OUR HISTORY IN DRESSES…

This will not be a book about the incredible undiscovered couture that the women in my family have sewn. Rather, it tracks both the utilitarian function of making dresses and the emotional attachment to both the object and the process. None of the makers ever speak much about the dressmaking and certainly not as an art form. But there is certainly the feeling that something special and important has been made. These dresses are kept and handed down to family members in the next few generations. Many of the important dresses for baptism and holy communion were lost in a devastating fire at my Aunt’s house in 1986. And as such the dresses that are missing are as much a part of the history as those that remain. Many of the teenage girls in the family have at some time or another worn our grandmother's and mother's hand-made dresses. This book is an attempt to document both the physical objects and their trajectory as well as the women who made and wore these dresses. These dresses had little to do with fashion trends of the eras except in loose referential ways. Each dress is a reflection of personal desire and the particular functionality mediated by those desires. Evident too is the individual approach to dressmaking. None of us were formally trained, all of us were taught by mothers, aunts and friends. Idiosyncratic traits of method are passed down from generation to generation. The dresses are sculptural pieces. Alterations and reworking of design define the style of dress. The maker might have begun with an idea for a design, but mistakes and shifting whims curb or divert the process. To turn these dresses inside out and look at the construction is to discover the distinct hand of the maker. Recently I was repairing a dress of my grandmother’s designs from the 60’s and found the same bizarre, methods of construction that I had inherited from my mother. Mismatched upper and lower thread colors, a seam that is resewn in 3 different iterations. A minute history of the hands at work.