Uncle! Uncle!

OK, I give up. For days now--for weeks--I've been trying to figure out how to talk about what obsesses me. No, I don't mean "obsesses me" in any OCD sort of way, although who knows? That might have something to do with ALL my serial obsessions.

No, this is "obsesses me" in the very best kind of way. But I can't talk about it because I don't even know how to describe it. So I thought, hey, I'll just do the best I can and then ask y'all to join in and discuss the idea.

I do stuff with clothes, right? I love clothes. And bags. And jewelry. You might call it Personal Adornment. Tattoos. I love it. It's like the biggest thing, interest-wise, right up there next to writing. But here's the deal: I have no interest in fashion. In fact, I loathe fashion, because fashion--what's in style right now, what's hip, what everyone wants--is the opposite of what interests me about clothes and bags and stuff. What fascinates me, what I find endlessly intriguing, is personal style, and, specifically, Personally Meaningful Clothing/Bags/Jewelry.

One-of-a-kind handmade stuff, heavily embellished by the person who wears it, is like crack to me. But wait--I'm guessing that someone who loves crack can find it pretty much anywhere. I cannot find PMPA (Personally Meaningful Personal Adornment--and here's some more help I need:  we need a name for this. It's not artwear, it's not wearable art (I don't like that term; I like artwear better (and wanted it for the title of Book #2 but was overruled), but I need a more descriptive term, because I'm not talking about shibori or hand-quilted jackets, although those could be PMPA. See?) everywhere. I hardly ever find it at all. When I do find it, it's crazy:  my heart beats faster, ideas start zipping around in my head, I want a really close-up view, I want to talk to the person who's wearing it (but since it's usually in a book or online, and since, for some reason, these people are really hard to get hold of, I hardly ever get to).

Need some examples? Well, pretty much everything in Native Funk & Flash, of course, which explains a lot: this book came out in 1974, and that's when I got a copy and began this obsession. Up until then, my mother had made almost all my clothes, stuff we designed together. But I was a senior in high school, and my mother was having a miserable life by then, and I'd never been interested in learning to sew regular clothes from a pattern. These things, though--this opened up a whole new world. While I wasn't allowed to do much to my own clothes--we'd just left California, where we'd lived in 1968 and 1969, and my parents were absolutely terrified their only child was going to Become a Hippie. Terrified. They watched me like hawks. Well, when they weren't making each other miserable, they did. I was once grounded for 6 weeks for wearing a pair of my best friend's jeans, jeans that had--OMG!--the hems ripped out. Rampant Hippie-Becomingness!

So--you might glean from this that 1) my high school years living in our house were not happy ones and 2) I've been in the grips of this same clothing obsession since 1974 but was, at the beginning, frustrated by both lack of skill in the whole clothing-altering area and parental restrictions.

OK. So enough history. I turn 55 next month, and for me, it's always seemed The Magic Age, the one where I'll drop any few remaining constraints (I can't think of any, but I'm sure there are things I do that, if I were on a desert island all by myself, I wouldn't do. Like what? I have no clue) and do exactly what I want to do, particularly when it comes to how I look.

Quit snorting! I'm serious here~~

So you want some examples of what intrigues me? Sigh. They are so few and far between, but let me see what I can find for your viewing pleasure.

Here's Natalie Gibson, a textile designer, for one:

You can see more about her here, at StyleLikeU. Go there and do the slide show, which I do over and over, wishing I could spend a couple hours in her closet, pulling things out and asking, her, "Where did you get this? Why do you like it? What's your favorite thing about it? Where did you wear it last? How do you feel when you wear it?"

 So you're thinking, "Ah, it's about women with weird-colored hair and bright clothes." Nope, that's not it. There's also this:

which you can't see but is the only photo I can find of Minerva, the voodoo woman from the movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I LOVE her. I want to study everything she's wearing. I watch the movie just to see her (and, of course, Lady Chablis). Here's a clip, but it's so dark you can't see much there, either. I like the scene where she's in the park, because then you can see her in the daylight. She was supposed to be based on Valerie Boles; I can't find images of her, either, possibly because she was "the reclusive voodoo priestess." That would explain that.

And there's this:

Rafiki, from The Lion King. I'm sorry, but I don't know where that photo came from. This one:

came from here, where it says it's Buyi Sama as Rafiki at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
I could study this costume for DAYS. Sure, it's just a costume, but if it's well done, it's surely fabulous.

OK--so that kind of gives a broad overview of what I'm talking about. Not costume, although you could call those garments costumes. But "costume" to me implies something you wear for performances or special events, rather than your everyday garments. I'm thinking Costumes for Real Life.

Some more notes--

~~meaningful doesn't mean it has to have specific significance, like a shirt that protects you from evil or a bag that makes you stronger. It can just be that it's important to you for whatever reason, something vague and amorphous but nevertheless important.

~~heavily embellished. A shirt might be important because it was a gift, but it's not really interesting to me unless something has been done to it. The sign of the human hand: stitching, beading, the use of thread to attach something to the garment.

~~it needs to be worn, not something that hangs on the wall. So it should be constructed for wearability--sturdy, something you don't have to worry about and treat preciously

~~old is much better than new

~~it seems that it's important that there's the sense that the garment is still being added to, that it's never finished.

~~hidden meaning is good--like symbols or names or text sewn into the lining or the inside of pockets. I've never done this, but since I'm just now refining my interest and honing the obsession, I'm sure this will happen.

~~When I think of the Perfect Garment, I think of something so heavily embellished, so thoroughly worn and worked, that you could look at it for an hour and not see everything. It would be passed on to someone else, or even, perhaps, donated to a museum of some kind.

In my daydreams about this kind of garment, I'd have one of each: a jacket, a pair of jeans, a jeans skirt, a dress, a long coat, a shirt. Each one would be so intricate, so intense, so *me* that it would be the only one I'd need. On the other hand, I can't stop collecting multiples of things, like the dozens of tank tops (I don't think a tank top could ever be The Perfect Garment, but who knows--several of mine are beaded by hand). I'm always looking and looking. I imagine that the perfect things will someday appear, worn and broken in by their previous owner and then, somehow, passed on. I imagine a long, worn-soft denim coat, one that flares out in a peplum style--a denim frock coat, sort of, with leather trim and deep pockets, just slightly large. I could work on it for years, adding to it. I've never seen one like this and can't imagine making one--because where would I find worn-smooth denim? And a pattern--I'd need a pattern to make a coat. I want one to just turn up somehow.

A chambray tunic, soft, with pockets. A heavier chambray--not too thin, but not TOO heavy.

The perfect leather bag--handmade, perhaps. Sturdy, quirky. I have one that I bought on ebay that I'm loving a lot right now. I find these things that other people don't seem to see as the marvels they are, and I get them for really cheap. And then I can do things to them (although working with leather is proving to be tough, literally, and my fingers are not singing in happiness). I'm trying to figure out some leather-working skills that will allow me to do cool stuff.

This refining of what I'm doing here has sort of kicked into a higher gear. Now I can see which things are never going to be The Perfect Garment (or one of many Perfect Garments (and yes, I know that sounds a little like I've been to Utah and have drunk the water), and I can donate those back to the thrift store. I like to imagine that, when I die, there will be a little closet with a selection of Perfect Clothes, just amazing things that somebody will find totally delightful.

So I'd better get busy, huh? Now I just need to find other people who have this same obsession, who love their clothes and are creating an idiosyncratic wardrobe of their very own. They're out there, surely. If you come across anything--photos, books, garments in your closet that cry out "I'm Ricë's Perfect Garment!" let me know--if you hear of an exhibit of clothes or costumes or know of books that shows great stuff, I can't wait to hear about it.

XO