It's All in the Clothes

Clothes? I hear you ask: why would a writer, someone who should be concerned with higher things, with the things of the mind, blah, blah, keep a blog about clothes? Why obsess about cut and style when villagers are being bombed, when Habeas Corpus is being wiped from the collective consciousness?

Believe me, I've often asked myself such questions. For one period of my life I was bored and angry with the style pages of the newspapers and with purposeful neglect wore the same faded black sack-clothy outfit every time I left the house - for reasons of personal history which I may or may not feel inclined in future to reveal.

But denial is itself obsession, of course. I've long since given in to my fascination with garment, with the power and slavery and downright cultural signification of clothes.

As a playwright and performer I'd have been mad not to anyway, but now it's seeped into my prose. I recently finished a long novel. One person who read the manuscript, commenting on its historical sweep through the twentieth century, said, 'One way you've done it is through the clothes.'