Clothes have feelings too, you know.
Well, maybe we don’t, not at least as you would understand them, but close association with humans for so many years has meant that some of your qualities have rubbed off on us. Sadly, it tends to be those attributes that are the less attractive of the species, pride, sexual or personal, insecurity, anxiety, greed, self-absorption, you know the kind of thing I mean.
You see, we are the ones, remember, who are with you when you think yourself alone, when you pose, parade, pirouette before the mirror. We witness, for we cannot do otherwise, the grimaces, the coy expressions and, worst of all, those supposedly seductive pantomimes - we have seen them all, seen them all. We are what make you how you wish to be seen - have you seen yourselves? really seen yourselves? the folds of fat if you’re overweight, the sharp-angled flesh if you’re thin, the spots, rashes and the hair! It’s only when we are draped over your toad-like bodies that you begin to see yourselves as you wish to be seen. It is we who give you identity, cover up your failings and make you what you wish to be. Beneath the cascade of drapery, the fall of a linen shirt or silk blouse lies the putrid reality of your flesh. We know you better than you know yourselves and we know who it is that lends you that surface sheen of attractiveness that you find so necessary in your daily lives.
And how are we treated in return for our services? Badly, for the most part. For every one of you who takes care, treats us with respect, hangs us up correctly, with feeling, properly folded, making sure after each outing that we are returned to our original pristine state - there are so, so many others who treat us like dirt . . .
. . . And how we suffer at the hands of your various and for the most part truly disgusting personal habits, your messy procedures of eating, your unforgivable methods of self-grooming and as I am an article of clothing (despite everything that has happened), of delicate sensibility, I will spare you further details of the actions that I know you are all only too aware.
Him? - a curator, a historian of art. Now, being worn by someone like him, someone who was working in an art gallery, someone who knew the true aesthetic value of clothes, that’s was a privilege, something that doesn’t happen to every garment. Many clothes spend their whole existence being worn by people who seem, quite frankly, to be completely unaware of our function, our significance. But he was an exception to the rule. He took care, even when going out to the shops or pub, he took care -casual, but nice, nothing sloppy. Through the week, at the university and on his trips around the country and abroad, that’s when he was at his best. And not only in his actual demeanour (for he wore us beautifully), but the for us the real privilege was to be there when the lights faded into blackness, when he begins his lectures - as long as he’s not talking about landscape or abstract art-, projecting those beautiful images on the screen of a time when people really knew how to wear clothes - and when there were artists who knew, who really how to paint us.
Those linens, silks and velvets of Titian, Giorgione and Rembrandt, the lesser materials so beloved by Degas and Manet - and those sumptuous creams, ochres and browns of Braque and Picasso, the creases and folds, the collars and shirt fronts, talking of shirt fronts, of course, how much the owe to Cézanne and - the master of them all, Ingres, that troubled idolater of fine fabrics, crisp and clean, layer upon sculpted layer, his darks, black and a blue so deep that suggests a dark darker than black and his whites, oh, his whites - and for his women those vibrant blues, his dull or brilliant reds and those greens - olive, sage or the sharp green like a newly opened leaf in spring and then . . . his satins, sheen and shine, perhaps a little vulgar when set against the reticence, the disciplined restraint of his master, David. The stuff of dreams . . .
. . . In English art, of course, it’s not so clear cut, Van Dyck, what a master, so flamboyant - but then he’s not English. I suppose it begins with the sharp-edged incisive lines of the gothic and then the finesse, the elegance and fine detailing of the Elizabethans, followed by the luxurious surfaces of Lely and later, of course, the divine Gainsborough. And Reynolds and Millais, (though both slackers at heart, I always think), but each capable of moments of absolute sublimity. . . And then the sad decline of this modern age - I worry over effect on our national school of the Americans Whistler and Sargent - one too, too ‘hard-worked’ and the other - simply too vulgar, too flash.
No, there’s no respect, no - and no understanding of the transformative effects of an efficient laundry service - and God! those dingy encrustations of variegated mould that sprout so malevolently in the work of that grubby Edwardian Sickert, but again, and this time we should be glad - not English artist pur sang.
Well, I digress but, you can see what mean - things human rub off on us and I don’t just mean sweat, skin and other unmentionable substances. But at least I’ve made my position and that of my confrères, clear.
I had thought that myself and my wearer understood each other, enjoyed a pretty good relationship, but in time things began to change and soon it became increasingly clear that something was seriously wrong. I can’t recall exactly when things began to deteriorate, but I began to notice that he wasn’t taking as much trouble with his clothes as once he had. The others took longer to realise the potential seriousness of the situation, but eventually they did and we began to talk. Each of us had an anecdote to tell, (for after all, there was no shortage of witnesses to his actions), and slowly we began to understand that whilst we were all in different ways party to his every action, we didn’t possess a completeness of understanding of human affairs to be able to decipher the significance of the events to which we are party. It took time. But as we pieced things together, this is what we figured had happened.
Now, normally it is an easy matter to recognise those occasions when we know something out of the ordinary is in the offing. New clothes are bought and old, unwanted, worn-out clothes are discarded, thrown out how can humans do that? After all that we have given them, simply to discard us like . . . like . . . well, I digress, yet again . . . I apologise. . . but these things touch us deeply - back to my story.
Yes, he had bought some new clothes, well, it happens all the time, but these clothes, I have to say it, well, some of us didn’t all approve of a number of the items he had chosen, for they weren’t at all in his usual taste and after due discussion we agreed that there was an another hand at work here, we knew, clothes know these things.
It was a look that he had never tried before and one that frankly, did not become him. He had always been well, sartorially elegant, modish, but not self-conscious, if you know what I mean. He was always a man’s man, but here, well, it was evident that a woman’s influence was at work. The clothes, whilst being expensive, were those that were obviously meant to play second fiddle to someone else’s clothes, they were if you like, the frame and not the picture. Well, nothing disturbs clothes more than knowing that you’re being worn, not to make an impression in one’s own right, but only in order to secure respect for some else’s wardrobe.
She was big, possessor of a larger frame than he, taller and fuller in the figure, blond and after their first date, other meetings followed - this was no mere momentary aberration. Something was developing and several of us began to feel neglected, physically and emotionally. There was trouble, division within the wardrobe, there was an ‘us’ and there was a ‘them’. We felt betrayed, for it was we who had been who he was for so long, we had defined him, given him his way in the world. I, for example, was there at his first interview as were some of the other articles. We went back along way, we had made him who and what he was and now he was abandoning us.
Well, a number of us felt that things had gone too far and we felt that the day would soon come when we too, would meet with the same fate that had overtaken some of our former colleagues.
To begin with, he was only seeing her at weekends and those were the days when we knew that our services would not be required. It was only when he started wearing some of his week-end clothes through the week, that well, we all felt that something had to done. We knew, and indeed most of us always had, that au fond, most of us were really not cut out for weekend or, such a horrible term, leisure wear, and it was when he began to introduce such items into his, how shall I say, professional wardrobe - that things came to ahead.
Well, we adopted the usual strategies that had served us so well, under different circumstances in the past. Certain articles of which we, the majority, did not approve, were caused to disappear to the back, darker recesses of the bedroom drawer, or they would be rubbed against the sharp corners in the hope that they would get snagged or torn. Alternatively, they could be pressured into the bottom corners of the linen basket.
But all these measures, usually so successful, were to no avail, for he would actively, with more persistence than he had ever shown before, search them out, straighten their creases, iron them so that all our energies went for nought.
Things went from bad to worse, there was definitely an new order in formation, and we knew that if we were not to act, we would soon be the articles of yesteryear. We know that humans’ lives are punctuated by such changes, but you have to see it from our point of view. This is all we have.
So we decided to something about it, to make a stand. To do something - to intervene in human affairs in more direct and effective manner than heretofore. We recognised the possible futility of our actions, that in the long term we might not be able to effect a permanent change in the order of things, but we could try. At least we would have decided our own fate and not left it in the hands of others. At the end of our discussions we were justifiably proud of ourselves, but we all realised that it was one thing to discuss such things, and quite another to set them into action.
It was my privilege to be the instrument of our joint decision, I knew the risks, for after the demise of our owner, what would be our future? To be bundled into a bin and then sent on to an uncertain fate, or perhaps we would be gathered up and treasured as the fine garments we undoubtedly were, or would we be cast aside, donated to some fusty high street charity shop. Over the years, I have seen many of my former confrères draped around wildly inappropriate plastic effigies or hung carelessly, unfeelingly, cheek by jowl with articles of lesser distinction and quality on cheap wire hangers. Who knows, I remember saying, for I am decisive and forceful when necessary, when whatever fate may eventually be awaiting us might fall, the discerning heir or the black plastic bag, there was no time to lose. The feelings of the wardrobe had run high and could not be gainsaid. I simply hoped that we had not left it too late.
Well as it transpired, we hadn’t. We passed a few anxious days, but then the morning came when I felt his treacherous hands fall lightly upon my fine silk, and I felt myself lifted into the light and I was able, as I had done so often in the past, to watch myself in the mirror, being wrapped around the graceful column of his neck . . . ah, such pleasure, such a sense of the rightness of things.
The thrill of the moment when through the fine cotton of his collar, I could sense my closeness to his physique, of connecting and complimenting, of setting of his beauty with my own. The feelings, so intense and on this day of days, were given an extra frisson be the anticipation of what was to come.
Well, such fools these mortals be, thinking that it is they who order and control. His fingers moved rapidly skilfully - as delicate a butterfly alighting on a summer flower. Adept as ever he certainly was, constantly adjusting, a touch here, a touch there, the slight pressure, the shift of weight, neither too heavy upon my fabric, nor too intruding that allowed me to make my supple and well-co-ordinated moves, looping and wrapping, finishing with the slight confident tug to indicate a knot well formed and exactly situated. Perfect.
Well, it was not difficult of course, to continue what he had so unthinkingly began. A shiver, no, something more elegant, something more in keeping with the perfection of the mirror image that we were both enjoying, a ripple of sensation sifted through his body as he, poor fool, felt the slight, oh, the ever so slight, tightening of this tie about his neck. This object to which he had paid, over the last few months, such scant attention, was growing ever so slightly tighter around his neck without the intervention the unneeded manipulations. Then, a shake of his head, I remember the raised eyebrow, a quizzical look, the almost imperceptible wrinkling of his hitherto unwrinkled brow, for he was an experienced tier of bow ties and had long since ceased to worry unduly about his ability to create the symmetrical distinction for which of course, we are so well-known. And then the expected jerk of his head- a compulsive movement, his chin upwards and the frantic scrabbling of his hands. As if he could correct what to him, poor creature, must have seemed an impossible and some what embarrassing set of circumstances. The next few seconds were unpleasant, difficult for me to experience - we had had so many good times together. But gradually he fell to his knees - gratifyingly I could see all this in the tall cheval glass - and despite his very best efforts I prevailed. In a moment, it seemed, he completely lost his composure as his movements wrought no change for the better in his situation and I continued on, tightening, slowly and surely - not without a certain tenderness, I assure you, but resolutely and without let up, until his actions grew increasingly panic-stricken as he tried without success to loosen the increasing pressure.
Then, somewhat distressing to me, for we had shared many moments of distinction together, I felt the undulations of his throat grow wilder and more out of control, and these frantic movements were accompanied by the most coarse of expletives. Gradually he lost the ability even to articulate the least of vocalisations and as he weakened further, his hands grew slacker and, not soon enough for my ease of mind, a sudden loss of consciousness resulted in his immediate shift from the vertical to the horizontal. As a consequence, annoyingly, I lost sight of myself and the progress of my actions. But, I felt sure, that soon it would be over my success would be complete.
We lay there, feeling that lack of movement that constituted his demise. There was a complete, and after all that exertion, a rather pleasant stillness. No heart beat, no pulse, no lift and fall of the rib cage - we were secure. I loosened myself, and we awaited the consequences of our actions.
No words were said of course, none were needed, we do not communicate in any such vulgar way, but I could sense the approbation of my partners in dress.