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Looking Like a Woman, Feeling Like a Woman, Sensing the Self: Affective and Emotional Dimensions of Dress Therapy

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Fashion and Feeling

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Fashion and the Body ((PSFB))

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Abstract

This chapter explores the correlation between fashion and feeling in dress therapy. It draws on three dress-based psycho-medical therapeutic approaches: ‘Therapy of Fashion’ (1960s, US), vêtothérapie (1999–, France) and Sensory Stimulation Treatment (2005–, Germany). While (fashionable) dress is constructed as a therapeutic technology of the self across these therapies, they differ considerably in terms of their conceptual underpinnings. Different notions of self, dress, gender, the body and therapy result in distinctive therapeutic approaches, such as making and modelling fashionable dress in a make-over setting, trying on and borrowing garments in a fashion library during therapeutic sessions, and wearing a diving suit as part of haptic-centred body therapy. While the mirror constitutes a key element in some of the therapies, it is purposively eschewed in others. The gendered and naturalized connection of looking good and feeling good determines some of the treatments, whereas others focus exclusively on the sensory impact of fabric on the skin. Nonetheless, the notion of ‘feeling’, as a descriptor and evaluative category, runs through each of these projects. Accordingly, this chapter explores the emotional and affective discourse around dress across these settings, their purposive employment, inadvertent occurrence and enclothed creative opportunities. In its analysis it draws on empirical and documentary research, author interviews, participants observation, respective contemporary publications and visual documentation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Ruggerone’s article forms part of a small, yet instrumental body of work on the physical and/or emotional experience of dress mainly since the mid-1990s, rooted in different disciplines, e.g. Wilson (1985), Craik (1994), Kaiser (1997), Dunseath (1998), Entwistle (2000), Guy et al. (2001), Clarke and Miller (2002), Woodward (2005), Johnson and Foster (2007) and Findlay (2016).

  2. 2.

    See Ahmed (2010), Knudsen and Stage (2015), Seigworth and Gregg (2010) and Clough (2009).

  3. 3.

    See Filippello (2018), Ruggerone (2017), Sampson (2020), van Tienhoven and Smelik (2021).

  4. 4.

    Monday, 27th April 1925.

  5. 5.

    Wednesday, 23rd January 1935.

  6. 6.

    The term ‘State Hospital’ refers to state-funded psychiatric hospitals in the US.

  7. 7.

    For a detailed discussion of processes of passing in Therapy of Fashion, see Stauss (2020).

  8. 8.

    No further information is given concerning the diagnoses or details of participating women.

  9. 9.

    The expansion can be traced to other mental institutions in Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, New York and Wisconsin. Evidence of an international proliferation, however, could not be found. Its demise by the mid-1970s was apparently related to a lack of financial resources and volunteer time. The last obtained references to the treatment at Napa date back to 1970 (Logrippo 1970), in Greater Chicago to December 1974 (Anon 1974).

  10. 10.

    Referred to as AI hereafter. See list of interviews in References.

  11. 11.

    ‘Look Good Feel Better’ is also the name of the global cancer cosmetotherapy programme developed in the US in 1989. See http://lookgoodfeelbetter.org.

  12. 12.

    See, for example, Maisel (1946), Goffman (1961) and Kesey (1962).

  13. 13.

    French and German quotations that have not previously been published in English were translated by the author. The original statements can be obtained upon request.

  14. 14.

    While there is an insistence on working with fashion (not dress), on changing the garments every six months, the term vêtothérapie (dress therapy) was chosen over mode-thérapie (fashion therapy) for better sound and pronunciation (AI, Battista, 2.4.2008).

  15. 15.

    For a more detailed account and analysis of vêtothérapie, see Stauss (2017).

  16. 16.

    For a detailed written account of the development of SST, see Grunwald (2008).

  17. 17.

    E.g. Charité University Hospital Berlin, Pfalzklinikum für Psychiatrie und Neurologie in Klingenmünster, and the University Hospital Salzburg in Austria.

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Author Interviews

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The American University of Paris, Paris, France

    Renate Stauss

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  1. Renate Stauss
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  1. Community, Culture and Global Studies, University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, BC, Canada

    Roberto Filippello

  2. Community, Culture and Global Studies, University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, BC, Canada

    Ilya Parkins

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Stauss, R. (2023). Looking Like a Woman, Feeling Like a Woman, Sensing the Self: Affective and Emotional Dimensions of Dress Therapy. In: Filippello, R., Parkins, I. (eds) Fashion and Feeling. Palgrave Studies in Fashion and the Body. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19100-8_9

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