A Regional Study of Women's Emotional Attachments to the Consumption and Making of Ordinary Clothing, Drawing on Archives in Leeds, West Yorkshire, 1939–1979

Abstract

This research takes an interdisciplinary approach, investigating dress through the lens of regional social history by exploring women's emotional experiences related to making and consuming ordinary clothing in the period 1939–1979. A case study encouraged Yorkshire-based participants to reveal diverse stories associated with ordinary clothing. This brought the technical knowledge of making clothes and material-based research methodologies into dialogue with regional social history and helped us understand how ordinary people shaped the way women dressed. The research was funded by a grant from Leeds Museums and Galleries and University of Leeds Cultural Institute. It aimed to build a relationship between the users of the dress and textiles collection at Leeds Museums and Galleries and the Yorkshire Fashion Archive, housed at University of Leeds, which is a regionally focused collection of (mainly) twentieth-century garments and accessories. The collaboration allowed the museum curators and academics to discover how ordinary clothes can be used to engage the community with dress collections to discover and document untold stories of material culture in practice.