Lettre des co-rédactrices / Letter from the Co-Editors

Figures 1 & 2

Anne-Marie Ouellet. Tenue sociale, 2017, installation. AXENÉO7, Gatineau. Photography : Justin Wonnacott.

As a marker of identity, social class and personal status, garments fashion the body, shape it and render it significant (Jones and Stallybrass 2000). They are, in this sense, heavily tied to the reification of cultural and gender norms (see Provencher St-Pierre et Mathieu). Getting un/dressed is indeed never innocent or devoid of implications (see Contogouris), as the French verb dresser, “setting straight,” “having to obey,” denotes. Garments may overly burden the body, connote, or stigmatize it to the point of marking it indelibly (see Pellegrin). They may also render the body vulnerable, constricting its movements and socializing it to extend in space in some ways and not others (Young 1980, Ahmed 2006). If garments can make the person, they can also break them, as when the dress code fails the body, or when the threads of a particular piece of clothing fail to lead us to an understanding of how things might have gone wrong. But we might also picture instead the breaking of bodies in terms of subversive acts of resistance to societal or gender norms, when getting dressed—deliberately putting on or rejecting a particular garment—becomes a transgressive act (see Benzouine and 2Fik). The breaking free of bodies from their expected performances through dress render visible the ways in which gender is constructed as “stylized repetition of acts” (Butler 1990, 179), as “a continuous ritual habit that has been established by society over time” (Ghosal 2024, 442, italics mine). The English word “habit” evokes these daily rituals and customs that are stubborn and sometimes hard to break. Its French homologue, “habit,” materializes these customs in sartorial terms. We slip into our habits as into a uniform; they cover us up, protect us and perhaps also wear us down—as much as they themselves become worn through repeated use and usure. Breaking these “habits” and re/claiming alternative performances call for no less than a renegotiation of the boundaries of cultural norms and their solid grip on bodies. These new performances of resistance can follow many paths, ranging from politically transgressive and even dangerous fashion statements that go against religious or cultural norms (2Fik 2017) to creative choreographies that challenge and repurpose the very notion of what makes a garment, often blurring the boundaries between garments and the flesh they extend (Gromko 2023, Ouellet 2016, Vanderveken 2023). Feminist, queer, and transnational solidarities also emerge through the reappropriation of gendered labour and material practices surrounding dress and textiles (see Petiteau, forthcoming, Ezcurra 2022), where issues relating to social justice and peoples’ livelihoods are often concretely at stake.

Figures 3 & 4

Pénélope Gromko. Nos désirs sont des Ordres, 2023, performance. Model : Naomi Gromko. Carrefour des arts et des sciences, Université de Montréal, Montréal. Photography : Maud Brunet-Fontaine.

Circling back to the title of the special issue for a moment, we uncover another equally relevant meaning to the word corpus as it relates to its signification as a collection—often, a collection of literary works. Corp(u)s Textile indeed puts forward a collection of written analyses, an original “ensemble” of texts that addresses a truly broad corpus of theoretical influences and material objects of dress to ponder. It delves both into the literal materiality of tangible sartorial objects—those that one might wear, touch, and manipulate—and their representation in art or in “textualized” forms, where garments are seen or read about without being touchable (see Contogouris, Létourneau). As pictorial or literary representations of garments, these paradoxical sartorial objects—often traditionally taken for granted as elements of scenography—prove to be no less significant than their “physical” counterparts. They reveal themselves to be equally complex and fruitful objects of inquiry, capable of shaking up dominant histories of reception within the Western canon, sparking interpretive debates and unlocking unorthodox imagery. In this respect, the special issue rehabilitates textile filiations present within textual traditions, challenging deeply engrained conceptual habits as well as metaphors (see Cusson and González Diéguez, forthcoming). These are indeed the junctures where text and textile meet: a flourishing overlap. 

FIGURES 5 & 6

Nathalie Vanderveken. Inside Out, 2023, performance. Agrégat, Longueuil. Photography : Mana Miecyzslawa.

As an intrinsically interdisciplinary project, Corp(u)s Textile creates a space for exchange and collaboration across classical disciplinary boundaries. As an “ensemble,” it provides the reader with a freedom of movement and the possibility to establish uncommon resonances and connections between diverse fields of study and distant historical periods. The issue is thus both analytically rigorous and spiritedly “undisciplined” (see Petiteau, forthcoming), faithful to its feminist and critical foundations. Beyond their different individual styles, all the contributions to this issue have in common the fact that they approach sartorial objects with care, slowing down their pace to better turn them over, examining with a great deal of attention and clairvoyance their many creases, folds, and stains. These careful material observations require a hermeneutic practice akin to the method of close reading, or forensic examination. The careful practice of clothes reading that unfolds throughout this issue, we hope, will contribute to broadening the analytic and creative possibilities for future research surrounding the relationships between garments and bodies. As they quietly inhabit our everyday lives, sartorial objects have the power to open us up, at any moment, to the ways in which “ordinary things … shimmer precariously” (Stewart 2012, 519).

Laura Kassar

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The co-editors would like to thank the wonderful scholars and artists that participated in the Vêtir/Fashioning conference in May 2023, as well as the people that helped make it happen: merci à Nicolas Gaudreault du Carrefour des arts et des sciences de l’Université de Montréal; merci pour le travail réalisé par les étudiant.e.s Brandon Haskel, Lucy Calmet, Olivier Sansfaçon-Lévesque et Vincent Vaslin ; merci aussi à l’aide précieuse apportée par Maud Brunet-Fontaine, Valérie Irtanucci-Douillard, Zoé Kassar Lamarche, Félix Lamarche et Tim Lorndale au fil de ce projet d’envergure.  

We also would like to thank our institutional partners: nous remercions le Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines (CRSH/SSHRC), le Réseau québécois en études féministes (RéQEF) et notamment le chantier Religions, Féminismes et Genres, la Faculté des arts et des sciences de l’Université de Montréal, l’Institut d’études religieuses (UdeM), le Centre interdisciplinaire de recherche sur les religions et les spiritualités (CIRRES, UdeM), l’École supérieure de mode (ESG UQÀM), l’Institut de recherches et d’études féministes (IREF, UQÀM), le Réseau Perspectives Féministes (UdeM).

Finally, a warm thank you to the editorial team at Fashion Studies which made this issue come to life: to Carlea Blight, Alison Matthews David, Nigel Lezama, Ben Barry, Hilary Davidson and Alyssa Lutrin, as well as to the incredible graphic design team: Mia Yaguchi-Chow, Tysa Laidlow and Kyle Shepherd.