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mourning/morning
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
A very lovely friend has lost her husband recently. They really loved each other. I was thinking about mourning clothes and whether or not it was a good idea to do yourself up in black with veils and jet jewellery and a scrap of hair from your loved one pinned to you. A signal to everybody that you are not yourself, you are off somewhere in your head with your pain and your memories.
Last night I dreamed about my friend. We were dressing up with great piles of stuff - I remember pink, voile, lace, delicate frilly stuff, feminine, diaphonous. But I looked terrible in everything I tried on and she didn't want to dress up. The dream ended with us embracing wearing our ordinary clothes. A dream of love and acceptance maybe.
But it also links clothes with identity, especially female identity and I'm very interested in that. The meaning of clothes. When I was little, I collected lace, ribbon, glass buttons and sewed them on to everything - the dolls' clothes, my own clothes. I can't begin to describe the pleasure I took in making a ruffle out of blue lace and sewing it to my pyjamas. Deeply satisfying and thrilling.
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