COMFORT CLOTHING

In my work the word “comfort” is thrown about quite often. But it is a word that means different things to different people in different contexts. My messy definition of comfort in clothing is constantly evolving. I wanted to attempt to unpeel its layers over a series of writing entries (this is the first of a few). The commonality across definitions, I have found, is that comfort equates to a lack of tension: physically, emotionally, socially. There are many layers of tension to release and some that cannot easily be unpeeled from the other. For example, something physical can be used to comfort yourself emotionally. Additionally, to feel comfortable amongst others you must feel comfortable in your own skin. But comfort is more than just an exhale, a release, a drop of the shoulders. It is a melting followed by an embrace. It is safety: to express, to explore, the momentary precursor to being pushed out of your comfort zone. It is a pleasure that perhaps previously felt so impossible, so undeserved. It feels like home.

Food is so often the sensory experience that evokes the feeling of home: comfort food. Food that is warm and nourishing. Its making is an act of care, and its eating is an act of appreciation. It is made by loving hands that have absorbed the tacit knowledge of past generations. It has specific ethnic roots, maybe even political connotations. It evokes memories of people and places, of shared activities. But what are the clothes that evoke that same feeling of home? What are your comfort clothes?

Growing up, my mother referred to these as “around the house clothes”; clothes you put on as soon as you got home and hung up your “good clothes”. Growing up in Northern Ireland in the 90s these were a pair of pink spandex cycling shorts teamed with an inherited hand-knitted aran cardigan. The shorts moved with me as I moved. My prepubescent body drowned under the weight of the wool (the original owner was probably an older relative). But this weight was a familiar embrace. The cardigan was “worn in”. It had the beginnings of a hole at the right elbow that mapped the movement of my dominant hand. The look was not one that I wanted to present to the outside world. I would have been mortified if an unexpected visitor had called to the house. My mother was obsessed with “keeping things good”. But I was an aspiring artist and dancer with a vast expanse of fields to explore. I couldn’t be restrained by the fear of “keeping things good” so I wore garments that had expired out of their good phase. A friend, who teaches parkour, expressed something similar about the essentiality of his clothes not inhibiting his explorations. Of course, how the physicality of the garment facilitates his freedom of movement are important design considerations; its fit, fabrics and construction. But there was also something liberating about his clothes being past good. He didn’t have to be careful because they were already stained with previous entanglements between his body and the environment: tears under the armpit, worn out knees, sliding grass marks on the back. He was free.

Clothes are shaped by the lives they live but they also shape the lives that are lived in them. My parents had their own “around the house clothes” that had a distinct hierarchy based on the messiness of the activity at hand: cooking, gardening, clearing the drain, car washing etc. These clothes had so much more character than those hanging in the wardrobe. They had been lived in; they told stories. But they were also a type of uniform, albeit one that was self-imposed to be freeing rather than dictated by an oppressive system. They communicated something about the activities they were about to undertake. Irish DJ Annie McManus described this beautifully in her newsletter ‘Making Spaces’

This uniform also communicates something about the mindset of the wearer which my favourite fashion writer Leanne Cloudsdale explains in the context of her father’s pottering shed rig-out:

My favourite designer, Margaret Howell, makes clothes to be lived in inspired by her father’s gardening uniform:

In my research I have come across people who only like to wear “hand-me downs” precisely because of this soft worn-in quality. They despise the crispness of freshly manufactured clothes. This preference seems to be more of a physical tactile comfort than one of sentiment or emotional attachment. With time they will cultivate their own emotional comfort. 

Over the last two years of home office we have all had to shift into “around the house clothes”. Have your go to comfort clothes changed? During this time I started working as a PhD researcher where my days are divided into writing at home, making in a design workshop and presenting my work at academic conferences. These are decidedly very different tasks that involve very different movements in very different environments with very different social interactions. But increasingly I find my need for comfort clothing the same in all these situations: freedom from physical restrictions, reliable familiarity, and support when emotions become overwhelming. In addition, there is a deep desire for my clothes to communicate myself in a way that I “fit-in”.That is, to feel socially accepted for my self-expression.

I reassemble layers of clothing between these different tasks rather than reinventing a new identity. Howell’s clothes occupy the most space in my own wardrobe: items I’ve saved up for, second hand finds, or my own heavily inspired hand-made clothes. The construction does not restrict my movement yet I feel safe in the knowledge that the quality of construction will withstand the demands of my movement. The quality of fabric is soft yet hard wearing. Its aesthetic says something about who I am: my values, my motivations. Like the “around the house clothes” they communicate musings on the tasks I’m about to undertake and my mindset. (I like to think the look says I’m about to make something beautiful, thoughtfully reflect on it and then articulate those thoughts through carefully crafted words … others might disagree!) However, unlike my childhood “around the house clothes” this is a look I feel comfortable expressing outside my home.

My wardrobe is evolving. It reflects who I am now. It attempts to stay on the pulse of fashion trends but is limited by my financial income and tiny apartment. Increasingly, it is being shaped by an investment in the future me: someone that straddles her own design practice with an academic career, someone that travels but is committed to building a home and community, someone that tends to her vegetable patch and is nourished by her comfort food and comfort clothing. The clothing, like the wearer, must embrace those contradictions; it must release the tensions between these states of being. Perhaps childhood me, pictured above, should be my muse.