MY ROLE MODEL WHEN I was six was my aunt Dorothy. She was 5 ft tall with a 1 ft black beehive, red lips, a black skin-tight suit, high heels and a boyfriend who was bald and 6 ft 2. And I still remember when I first saw them – looking at her in awe and looking at him and screaming. This memory is indelible. My aunt lived in Canada so I only saw her once every five to ten years.

Fast forward to the future. My aunt Dorothy is living in L.A. and she must be in her sixties by now. I’m in my twenties and for some reason I’m also in L.A. and so I get a chance to meet her again. And as I step into her flat the first thing I see is that she has fifty pairs of Fredrick’s of Hollywood, from the Fifties, shoes. There was one pair I just fell in love with as soon as I laid eyes on them. They were a pair of wooden mules in cheetah skin – just incredible!

My aunt saw what an effect those shoes had on me and, in an act of great generosity, decided to give them to me. I still have those heels. They’re the oldest objects in my possession and considering how much I’ve moved how I’ve managed to keep them is simply beyond me. But those shoes have always been with me.

Sometimes they’ve been stored at some friend’s house and sometimes they’ve been packed away at the bottom of a suitcase for months, but they’ve always been there. They’re so old now that the fur is cracking and they’re so small my hand barely fits them. But I just can’t get rid of them. Those shoes are an architectural wonder and the size is just… I love them for all those reasons and also perhaps because they are a memory of someone who did have a visual impact on me, a twisted Ronette, a Shangri-La or a Shirelle. I never really knew my aunt, but to some extent I guess those shoes represent my family, or the family I never had. This striking woman, very tiny, in black and with red lips. There’s my fashion icon. I just don’t do the beehive.

Anja Aronowsky Cronberg is Vestoj’s Editor-in-Chief and Founder.

Jenny Mörtsell is a Stockholm-bred, New York-based illustrator.

This article was originally published in Vestoj On Material Memories.

THE CLOTHES WE WEAR are functional objects that we spend most of our lives cloaked in, yet over time, we begin to develop relationships with these items that make them mean more than just the material. They whisper of our passions, our personal histories and our relationship with the physical spaces we inhabit, as well as of our own physicalities.

The last speaker in our ‘Speaking Dress’ series, Ryder Jones, who divides his time between the world of surfing and art in New Zealand, talks of the blue-lensed sunglasses he wears daily. Initially prescribed by his doctor to overcome pterygium, a biological response of light eyes to the sun, they have also become a focal point for his life in the water, and an emblem of stability in the nomadic world of surfing.

***

My mum got me these sunglasses for Christmas, but I picked them out.

They are a different shape from most sunglasses I’ve seen, but they’re not outrageous, they are slim and they have blue lenses. They make everything I look at blue, when I wear them the sky gets deeper and so does the ocean.

I wear blue most days; I keep falling back into this colour. I must be a blue kind of person, though not necessarily in the melancholic sense. My eyeballs are blue and they fry out in the sun, because of their lightness. There is a something that happens to ‘light eyes’ in the sun called pterygium.

My doctor said this word in Latin means third eyelid. It’s a tiny bit of flesh that creeps into your cornea, in an attempt to protect your eye from sun and saltwater damage. My doctor says I should wear sunglasses all the time outside. Basically your eye gets irritated, it’s not painful, but feels like when a piece of sand gets in your eye and it gets scratched and red.

I’ve been surfing for a pretty long time – mostly the men in my family surf. My dad got me into it when I was pretty young; probably six or seven. My dad used to put me on his board, and I would paddle out and sort of sit on his board when he caught waves. After a while, I figured out it was pretty fun, I got more into it. I was probably around seven when I caught my own wave.

When I go to check out the waves with my dad we always sit at this one bench. Before we get out of the car he says ‘the future’s so bright I gotta wear shades’, he says this a lot. I think he heard it on TV, but I’d like to think it is true.

Surfing for me is a solitary thing, or something I just do with my dad or my family. There are a lot less people who surf in New Zealand, than Hawaii or California (where I’ve lived) which is nice, as often I’m out there by myself or just with a couple of other guys. I read an article the other day I really liked – about your ‘lizard mind’, it was this one New Zealand surfer who talks about that when you go surfing, it triggers the combative part of your brain. When I wear the sunglasses, I feel incognito and anti-social, so I think the sunglasses tap into that.

A lot of my surfing equipment deteriorates after a certain amount of time – all of the things that I go swimming with either break or rust out, and my wetsuits burn through, especially in the winter when you’re surfing a lot. The little salt granules in the water are like tiny pieces of sandpaper and they tend to grate against things, and perish them. You don’t have a lot of things that last a long time when you surf, but my sunglasses are one thing that have lasted. They’re also a functional object for me and they stay exactly the same in the way that I imagine them. I think I’ve just grown closer to them, in the way that I appreciate more over time.

My parents and I have moved around quite a lot but it has always been orientated around the ocean. It’s something that is really embedded in my family, a tradition of organising ourselves around the ocean. The sunglasses land me back into blue. In all honesty, the sunglasses are important for me, but really they are a take-off point for speaking about something larger than that.

Shana Chandra is a New Zealand-based writer on fashion and culture.

Mark Hall-Patch is an illustrator and painter from Canada.

THE CLOTHES WE WEAR and the items we carry represent us so fully, they can speak of who we are even in our absence. As such they become talismans of our presence, helping to calibrate our selves with our environment.

The tartan pants of the next speaker in the Speaking Dress series, Australian Contemporary artist Prudence Flint, are one such talisman. With multiple pants in different tartans, Prudence sews these herself, wearing them as a daily uniform for which she is recognised by. The ‘genderless’ quality of the tartan pants are a draw card for Prudence, for whom protecting the female form is a reoccurring theme, one that she interrogates in her paintings. Known for depicting women in enclosed spaces, a need borne out of having women “feeling safe in a space and having room”. Prudence’s tartan pants offer her the same comfort, highlighting how our bodies are our own spaces which we negotiate with the external world, through clothes.

***

I’ve been wearing tartan pants since about 1998, this is my winter uniform. I sew them myself; I’ve made about ten pairs of tartan pants over the years, and I literally wear them out. They’ve become a signature style for me, I have a complete attraction to tartan!

I love that there is this kind of a loaded history embedded in the material. There is this time-informed aspect of tartan, that over hundreds of years it has been refined to each pattern.

There is a resilience in this rich history. It is also an intuitive history for me, coming from a generation who migrated from the United Kingdom, I am a misplaced being – as most of us are – from the other side of the world. It’s not that I wear tartan as a fanatical patriot, but I love the history of what lies behind it. I also love the look of it, the subtle variations of colour and design that are associated with clans, like the Stuart tartan.

There’s also a personal history with tartan for me – Mum and I both had matching Fletcher Jones tartan pinafores when I was little. I had a little pinafore, and she had a Stuart clan skirt, though this was probably something that most families in the Sixties and Seventies had.

Mum had a Stuart tartan, which is the red tartan the English Royal Family wear in reference to their Stuart lineage, and I had a cream tartan, that was my pinafore. It was gathered and had a fringe down the side, and I wore it with a Scottish thistle pin. Now that I think of it, tartan is a very specific thing, it’s about Europe. I almost take it for granted, but perhaps it is a claiming of this heritage. There is something nourishing in the familiarity of tartan for me, there are a lot of layers in the fabric.

Tartan also has this genderless quality, and I love that men have tartan kilts. I think it’s the genderless thing that’s important to me about the pants, as well as the fact that I’ve made them myself and I’m in control of repeating it again.

I make most of my clothes. I would make everything if I could, even my shoes and bags. It’s a control thing I think. With my pants, I know I can get the right fit when I sew them, I can never get pants that fit me in shops. I’ve learned to sew these pants with straight legs; working with tartan is like working with the grid, so I can easily make them fit perfectly. I’m a bit obsessive, if I find something I like, I’ll keep making it again and again.

When I was a little girl, I remember needing to be in control of my clothes. I remember having complete meltdowns and tantrums a few times, and it was always about clothes. If my Mum was making me wear things that I didn’t want to, it felt like life or death for me. When I look back, there is something about my femaleness and needing to be safe and protected for myself in my clothes.

I play out these issues is my paintings too, they’re very much about women’s spaces, and feeling safe in a space, having room for myself. Clothing is protective, it is like emotional armour for me. I think as a woman, clothing is such a strong part of our identity.

Shana Chandra is a New Zealand-based writer on fashion and culture.

Mark Hall-Patch is an illustrator and painter from Canada.

AS WELL AS A harbour for stories and memories; dress has a protective force, guarding us as we present ourselves to the world each day. There is comfort in this, in the act of dressing that connects us with the social world.

This much and more is true for a performer, where appearance is so crucial in creating a captivating character on stage. This is something ballet dancer Ingrid Gow is all too familiar with, as well as the trials and tribulations of the life of a performer. As a ballerina in the coryphées (the leading dancers in the corps de ballet) for the Australian Ballet, Ingrid has danced in both traditional and contemporary productions by leading choreographers in her eight-year career. As the subject of this next instalment to the series ‘Speaking Dress’ Ingrid nominates her Wheels & Dollbaby leather jacket as holding particular power in her life. She speaks of retreating into the jacket after ‘that moment of beautiful completeness’ on stage, and the rigorous and constant exposure demanded of a ballet dancer, highlighting the powerful connection between self, clothes and the external world.

***

It was about four years ago that I bought this leather jacket. Soon after we had started to go out, my now-ex-boyfriend gave me a voucher for the label Wheels & Dollbaby; I used it to buy the jacket. I had been eyeing it off for a while, I was drawn to the toughness of it. Now I look back and think, though he barely knew me, he got the present so right!

I tend to go through quite distinct phases when it comes to my relationship with clothing. So there is a part of this jacket that will always remind me of him, but at the same time, since it has stayed with me, there are so many different memories embedded now in the garment.

I see the jacket as a piece of armour: when I put it on, I feel protected. In my job as a ballerina I am so used to wearing leotards, tutus, and costumes that allow me to inhabit other characters and perform on stage. When I put this jacket on, I feel as though I can get back to myself.

It has become really important for me to have that division – between my ballet and personal life. Ballet is such an all-consuming world that even when I take a lunch break and leave the theatre, I’ll put my leather jacket on just to return to myself. I also have to travel a lot for work, so wearing the jacket reminds me of home – I’ll be leaving the theatre in New York, and I can put it on and feel instant comfort. It grounds me in that way, since our tours overseas are quite a whirlwind; we arrive, perform on stage, and basically get back onto the plane.

I’ve never come across a leather jacket that feels like this – it’s the perfect weight; it’s tough, but not too heavy. I think being a ballerina, I am always exposed to materials with strong textures that are not necessarily comfortable – tulle, even ballet tights, so I’m drawn to the comfort factor the jacket offers, especially as it has worn in over the four years I’ve had it. Some of the other ballerinas in the coryphées have tried it on, and they all fall in love with its texture, but they can’t seem to find a jacket that feels the same as this.

There are a lot of sacrifices that you have to make for ballet – in terms of time, and energy, but once I get on stage, and I have that moment of beautiful completeness – all that rigorous training everyday, all that hard work comes to fruition on stage, so that sacrifice all of a sudden doesn’t feel like much at all. When I dance I am baring so much of myself – expressing emotion through the movement of my body ­– that when I stop, putting the jacket on is almost like a shell that I can retreat to. So much of our time at work is spent around other people and personalities, and we work intimately together, both physically and emotionally. It’s one of the reasons I like to live alone! Otherwise it just gets too much.

Dancing is physically demanding too. I did a particular contemporary piece for choreographer Jiří Kylián, Bella Figura, which is my favourite ballet that I have danced. This one required me to perform topless, so there was nothing that I could hide behind, it was very exposing.

But I do love the ritual of dressing up. Choosing what to wear every morning, and going through the process of adorning myself, is very important to me. I use that time to put together an appropriate outfit for how I’m feeling, or to change the way I’m feeling and to start the day off on the right foot, which is really important when there is so much training involved. It gets me into the day, and it’s the time with myself I appreciate.

When I first started wearing it, I think I projected this notion of armour and protectiveness on to the jacket, and now, it’s become the other way around. I have projected this myth onto it, so in a way it does protect me. If I were to lose it I would be devastated. Not only because it is such an important part of my wardrobe and working life, but because it has almost become a part of me.

Shana Chandra is a New Zealand-based writer on fashion and culture.

Mark Hall-Patch is an illustrator and painter from Canada.

THE ITEMS WE POSSESS ­and clothes we wear have unspoken power in our lives; in function, but also as anchors to our stories, memories and identities.

Take the notoriety of Honoré De Balzac’s famous writing coat. Legend has it that the author wore the monkish cowl routinely when he wrote. Auguste Rodin’s posthumous sculpture of the author had him cover the mould with a cloth soaked in wet plaster, capturing the house coat just so. The coat became so synonymous with Balzac that when Oscar Wilde went through his Parisian bohème phase, he wore a white dressing gown during the day while he worked, fashioned after his hero’s garb. The narrative of Balzac’s coat speaks of the transcendental power of a garment as an object of personal value, but also in our presentation to others.

Taking cue from Balzac’s symbolic coat, this series asks subjects from different contexts and cultural backgrounds to select an article of clothing that is meaningful or significant in their life. The dialogues that follow reveal the story of a wearer, but more broadly, the universal connection between dress and everyday life.

In the first instalment Hamza Kaddur, a Berber jewellery trader in Morocco, nominates his turban as the garment subject. Embedded in the story of Hamza’s turban is a notion of self image and pride that sets him apart from others, but is integral to his sense of belonging in his local culture. It connects him with his own personal history – his ancestors also wore turbans – and the people he meets on his travels abroad.

For Hamza, the act of tying the turban is a process that holds performative power, linking him with others when he learns new methods from others. The turban also connects Hamza to his land, and he chooses the naturally dyed brick-red colour as it goes with the gold of Morocco’s desert sand.

***

My three grandfathers before me wore turbans and so I wear one now. It is a symbol of the past, and has been passed down from grandfather, to grandfather, to me. I’ve worn one since age twelve, and I am now sixty-six. What I like about it is that anyone can wear one and tie it for themselves in their own way. But the turban is not part of my religion. I believe religion is more than clothes.

Originally, I am from the South of Morocco, a place called Tafilalt. It is a larger city with a market three times a week. In the markets we sell many things, and a lot of the people wear turbans, and they wear them in many different ways. I live in Essaouira now, and I have lived here for twenty-two years, but I always travel. I have been traveling since I was young, I am never staying for too long in the house. I leave to travel every few months and bring back my jewellery to sell at the market.

I wear the turban because I live in a culture where it is a common part of our dress, it is a way of belonging to the people of the kasbah. Our traditional clothes are called djellaba, but I don’t feel relaxed in these clothes, so I wear western clothes. My turban shows that I am from Morocco and reflects my history. In our culture, the turban symbolises man and his energy, but there are different symbols for women.

If I didn’t wear the turban I would feel like I had left something behind. It is a part of myself. I put it on each morning before I leave: I get up, take my shower, and then I tie my turban.

At home I keep a collection of different turbans; I have a blue one, a black one, a yellow, among others. I prefer the red one I am wearing now, the colour is symbolic because it goes with Morocco’s desert surroundings. The colour of the desert sand here is different from that of the south, and it’s not like sand you see in the beach. The colour of the sand of Morocco is like gold, and so the red of my turban goes with gold colour.

Our turbans are made from the fabric brought from places like India, Sudan, Mali, Dakar, and all over Africa. We add the colour by dying the raw material. For red we use the pomegranate fruit or henna, and for blue we use the indigo flower. This is a flower that grows in the desert sand and can only be cut between dusk and early morning during one month of the year. When you see the colour of the sun coming into the sky then the flower is ready to be cut. The indigo from the flower creates such a strong blue colour that with a single gram you can make one hundred kilos of linen. With the indigo we dye many things: clothes, paintings, even houses. We used to build our houses out of wood and make the colour correspond with our natural surroundings. But now, since the climate is very hot, we now live within the walls of the kasbah.

I have my own system of tying the turban that I use each day. My father was first to show me how to tie the turban, but in my travels people have shared their different methods with me. Different countries wear the turban in different ways, but at the moment, I wear it in a style that is similar to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In the turban I am wearing right now, there are twelve metres of fabric. Sometimes you can have more than this, but when the weather is very hot, we have less. The turban also protects me from the wind and sand of the desert, it keeps my head clean, not to mention beautiful! During the hot season it prevents the sun from shining directly onto my head and into my mind, it shines on the turban instead.

I have a son who now lives and studies in Canada, he sometimes wears his turban with his friends, but he is free to do as he pleases. So long as he smiles and has a clean heart, he can do what he wants. God is not something we can see in the way we dress, we can see it on the inside.

Shana Chandra is a New Zealand-based writer on fashion and culture.

Mark Hall-Patch is an illustrator and painter from Canada.