outsize
measurements to a mail-order firm in the north and had had delivered to her a
brown costume with fine brown stripes. |
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Pg.59 |
And Susan is standing still and silent in the corner; her limbs are
blue and cold. She has taken off her cardigan and shoes and will not be
persuaded to put them on again. |
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Pg.66 |
Her dresses had been marked, her shoes, her nighties and in the rush
of admission they had forgotten to mark her, therefore she was telling people
her name, indelibly, like the ink on the tape. |
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Pg.68 |
…even their bodies were the same, huge, encased in the white uniform
through which you could see the marks, like bars, of their corset. |
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Pg.73 |
She was a middle-aged woman who had unconsciously or deliberately
followed the current fashion advice that pink and grey are “right’ colours
for middle aged people. She wore pink blouses and grey suits and floating
chiffon scarves. |
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Pg.89 |
And now I was in Lawn Lodge, the refractory ward, in a room full of
raging screaming fighting people, a hundred of them, many in soft strait
jackets, others in long canvas jackets that fastened between the thighs, with
the crossed arms laced at the back with stiff cord, and no way out for the
hands. |
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Pg.102 |
Those assessed as likely to have visitors...were brought beyond the
enclosure, like cattle chosen for exhibit, to wait for the dressing
operations which began when two nurses entered dragging a sheeted bundle. The
knots were untied and “best” clothes, anybody’s clothes, as-long-as they
nearly fitted, lay ready to be put on anybody. The waiting patients were
already being stripped of their high-waisted faded floral smocks and
subjected to a swift curry combing process with a damp flannel and a ward
comb. Shoes were put on, ward shoes, black lace-ups with a dusty shine on
them, and there were high-spirited clompings up and down and attempts at
skating and kicking. A pillowcase of garters were emptied on the floor and
distributed with earnest persuasions not to ping them but to wear them for
keeping up the stockings. Some patients had gray ward socks; others whose relatives had
remembered that mentally sick people, at least on gala occasions like
visiting day, may sometimes wear the kind of clothes worn in the outside
world, had their own real nylons, pulled delicately and dangled from smooth
cellophane envelopes. What did it matter that, after visiting hours, these
same stockings would be ruined? |
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Pg.106 |
Sometimes I had no pants on or no shoes and stockings because when my
bundle was given out in the morning they were missing and there was no time,
in the rush of dressing one hundred people, to attend to the needs of those
who, like myself, were capable of dressing unaided. |
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Pg.120 |
..Everybody was issued a clean smock…some patients had their hair
tied with satin ribbon and a slit of lipstick etched upon their wrinkled lips. |
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Pg.169 |
..Sometimes, in my mind, I dressed the people in ordinary clothes,
rubbed the dreadful stain of hospital from their skin and put teeth in their mouths,
put makeup on their faces, gave them handbags to carry and gloves to wear,
and then I thought in my naïve way that I had transformed them into ordinary
people… |
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Pg.184 |
…noting their weird hats, crumpled coats, twisted stockings… |
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Pg.185 |
In the coat cupboard there hung a collection of ward dresses, pastel-shaded
party dresses in stiff shiny materials with gathers, pleats and flares and
sometimes matching underskirts in parchment nylon… Although Matron Glass was constantly telling me to “write to your
people and tell them you need clothes,” I did not do so, for my parents
either had no money or did not realise that mental patients wear clothes
other than the pants which arrived for me in festive parcels at Christmas
times and on birthdays. |
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Pg.186 |
…One day we were fitted for new skirts and sweater sets…chosen to
wear what could be called the uniform of the dead. We dressed in our exotic party dresses, taffetas and rayons and silk
jersey florals…. |
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Pg.188 |
When the last group from the male side had arrived, looking self-conscious
with slicked-down hair and pressed trousers and white handkerchiefs peeping
from pockets |
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Pg.192 |
…and the six o’clock jingling of keys as the nurses unlocked the
doors and threw in the clothing bundles. |
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Pg.194 |
On Monday we dressed in our party clothes which looked gaudy and
incongruous on people about to take part in sports. |
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Pg.211 |
…I dressed in the crumpled clothes they gave me… |
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Pg.212 |
One morning I was given my clothes and told to get up. My clothes
flapped and sucked at my bones like a tent pitched in the snow… |
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Pg.223 |
…and the patients pegging their washing on the rope clothesline
strung between the poplars, and it was their own clothes, not stout striped
flannel pants and thick ward socks and scarecrow nighties. |
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Pg.245 |
And then the patients who, when they are undressed at night, are
found to have their fingers clenched tightly over something which they refuse
to surrender, as if they said, You can have the blue striped dress, and the
flannelette pants, bunchy, reaching to the knee, and the gray woollen ward
stockings, and the v-necked striped garment known in official records as a
chemise….. |
Jessica Ogden is an interesting clothing designer. Old and distressed fabrics were a continuous theme in her collections Want to know more, click on this link, lots of good information about her work. http://www.jessicaogden.com/about
Regard writing being an inspiration for design, when I was in lockdown I was working on a Central Saint Martins Foundation course project. The project was to be based around corduroy, which was challenging. I eventually worked with a delightful story from my partner's childhood...
"When he was 9 or 10 years old, Little Eric lived in the village of Mostyrn in Wales. He went out to play in the paddock one day, wearing his new pair of bedford cords. While climbing through a fence he caught himself on barb wire or a staple and tore the left leg, inside thigh of his new bedford cords. Little Eric knew he was going to be in deep shit with his mum, 'cos he didn't have many trousers and they were not a well off family! So, he goes back to the cottage and carefully spread the trousers out on the arm of the armchair, got a needle and thread and began to sew up the triangular shaped tear. When finished Little Eric thought he made a pretty neat job. "Mum will be pleased" thought Little Eric. Feeling much better Little Eric picked his bedford cords up from the arm of the chair, and ripped the material on the armchair. He'd sewed the bedford cords to the armchair! Oh no, it's double deep shit now!!
My creation, which came out of that story, and some other aspects concerning corduroy, e.g.corduroy roads.
And lastly, I return to Virginia....isn't this an amazing photo of her taken in 1912. She is statue like,
and the bag I made in honour of her feminism.
