Looking for Maternity: Dress Collections and Embodied Knowledge

Fisk, C

Looking for Maternity: Dress Collections and Embodied Knowledge

Fisk, C

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Publication Type:: Journal Article
Citation:: Fashion Theory - Journal of Dress Body and Culture, 2019, 23 (3), pp. 401 - 439
Issue Date:: 2019-05-04

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Fisk, C https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5151-690X	en_US
dc.date.available	2020-11-04T18:03:13Z
dc.date.issued	2019-05-04	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Fashion Theory - Journal of Dress Body and Culture, 2019, 23 (3), pp. 401 - 439	en_US
dc.identifier.issn	1362-704X	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/136684
dc.description.abstract	© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Childbearing accounted for a large proportion of women’s lives in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, yet the questions of what they wore and how they balanced bodily change and the dictates of fashion have been generally under-explored. This is especially true of object- and collections-based research where scarcity of surviving examples limited the range of material culture analysis of maternal dress and bodies in those centuries. This article complicates that seeming absence by critically considering the process of looking for maternity in dress collections. Working with evidence drawn from a database of approximately 300 garments associated with maternity studied between 2015 and 2017, this article reflects on the modes of encountering maternity therein. The object biographies of maternity-associated garments in such collections reveal the disjointed nature of the material record of pregnancy and how historical practices of reuse, storage and recording can obfuscate that record. Current perspectives on materialism and material culture in fashion studies are mobilized here to consider how a methodological combination of object-based study and recognition of the connection between material and wearer informs new narratives of embodiment contained in existing dress collections.	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	Fashion Theory - Journal of Dress Body and Culture	en_US
dc.relation.isbasedon	10.1080/1362704X.2019.1603871	en_US
dc.subject.classification	Anthropology	en_US
dc.title	Looking for Maternity: Dress Collections and Embodied Knowledge	en_US
dc.type	Journal Article
utslib.citation.volume	3	en_US
utslib.citation.volume	23	en_US
utslib.for	1901 Art Theory and Criticism	en_US
utslib.for	1203 Design Practice and Management	en_US
utslib.for	1505 Marketing	en_US
utslib.for	2002 Cultural Studies	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building
utslib.copyright.status	open_access	*
pubs.issue	3	en_US
pubs.publication-status	Published	en_US
pubs.volume	23	en_US

Abstract:

© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Childbearing accounted for a large proportion of women’s lives in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, yet the questions of what they wore and how they balanced bodily change and the dictates of fashion have been generally under-explored. This is especially true of object- and collections-based research where scarcity of surviving examples limited the range of material culture analysis of maternal dress and bodies in those centuries. This article complicates that seeming absence by critically considering the process of looking for maternity in dress collections. Working with evidence drawn from a database of approximately 300 garments associated with maternity studied between 2015 and 2017, this article reflects on the modes of encountering maternity therein. The object biographies of maternity-associated garments in such collections reveal the disjointed nature of the material record of pregnancy and how historical practices of reuse, storage and recording can obfuscate that record. Current perspectives on materialism and material culture in fashion studies are mobilized here to consider how a methodological combination of object-based study and recognition of the connection between material and wearer informs new narratives of embodiment contained in existing dress collections.

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:

http://hdl.handle.net/10453/136684