Motivations for Private Collecting

Abstract

In his seminal text, Collecting in a Consumer Society (1995), Russell W. Belk proposed that modern hedonists live out their desires through the consumption of goods. Other texts contained herein have made explicit that collecting dress is in many respects, unlike collecting other media, not least because the acquisition is not strategic. Clothes are usually bought to be worn, and the fact that a group of dress might at some point constitute a collection often “creeps up” on the wearer. Using oral testimony as the core methodology, this paper explores some individual and intriguing personal motivations for four private collectors of women’s dress.