Memories

The image from the book, My Mom, Style Icon by Piper Weiss

"Clothing is rich memory. Our childhood wardrobes stay forever with us all, a cogent, biding presence. New clothes mark the stages of our growth. In family households, mothers usually provide the most important helping hand. It is they who dress us and thus acknowledge our change. ‘You’re growing so fast’ is sung in many tones, encouranging and disappointed. Together with her child, mothers articulate a course for multiple transformations. Dressing her child, she studies herself as well, her own history. Dressing her child is in fact dressing herself. The clothed child is also her memory. Dressing her child, she touches her own inner self. She thus teaches her child to be himself, in his clothing. She teaches him to be for himself and no longer for her. In one and the same motion, clothing her child brings him closer to her and lets him move away. In clothing their children, mothers give them the world."

Dirk Lauwaert (The Power of Fashion, ArtEZ) describes clothing and the act of being clothed as a child by the mother, as a meaningful experience that influences the memories that are created since childhood. Also, it emphasizes the desire to nurture and care for the offspring, because simultaneuosly when a mother shows love for her child, she shows love for herself as well. As a mother clothes her child, she also drapes her innerself in the distinct memories that reflect the heritage passed on to the next generation. One of the principles of heritage is to communicate a story or signify a memory. Such awareness of heritage is significant to understand in order to comprehend the culture one lives in, the legacy which one is associated with and finally, the initial understanding of oneself. Stories of a cultural legacy are important in order for people to remember who they initially express themselves to be, which also can explain where they aspire themselves to be in the future.

Clothing as a stimulating dialect and an inspiring performance between different people and cultures is continually narrating the aesthetic and historic path of fashion. Because fashion is undertsood in relation to time, it either embodies memories or establishes the visual manifestations of the tomorrow. Moreover, a garment can sustain a piece of the past, holding certain memories, which can give it a more significant and a meaningful existence. This means that the memory the garment withholds can be understood to give considerably more value to it. 

The contemporary western society comprehends reality through creating structures and compositions on everything, in order to explain it. This also includes the understanding of time and the concept of memories. The past, the present, and the future are all concepts, which structure and rationalize our lives in order to support the theory of time. When we determine life by these concepts, it makes it easier for us to dwell it. In fact, the real reality does not embody time, nor the concept of the past as we perceive it, because it is created and only exists in the structures of society. Probably, we only need to rationalize the past so we can understand the present. In the end, there is no past, only memories of the past. This can be seen as one of the reasons why it is so important for people to create and attain memories, to take pictures on birthdays, to write diaries and biographies, to have a record of the  physical existence and to understand the self through the context of memories.