Fashion & Motherhood: A Letter from the Editor
Image: Sultana Bambino
Welcome to our special issue on fashion and motherhood!
The idea for this collection was in the works before the coronavirus hit the West. We were already receiving submissions by the time we (the FSJ editors) entered lockdown, and I (the instigator of this whole thing) immediately wondered if the topic was relevant anymore. Who could bring themselves to care about motherhood and fashion in the midst of a survival event?
But motherhood — an inadequately inclusive term meant here to welcome people of any gender who identify with the experience — has turned out to play a significant role in the pandemic. With communities isolated into their component households, gendered labor has reared its head, and motherhood as an institution looks different today than at any time in the last few decades.
“If Covid has seen you joining the ranks of the forever-sweatpants people, welcome! Parents of young children have been here for a while.”
Fashion has undergone the same kind of upheaval: it both changed instantly (we literally got a whole new category of daily garment) and has slowed down completely (What will happen to retail? Good riddance to five collections a year!). We’ve heard a lot about the work-from-home uniform and the reign of sweatpants. Well, if Covid has seen you joining the ranks of the forever-sweatpants people, welcome! Parents of young children have been here for a while.
Aimee Gilmore, First Year (Maya’s clothes as rope), 2015-2016, discarded baby clothes as rope ball
In this collection, 15 contributors have shared with us their stories and perspectives on how clothing and motherhood affect one another. Some are honest about how the ground of their identities shifted under their feet when they became parents, leaving them with no idea how to dress. Others have found mothering to be creatively generative — a chance to make and remake the self, and a rich vein of inspiration. Two reviewers explore a recent show and its catalog on the subject of pregnancy in historical portraiture, visualizing changing expectations of the dressed maternal body over the centuries. And two writers think through how fashion lessons from their own mothers have shaped who they are. Altogether, I hope you’ll find the pieces here to be a jumping-off point for considering how motherhood can find a place in conversations about fashion and dress. There is still so much more to say and so many more voices we need to hear from!
To that end, I’d like to draw your attention especially to the interview we did with three quarters of the curatorial team for the upcoming exhibition and book Designing Motherhood (coming to Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum and Center for Architecture and Design, with the book available to pre-order now for release in September from MIT Press). Their project is inspirational for its insistence that motherhood is a topic worthy of serious scholarship and inclusion in the annals of design, as well as for the curators’ model of collaboration.
Editing this collection has been a powerful and joyful experience. If you have an idea for a themed issue you’d like to put together, we’d love to support you and offer our platform for doing so. Please look out for more details on this opportunity and/or reach out at info@fashionstudiesjournal.org.
I extend my deep gratitude and appreciation for everyone who contributed to this issue, and especially for the essential support and hard work of my colleagues at FSJ.
With love and solidarity,
Laura Snelgrove
Editor, Fashion and Motherhood
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