Buyer beware

I’d heard murmurings of the quality crisis, noticed things here and there in my own purchases. But it wasn’t until I consulted shopping subreddits, TikToks and Instagram comments that the scale of the issue became apparent. Brands of all sorts were implicated. Items were stretching out, losing their shape or fading after a few washes; jumpers were rapidly pilling; dresses turned out to be sheer in daylight; shirts would refuse to relinquish oil stains. Everyone seemed to agree: clothes were better a decade ago.

My body is the gallery – enjoy the exhibition!

CELEBRITY CULTURE HAS slowly eroded the negative connotations associated with tattoos. In the ’80s, punk and heavy-metal rockers used body art to cement their anti-consumer images into mainstream minds. Since the turn of the century, reality TV shows including Miami Ink and Ink Master have accelerated the normalisation of tattoos. Now, partly thanks to social media, tattoos have become another kind of commodity to show off to the world. Outside of the job stoppers (hands, neck, face), tattoos can be seen on lawyers, corporate drones and even White House staff.

 
But tattoos have always been more than fashion statements. They connect people to subcultures. They express commitment to particular ideals and fandoms. They’re the ultimate form of self-expression. Even a tattoo you get impulsively can make a statement. Tattoos become stories shared at social gatherings. Icebreakers to get the conversation going when you meet someone new. Gruelling, painful rituals that highlight how strong the human spirit can be. Dedications to a belief or a thought or a love that you wish to always be reminded of. Signifiers of who you are. 

Out of the closet

So many people have this idea of fashion as just couture or the latest trends – things that are out of reach or quite intangible and fleeting – whereas I think it’s important to look at fashion as the clothes people choose to wear every day, and at the choices, social history and social connotations behind those clothes.

Superfine

On a more emotional level, I find knitwear very comforting. In addition to being inherently cosy, it can also be very personal, especially if it features imagery that resonates with the wearer. For me, the appeal of the graphic knit is maximum impact with minimal effort. You can make a statement but be incredibly comfy/lazy at the same time.

Suffer for fashion

There were plenty of boys in Brisbane in 2001 who dressed in attentive and interesting ways. But you’d have to be sure of yourself, which I wasn’t, or you’d have to have been straight. For the rest of us, survival meant the avoidance of colour; you had to avoid flourishes, avoid anything tight, avoid the sense of a considered style. My vision of an appropriate male dresser involved jeans, in the tropical heat, and a T-shirt, again dark. Sneakers were the acceptable form of shoe, skate shoes if you were chancy, with a pair of Holeproof Heroes in black or grey.

Change room

The story currently being told by the vast majority of the fashion industry is that plus-size bodies simply don’t exist. Looking to runways and fashion magazines, I see no bodies that even vaguely resemble my own. Not one B-shaped belly, not one roll, not even a hint of back fat. The shame and isolation that exists around fatness everywhere else also exists on runways, in fashion houses, in shopping centres. In my wardrobe.

Don’t prick your finger on a spindle

Before the witch hunts, women participated in many professions – they were brewsters, blacksmiths, teachers, court poets, merchants and craftsmen. Beginning with the Renaissance, a combination of social, legal and cultural forces changed this. Fear of being labelled a witch meant fewer women would work outside the home to earn a wage, leaving them vulnerable to impoverishment without the financial support of a man. This systematic exploitation of feminised workforces is one we’re still living with hundreds of years later.

Coat tales

We throw a spotlight on everyday menswear in twentieth-century Australia here because even though commentators have often conjured quick impressions of it in passing, it has less often been a subject of contemplation in its own right. Exhibitions and discussions of dress in Australian contexts have focused more on the feminine and spectacular. This emphasis means that the more mundane ways in which social and economic power relations played out through menswear have largely slipped from view.

No scrubs

WHEN FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE’S band of thirty-eight nurses set sail from Folkestone, England, on 21 October 1854, each woman was...

Standard issue

The first thing nurses get us new admissions to do is change into a gown – standard issue. It’s not what I’d call comfortable, exactly; it’s not even about dignity. It’s about access. If your condition suddenly becomes critical, doctors need to get to your body fast. Even so, when I’m allowed to leave later that afternoon, I tear off the gown and pull on the clothes I arrived in.

Sanford Meisner

TO HELP THE Year 10s reconnect with their craft after the September school holidays, Hale has them do Viewpoints....

Hat trick

BEFORE THE CALL, I was a girl in a new city, with a new job and a roommate I chose...