Design History Society

On the Margins: Theorizing the History and Significance of Making and Designing Clothes atHomeAuthor(s): Cheryl BuckleySource: Journal of Design History, Vol. 11, No. 2 (1998), pp. 157-171Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Design History SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1316192Accessed: 22/10/2010 09:31

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Cheryl Buckley

On the Margins: Theorizing the History

and Significance of Making and

Designing Clothes at Home

This article examines some of the theoretical questions posedfor design historians studying the ways in which working-class women made and designed clothes at home. In particular the article deals with issues relating to feminist histories of design which seek to locate women within a historical narrative as subjects, but which also try to acknowledge the 'situated' and 'specific' nature of their subjectivity. At the same time the article foregrounds the writer's role in constructing historical accounts which connect with her own identity and experience by drawing on oral sources, individual life histories, memory and family photographs. Dress-making at home provides an excellentfocusfor such a theoretical exploration because it connects the personal and the political. It is an arena in which mothers, daughters and sisters learn and acquire theirfeminine identities, and yet it is also a skill which enabled women to redefine their sense of self through design.

Keywords: fashion-feminism-home dress-making-home work-women designers-women's history

Making and designing clothes at home is a form of in her parents' small clothing workshop before design practice common to many women.' marriage, made clothes for her family, but also for Throughout the twentieth century women have sale in her local village. I came upon Mary made clothes by hand, aided latterly by a sewing Skelton's particular story during oral history machine finding space on the kitchen table, and research on cultural identities in the North East squeezing sewing between other domestic of England undertaken as part of a larger project responsibilities. The process of making and in the Department of Historical and Critical Stud- designing, the clothes themselves, and the ways ies at the University of Northumbria.2 Betty in which they were worn, reveal aspects of Foster, a home dress-maker from the mid-L940s, women's identities. This paper will examine is my mother's sister, and I was prompted to elicit some of the methodological and theoretical ques- her story as I became involved in research con- tions which arise for design historians studying nected closely with my own personal history.3 the ways in which working-class women made A number of familiar questions about women's clothes for themselves, their families and the local relationship to design and to history resurface in community in Britain between 19L0 and 1960. The this research, alongside some new ones. Most paper focuses on the life and design activities of important is how can one write about the place Mary Skelton (nee Hunt) who lived in South and significance of this type of design within Durham between 1897 and 1982, and Betty women's lives without merely replicating value Foster (nee Halliday, born 1929) who has lived systems that contribute to its marginalization?4 In for most of her life in West Yorkshire. Both this discussion of design, I am interested in the women worked from home making and designing way that it functions as a process of material and clothes: Betty Foster made clothes for herself and visual representation and as an 'aide-memoire'.5 her family throughout her life, whereas Mary Linked to this is the question of my own motiva- Skelton, who was trained by tailors and worked tions and role as a historian. In this, I am writing

Journal of Design History Vol. ii No. 2 (O 1998 The Design History Society 157

about an activity which has special meaning for these might be places which have less power or me as daughter and niece in a large family of prestige, such as the home, but which are none the women, several of whom made clothes at home. less crucial in shaping women's experiences as In this paper I will try to weave together the designers, consumers and historians. Finally all empirical evidence of Mary Skelton's life story these writers aim to conceptualize female subject- with that of my family whilst at the same time ivity and the place of the female subject in histor- trying to ask a number of questions about theoret- ical writing within a contemporary theoretical ical strategies. context which is indifferent if not hostile to the,

My aim then is twofold: firstly to write about notion of the subject. the way that a number of working-class women How to frame the subject and subjectivity, and made and 'designed' clothes at home (although as how to respond theoretically to the attack on these we will see there were significant differences in from postmodern theorists, are questions which 'the home' as a site of production); and secondly underlie this study.8 Although much can be said to consider how this can be done without margin- on the latter, it is surely significant that 'exactly at alizing the material. What are the theoretical the moment when so many of us who have been implications for design history and for the sort silenced begin to demand the right to name of history that I am interested in, of this type of ourselves, to act as subjects rather than objects of account which deals with a topic still firmly on the history, that just then the concept of subjecthood margins? How did home dress-making connect becomes problematic.'9 For this study, which with women's lived experience and what was its deals with women who have been largely invis- significance in their lives? ible in history, formulating some sort of theoret-

ical position in relation to the subject is particularly important. For Sally Alexander: 'Sub-

Women's Histories: Identity, Place, Subjectivity jectivity, and with it sexual identity, is constructed

Arguably an account that addresses such ques- through a process of differentiation, division and tions requires a new way of speaking and a new splitting, and is best understood as a process position from which to speak. As bell hooks wrote which is in the making, is never finished or in Yearning. Race, Gender and Cultural Politics, it is complete.'10 Rosi Braidotti uses the terms 'figura- better to speak from the margins through choice tion' or 'nomadic' to suggest the 'situated' nature rather than to find oneself there by default: of subjectivity: 'The subject is not an abstract

entity, but rather a material embodied one . . . I am located in the margin. I make a definite distinc- the embodied subject is neither an essence nor a tion between that marginality which is imposed by biological destiny, but rather one's primary loca- oppressive structures and that marginality one tion in the world, one's situation in reality [my chooses as site of resistance-as location of radical emphasisl"' openness and possibility . . . We are transformed, in- This idea of being 'situated' or 'located' is a dividually, collectively, as we make radical creative ...

,,. . . 1 . ~~~theme that enables me to think about a different

space which affirms and sustains our subjectivity, which gives us a new location from which to articu- type of historical account which tries to acknow- late our sense of the world.6 ledge that 'I' as a subject speak through the

account that I try to delineate. Virginia Woolf's Feminist writers such as bell hooks, Sally Alex- suggestion that 'we think back through our ander, Carolyn Steedman, Rosi Braidotti, Doreen mothers if we are women' is significant for this Massey, Elizabeth Roberts and Meaghan Morris study which links Mary Skelton, born at the end of have consistently tried to think differently about the last century, to Betty Foster and my mother how women's histories can be written, and there who were born between the wars, to myself, a are common threads in their work.7 In particular post-war baby.12 there is the idea of speaking differently in order to The situated nature of identity is taken up by articulate women's voices. Coupled with this is an Carolyn Steedman in her essay 'Landscape for a interest in the places from which women speak- Good Woman' as she describes her childhood in

158 Cheryl Buckley

the 1950s and the ways in which she interprets the term local is used in derogatory reference to fem- and reinterprets this within a bigger historical inist struggles and in relation to feminist concerns ... framework as she gets older."3 Working as an [the] bundle of terms local/place/locality is bound in academic historian, she begins to connect the to sets of dualisms, in which a key term is the dualism personal landscape of her childhood to the between masculine and feminine, and in which, on

broader historical picture: 'Worked upon and these readings, the local/place/feminine side of the

reinterpreted, the landscape becomes an historical dichotomy is deprioritized and denigrated.1 landscape, but only through continual and active In response to those who have under-valued and reworking.'14 By this process, Steedman begins to ignored the role of 'place' and 'locality' in the locate herself within a historical narrative. Follow- construction of identity and subjectivity on the ing a similar theme, Rosi Braidotti emphasizes grounds that these categories are static and essen- 'the lived experience of real-life women'. Borrow- tialist, Massey suggests: ing from Adrienne Rich, she calls this 'the politics of location': In one sense or another most places have been 'meet-

The politics of location means that the thinking, the ing places'; even their 'original inhabitants' usually came from somewhere else. This does not mean that

theoretical process, is not abstract, universalized, ob- the past is irrelevant to the identity of place. It simply jective, and detached, but rather that it is situated in means that there is no internally produced, essential the contingency of one's experience, and as such it is past. The identity of place is always and continuously a necessarily partial exercise. In other words, one s being produced. Instead of looking back with nostal- intellectual vision is not a disembodied mental activ- gia to some identity of place which it is assumed ity; rather, it is closely connected to one's place of already exists, the past has to be constructed.20 enunciation, that is, where one is actually speaking from. 15 The 'home' in which these clothes were made

This history or account of working-class women and designed was subject to change, and its mean- who made clothes at home is shaped by the ing was shaped and renegotiated over time, rather politics of my own 'location', my mother's and than remaining an idealized 'haven' in which her family's.16 Partly in response to this sense of essentialist notions of feminine identity were personal involvement, but also because of the fixed.2 The meaning of 'home' then could be widely held perception that there is a crisis fluid rather than static. For many women, it was within feminism, the possibility of trying to a flexible space by necessity in which a kitchen or speak more directly in a manner which connects front room could double as a sewing space. Betty with women outside of academic discourse is Foster, for example, used her sewing machine on very appealing."7 As bell hooks said: a stool in the front room of her two-up, two-down

terraced house after she was married. Various I have been working to change the way I speak and activities operated out of her home including a write, to incorporate in the manner of telling a sense of fish-hawking business which she ran with her place [my emphasis], of not just who I am in the pres- husband and his parents. This involved cleaning ent, but where I am coming from, the multiple voices and gutting fish and dealing with invoices, orders within me [my emphasis].8 and receipts." She also made and designed most

A sense of place, of who 'I' am, and of how I of her own clothes as well as her family's (my interpret and represent the lives of others shapes sister's and mine included) at home; and she took this study of dress-making, a significant cultural on domestic and parenting responsibilities as activity for countless women. Although women well. Similarly the dress-making workshop run from across class boundaries made and designed from home by Mary Skelton's parents was a things throughout their lives, this particular activ- small-scale industrial enterprise, strictly organ- ity remains on the margins. This is compounded ized with a labour hierarchy and labour divisions. by the fact that the 'things' are clothes and they From the same 'home', Mary's mother later ran a were made locally, mostly at home. In Space, Place bakery as well as the dress-making workshop due and Gender, Doreen Massey suggests: to changing family circumstances.23 Clearly for

Theorizing the History and Significance of Making and Designing Clothes at Home 159

both women 'home' was a more fragmented place ing their lives in the 1920s and 1930s, for example, than the frozen space of patriarchal mythology. although imprecise about some events, could Utilizing the theories of Massey and Braidotti, readily describe those for which clothes held 'home' dress-making provides an excellent focus special significance such as what they wore for for exploring aspects of the locatedness of particular dances, which colour shades their women's lives and the specificity of their experi- going-away outfits were in, and how their hus- ences. Both writers provide a justification for bands dressed when they first went out together. looking at the particular, rather than the general, My mother still talks lovingly of the shop-bought but within a theoretical framework which fore- red coat which was my father's first gift to her in grounds feminist concerns, as Braidotti argues: early courtship. Memory is clearly one way of

trying to glimpse individual subjectivity along- the defense of 'situated knowledges' clashes with the side more orthodox methods: 'Life histories, as abstract generalities of the classical patriarchal subject. they tell us something of what has been forgotten What is at stake is not the specific as opposed to the in cull memory, way descbe, orgrehea universal, but rather two radically different ways of hi ctory l "o affctv sctiviy As wih a conceiving the possibility of legitimating theoretical remarks. For feminist theory the only consistent way poem, they may suggest the metonymic signs of of making general theoretical points is to be aware femininity particular to a generation.'28 that one is actually located somewhere specific.24 Taking a more subjective view which draws

on feelings and memories provides a way of The 'specificity', which emerges from such thinking differently about the individual mean-

situated' or local knowledges, enables one to ing of clothes and offers a justification for reva- 'identify the gaps, the silences in histories-not luing this particular design activity which is only in the hope of restoring a fuller past, but to cross-generational connecting mothers, daugh- write a history which might begin from some- ters, aunts and sisters. As Juliet Ash has where else.'25 Arguably home dress-making, as argued: 'clothes relate to our feelings more one of these silences, could provide a key for those than perhaps any other designed artefacts, and attempting to speak from somewhere else and as thus require "subjective" as well as "objective" bell hooks suggests, to speak in a different analysis.'29. These generational ties which can be manner.26 To write a fuller account of home mapped out in the history of home dress-making dress-making requires a change in the nature give an insight into the broader history of and manner of the debate regarding what consti- women's lives as well as the peculiarities of tutes design, who is the designer, and how we individual ones. Home dress-making can pro- understand the meaning and significance of vide a context for exploring family relationships; design. As I will show, the activities of the home after all it is an activity in which women learn dress-maker and the products which resulted do and teach each other skills which form their not correspond neatly to 'typical' design methods feminine identities. or archetypal objects. Also the designer's role is Memories, and written and oral accounts of much more negotiated and divergent than the individual life histories are methods which usual 'model', and the value and significance of enable the particular meaning of dress-making the designs cannot be assessed using criteria to be interpreted. Although few actual garments which stress innovation, commercial success or remain, family photographs can provide a useful viability, and uniqueness. Instead one could argue prompt for remembering and reconsidering the that dress and dress-making are cultural sites significance of individual designs and the circum- where identity, place and memory figure promin- stances of their production and consumption.30 As ently. As designed objects and as a design Ash says: method, they are 'unspeakably meaningful', yet undervalued by historians.27 In talking to people It is a prompting to our conscious lives of the inexplic- about their lives, the significance of specific items able mysteries which exist both in present relations of dress is readily apparent. Older women recall- with living people and as reminders of people who

160 Cheryl Buckley

are absent, relations with whom are only dimly 'Merry Lodge' in Newmarket, and my mother remembered despite the objective reality of the item worked for the father of England cricketer, of clothing, the photograph." Norman Yardley, in the nearby mining village of

Royston in Yorkshire.34 Neither was taught to Mary Skelton andBettyFosterprovide aninter- cook, clean or sew by their mother, although

esting comparison in terms of their approach to both taught their own daughters.35 dress-making over a period spanning 1915 to Betty learned to use a sewing machine when 1965. Their lives and dress-making skills and she was in domestic service as a parlour maid. designs can be glimpsed from diaries, oral The machine was normally reserved for use by the accounts and photographs. I first talked to Gwe- ladies' maid, but Betty was allowed to use it to nyth Batey, Mary Skelton's youngest daughter, in make up her first dress.36 This was machine- and 1992-3 after she had written me a ten-page letter. hand-sewn, cut with a pattern from a piece of When we met, she showed me family photo- checked material sent by Granny Davenport (her graphs and a hand-written notebook in which grandmother on her father's side). After she her moter had kept recollections of her life returned from Newmarket in 1949-50 to work which Gwenyth subsequently transcribed for with my mother at Blakey's wallpaper shop in me. This narrative, supplemented by Gwenyth's nearby South Elmsall at her father's instigation, memory, forms the basis of this part of the paper, Betty taught my mother to sew and knit.37 but the nature of the story and the evidence on Once married (Betty in 1954 and June in 1955), which it is based connect with the theoretical they divided the knitting and the sewing between questions that I posed earlier.32 Gwenyth is one them-generally Betty sewed children's clothes year older than my mother, and talking to her and June did the knitting, although Betty who brought into sharp relief the theoretical problems could cut her own patterns, would also cut out posed in writing histories which aim to take fabric for June to make up. Betty learned to cut account of subjectivity, feeling and memory. patterns through practice. She would take clothes Although I interviewed my aunt, Betty Foster, apart to cut patterns from them, and she would and my mother, June Buckley, formally for this borrow friends' clothes and cut patterns from research, my knowledge and understanding of them turned inside out. She was particularly the role of dress-making in their lives is cumula- fond of pleats, and she inserted pleats of all tive, and it is difficult to separate the formal and types into her designs [5].38 Betty clearly designed informal parts of that knowledge. Dress-making clothes as well as made clothes. She not only has been an important activity throughout my designed the overall form (albeit often adapted family life, and I have sharp memories of par- from one seen in the High Street); she carefully ticular garments-their production and their con- chose fabrics and colours, as well as selecting and sumption .33 This personal involvement gives me a combining specific design features for sleeves, keen sense of responsibility about interpreting my necklines waistlines, belts, yokes and pleats.39

aunt nd m moter'spartiulardres-mak nekiewitieblsyosanpet. aunt and my mother's particular dress-making My mother, in contrast, had a more limited role. activities and in locating them as 'subjects' She selected and bought fabrics and colours, but history, albeit as 'nomadic', differentiated and she largely made up the clothes that Betty had incomplete ones. designed and cut out, although there was always

discussion between the two sisters as to the over-

in Women's Lives all shape and design of each particular item. However, in knitting, June took on a more creative

My aunt, Betty Foster, was born in 1929, one of role by adapting and developing her own pat- ten. Betty and her sister June Buckley (my terns, and by combining stitches to her own mother), went into domestic service after leaving designs. Between them, they supplemented their school where they learned numerous 'traditional' husbands' incomes-June married a miner and female skills. Betty worked for the racehorse Betty married a market stallholder who sold tripe owner and distiller, Johnny Walker, at his house and twin sets!40 For their respective weddings, the

Theorizing the History and Significance of Making and Designing Clothes at Home 161

bridal gowns and chief bridesmaids' gowns were learned tailoring skills, eventually running a small bought, but Betty made the dresses for the workshop from home with his wife, Elizabeth, younger bridesmaids.4" Also as was common making pinafores (he was known as the 'pinny practice, Betty made covers, pillow slips and man'), black stockings, pit socks, tablecloths and sheets for the pram from my mother's wedding bloomers. As well as the clothing workshop, they dress prior to my birth.42 also ran a bakery from adjacent buildings.

After marriage, Betty had been given a Singer By the age of 12, Mary Hunt was working in the hand sewing machine by her husband's aunt family business, although still attending school: which she used throughout the next decade making clothes for her own daughter, Alyson B 10 Mother got me my own button-holer and my

(born 1962) me and Michelle~' own knitter, as well as a scaled down sewing (born :962) and for me and my sister, Mmchelle achine. The 'finishing off' things were put on a big (born 1956 and 1959). Both my younger sister and chair, and my heart would sink! First: I had to do all I were dressed through childhood in mainly those dratted buttons and holes. A best pinafore took home-made clothes. It is important to emphasize 2 on the yoke, i at the waist. For bloomers i at each that this was not always down to cost as neither knee, 2 on the swiss band, and 2 more at the back family was particularly poor.43 Rather it was due flap. I hated bloomers.47 to the apparent shoddiness of much shop-bought clothing which was turned inside out before The system of production was small-scale and buying to check that the seams were well sewn.44 flexible.48 Only Mary's mother, father and the

My mother taught her daughters to sew and top hand made complete items, and only her knit, and as a teenager I made all manner of mother cut fabric knowing exactly how much clothes to be 'in fashion', and there are still she could get out of yardage and how much profit instances when I'm prepared to get my sewingwould be made. Mary's father went out delivering machine out (bought for my 21st birthday by my clothes and collecting new orders, and as a small parents).45 My mother dressed my sister and child Mary had accompanied him on these trips myself very smartly mainly in home-made around the South West Durham coalfield, often clothes, but on passing my eleven-plus examina- being away for a week at a time. Mary recalls: tion which would take me to grammar school and "Looking back I see I had a privileged lifestyle, beyond, my reward was not a satchel and books though I had thought it mostly hard work. I never like my more serious-minded peers, but a brown felt better than others at school, though I was trouser suit from C&A worn with an orange much better dressed . . .

blouse.46 In 1912, at the age of 15, Mary's life changed Mary Skelton (1897-1982) made clothes drastically. Following a business friend's default-

throughout her life: before marriage as paid ing on a loan for which Mary's father had acted work both outside the home and inside the as guarantor, the businesses had to be sold. home in her parents' clothing workshop, and George Hunt took a ?5 single outward ticket to then after marriage from her own home for her Canada to make his fortune. His wife, two husband, her three children, Ronald, Rose and daughters and a son had to look after themselves, Gwenyth, and for local people. Mary Skelton's although he sent a small amount of money each experiences are particularly interesting in the con- month to help out. With some determination and text of this discussion because she had formal foresight, Elizabeth Hunt persuaded the tailors training as a tailoress both in her parents' business Coates and Sedgewick on Stockton High Street to and with tailors in Stockton and Middlesborough. take on Mary to gain her certificate of apprentice- Her life was characterized by hard work due ship without the normal?25 premium. According mainly to changing family circumstances and to Mary: because her husband was poorly paid. Her I felt exploited as I knew all of the trade and went father, George Hunt, was an itinerant farm straight onto bonus sewing but without the money. labourer from Cheshire who moved to Stockton My day began at 8.30 a.m. A half hour midday for to work in the engineering industry. Instead he our sandwiches from home, and at 5 p.m. the

162 Cheryl Buckley

employers gave us cups of tea and a jam and bread re-turned, and furbished Up.'53 She used an old sandwich. We worked until 8.30 at night. By year two Jones sewing machine and made her patterns I got Is. 6d. weekly. The third, up to a florin weekly. using the Haslam system of home-dressmaking At the end of my time and the precious certificate I which was a large kidney-shaped board which worked for them just long enough to become top 54 hand at bodices, then to Hill Carters for more money. Shelwas alsoed at sketchinesignstfrom

^1.

, . , . . .

~50 . ............She was also adept at sketching designs from All of half a crown a week, and piece work. shops and then adapting elements from them to

Like many working-class women whom I've create an entirely new design for which she would interviewed, Mary was prepared to move from produce a pattern. She never bought a paper job to job for better wages irrespective of the pattern, although she copied designs of clothes criticism which she attracted: from Pontings of London's catalogues to which

her mother subscribed. This ability to cut patterns Because money was tight at home, I did the very apparently just by 'the eye' was the result of years worst thing in the eyes of the Good Templars and the of first-hand knowledge of garment construction Salvation Army where I was chorister: I started work for the Jews in Middlesborough! The flat rate of some- dan dresi Gwent ery mda efr hrsel a one of my calibre was then 6s. od. weekly, but in no dance dress which Mary made for herself in time at all I got to 'second' hand, and then 'top' hand Windsor blue' in the mid-193os. It had a sweet- again, and making Los. od. plus bonus on top. The heart neckline with tiny covered buttons all way Jews were, in fact, the best employers I had. They pro- down the back and lace sleeves tightly fitted at the vided us with tea for morning break, 45 minutes to wrist with more covered loops and buttons. It was have lunch. . . and more tea, and our working week mid-calf cut in the 'Princess' style with lace panels finished at 9 p.m. on Friday nights.51 inserted to give the hem a swing. Mary made a

With decent employment outside the home similar dress for her friend, but in red, which they

secured, Mary started making ladies' blouses, as apparently wore for the weekly dance. She also ' made velvet floppy tam o'hanters with self- she wrote, 'at weekends, at night, between church clue bows to bwo olnters which

l l ' ' l ' ~~~~coloured bows to be worn on the side which park walks and meals'. Mary and her mother

made her look like Maureen O'Hara. Gwenyth aimed to undercut shop-made blouses: described how 'mam had bright blue eyes and

Slowly I gained customers by word of mouth, touting almost titian red hair, wavy and in a loose bun at my goods around the back doors of the better off, or her nape. She was very thin then and quite making up my own pencil outlined designs [my emphas- vivacious.'55 is] with something just that bit different from the shops. Thus, between Mother and me we went in for custom made goods instead. I soon developed it into Re-thinking the Evidence, Re-telling the Story nightwear, chemises and other clothes . . . Days I Except for the notebook and her daughter's acted as top hand at the Jewish workshop, four nights memories, there is little left to show for Mary a week I worked on orders and we managed to live as ' p decently as before, or nearly.52 Skelton's prolific activities as a designer, crafts-

woman and maker of clothes. There are a few Mary Skelton married in 1915, aged i8. Her family photographs which show Mary's designs:

husband worked for the railway company in Mary and her mother, Elizabeth in the backyard South West Durham and the family lived in a of Mary's house in Hunwick Station [X]; Mary's railwayman's house at Hunwick Station just out- eldest son Ron with another unknown child [2]; side Bishop Auckland. When Mary married she Mary's eldest daughter Rose as a baby; Rose and gave up paid outside work as was typical, but Gwenyth sitting on a fence at Hunwick Station in because of the low wages earned by railway 1937 [i]; and finally a picture of Mary with Rose workers, she continued to work from home and Gwenyth in Blackpool in 1939 [4]. These making all her children's clothes and making photos are the only record of her designs. Look- clothes for local people. According to Gwenyth: ing at them they appear to be 'nothing special'- 'anything she had was kept for years, renovated, just everyday clothes worn by working-class

Theorizing the History and Significance of Making and Designing Clothes at Home 163

s ,..}} I was ever so proud, and mother made the dress in white silk, onto a square yoke. She also bought me real white buckskin shoes with pearl buttons. And she trimmed a white leghorn bonnet lined beneath the

... . .-' S22t. <w~4. ....... brim with pleated chiffon, the top trimmed with fabric . . .. .... :: . ...:....::.. ::.:.. :.. : :: :w 2 - : s

.......... -.<-.X<2._ r uy 56

*... .... . ..-... ~i..........2. R . . forget-me-nots.

Within my own family, there are more photo- graphs, which flesh out the record of what was made. There is a photograph of Betty Foster taken when she was in domestic service at Newmarket from around 1947 wearing a dress which she

.. 2^:. t.: e . .designed and made in a green fabric with white

spots, and pleats on a hip level yoke [i]. A photograph from 1949 shows Betty's husband Wallace before they were married wearing a Fair Isle pullover which she knitted for him [6], and a

i Mary Skelton and her mother, Elizabeth n the backyard of photograph taken in the Isle of Man in 1955 shows Mary's house in Hunwick Station, South West Durham Betty with her mother-in-law wearing a grey,

peope btwen te wrs-ad yt tey oin topurple and lilac skirt and a pale pink blouse

peoplebetweethewrs-andyttheyointt which she made and designed [7]. There are a significant part of this woman's life. Indeed the numerous photographs of my sister and me wear- photographs and the narrative suggest the pos- ing clothes designed and cut by Betty and made sibility of a different sort of history of fashion up by my mother, June. There is one from 957-8 and clothing than that usually told. With inter- (the year before my sister was born) on holiday at pretation, they can give us some idea of the hard Cleethorpes in which I am wearing a hand-sewn work, the sense of value and pride, and the sleeveless dress in deep lemon, orange, pink and pleasure gained by women from designing, green made up by my mother from pieces cut by making, and wearing good clothes. In her note- Betty, and my mother is wearing a home sewn book, Mary Skelton described the excitement Of navy and white gathered skirt [8]. A slightly later being a bridesmaid for her mother's sister, and photograph (1962) shows me and my sister (aged the clothes that she wore: 6 and 3) with my mother and her friend, Joan and

her children on a 'club trip' to the Yorkshire coast

2 Mary's eldest son Ron with another unknown child

164 Cheryl Buckley

3 Rose and Gwenyth (on the left), sitting on a fence at Hun- wick Station, C.1937-8

5 Betty Halliday at 'Merrydown', Newmarket, C 1947, wear- ing one of her own designs

(Scarborough or Bridlington) [9].57 My sister and I are wearing lemon and white crepe check home- sewn dresses, again cut out by Betty. Another photograph (1964), from a holiday at Mable- thorpe's Golden Sands Caravan Park when we stayed in Betty's caravan, shows me and my sister wearing blue glazed cotton dresses which my mother made up from Betty's cut-out pieces.

. S. AD{*;<,., 'it'We're also wearing my mother's hand-knitted cardigans in pale blue [io].

1 { .eAXSC . '\ Histories which deal with artefacts of this sort and lives like these are fairly uncommon. They fall between the gaps of disciplines, or they are women's history, local history, anonymous his- tory. To compound this, these subjects are difficult to research because sources are limited. Although latterly museum curators have begun to address

4 Mary Skelton at Blackpool on holiday with her daughters, the gaps in their collections, past conventions of Rose and Gwenyth (on the right), C.1939 museological practice reinforced a hierarchy

Theorizing the History and Significance of Making and Designing Clothes at Home 165

6 Wallace Foster, Betty's future husband, wearing a Fair Isle ~ pullover knitted by Betty Halliday in 1949

7 Betty Foster on holiday in the Isle of Man photographed within fashion by privileging the designs of with her mother-in-law, 1955, wearing a skirt and blouse named individuals, high-profile boutiques, and which she designed and made

garments which are culturally or technically inno- vative."8 In addition there are few testimonies of unique combination of design elements, materials working-class women who designed and worked and colour was distinctive to that one particular at home for the family.5'9 Clothes made by women garment-however, in a period in which shop- for consumption in the home by their families or bought clothes had a great deal of cachet, they for consumption in their local communities had were looked down upon as 'home-made'. In only limited value-both in terms of exchange relation to exchange value-even when these value and aesthetic value. In relation to the latter types of clothes were made and sold as part of they were rarely innovative, they were usually the local economym-they were part of the unoffi- eclectic in design being copied from numerous cial economy and not easily quantifiable. sources, and they were not normally unique. Although feminists have problematized ques- Indeed Betty Foster and my mother worked tions of history, value, power and identity in collaboratively, thereby rendering attribution dif- order to recover and explore aspects of women's ficult. Furthermore they tended not to be made social, cultural and political lives which remain from sumptuous materials, and although they unarticulated or have been understated, the were often of excellent quality, they were recog- women home dress-makers that form the focus nizably hand-made. These designs did have of this study are barely remembered. Yet I would special qualities which gave 'added value' for argue that such accounts can provide invaluable their wearer-they were exclusive in that the insights into aspects of British social, cultural and

166 Cheryl Buckley

some of the gaps which Sally Alexander pointed to. One of Alexander's goals in drawing attention

kV., _''V'I"? to these is to try to conceive of a history which

a _ USA,. ^itF! might begin from somewhere else-somewhere IN-, less orthodox. As Braidotti and Massey have

argued, that might mean starting with 'situated' or local knowledges such as those located in the home. From this discussion, it is clear that Mary Skelton's identity was enunciated within the con- text of dress-making undertaken both outside and inside the home.

Both collective and individual memories, espe- cially those focused on the family, play a crucial part in elucidating the importance of home dress- making to Betty Foster and my mother. These memories are partly shared by me, although their feelings for each other-shaped by the hardships of their childhood and adolescence-permeate their life histories. Today Betty Foster recalls her

8 June Buckley and daughter Cheryl on holiday in Betty's designs for home-made clothes with great clarity: caravan at Cleethorpes in 1957-8. Cheryl is wearing a dress she remembers the fabrics, the colours, and the designed and cut by Betty and made by her mother design details (especially pleats). With my

mother, she shares the memory of their lives creative lives, and, in particular, changing femin- through the clothes that they made. Together ine identities. The clothes which these women they recounted for me their connected histories designed and made can hint at forgotten, indi- through an account of their burgeoning dress- vidual subjectivities which belong not just to a making and knitting prowess which saw them specific generation, but also to a particular through domestic service, shop and factory "place'.' Mary Skelton's 'life history' as a home work, courtship and marriage, children and dress-maker provides an opportunity to identify family, only slowing down in recent years.

9 The 'club' trip to the Yorkshire coast, 1962. From left to right: Michelle Buckley, June Buckley, Cheryl Buckley, Sharon Kemp, Joan Kemp and Avril Kemp. Michelle and Cheryl are wearing dresses designed and cut by Betty Foster and made up by their mother

Theorizing the History and Significance of Making and Designing Clothes at Home 167

io Michelle Buckley and Cheryl Buckley at Golden Sands Caravan Park, Mablethorpe, 1964, wearing dresses designed and cut by Betty Foster and made up by their mother, and cardigans knitted by their mother

Although there is inevitably a danger that this recourse to memory leads to nostalgia, I think that there is a persuasive case for pursuing and explor- ing 'those inter-generational lineages of mostly oral and feminine identification and exchange' through the history of something so ordinary as home dress-making.

In conclusion, studying marginalized creative activities such as home dress-making, throws a number of theoretical themes into sharp relief for those interested in feminist design histories. In particular it highlights the fact that the history of making clothes at home is not just about the technologies of production and the processes of consumption, rather it is about design as a mechanism for the material and visual representa- tion of feminine identities. It raises certain ques- tions about the different tools that feminists might use to write about those identities and the differ- ent places that they might speak from as histor- ians in order to locate re-negotiated female subjectivities within historical narratives. For the women that I have spoken to for this study, making clothes marked out different stages of their lives: connecting feelings and memories with family and friends. It related intimately to

the specific places and locations in which they lived, rather than just the chronological, temporal sequence of their lives. Dress-making defined various stages in Mary Skelton's, Betty Foster's and my mother's lives and the meaning of this is inextricably tied to their 'personal landscapes', just as it also connects to mine. It is this inter- connectedness which places a responsibility on us to construct historical accounts which address the gaps, the silences and the margins of our disci- plines. My motivation in working in this way as a historian is to try to highlight the difficulties of producing accounts which are so close to home, but also to foreground the advantages of 'writing and speaking differently' about women's history. As Jane Flax put it: 'What memories or history will our daughters have if we do not find ways to speak of and practice them?'62

CHERYL BUCKLEY

University of Northumbria

Notes

1 Barbara Burman at Winchester School of Art has been working on this subject for some time, she is currently compiling an anthology on the subject.

2 See T. E. Faulkner (ed.), Northumbrian Panorama: History and Culture in the North East of England, Spreddon Press, 1996. My essay is entitled 'Modern- ity, femininity, and regional identity: women and fashion in the North East of England, 1919-1940', pp. 241-72, and it is more broadly framed than this one, dealing with issues of modernity, shopping, consumption, new clothing factories and women workers, alongside case studies of the role of fashion in a number of specific women's lives. In this paper, my aim is not to outline the various ways in which women negotiated modernity through fashion; it is rather to pose a number of questions about women's history, subjectivity and the meaning of making and designing clothes for particular women.

3 My mother, June, is the third eldest of seven sisters and three brothers; Betty is second eldest. They were brought up in South Hiendley part of the mining area of the West Riding of Yorkshire.

4 Although literature relating to women and design, and feminist approaches to design history has emerged over the last fifteen years, it remains the case in my view that it is still marginalized within the discipline of Design History. An analysis of

168 Cheryl Buckley

recent publishing, particularly papers in the key journals-which are indicative of new research- reveals that the literature on women, femininity, feminism and design continues to be cursory. Women are still a special case, rather than a thread woven into the fabric of the discipline. In the 1995 Spring number of Design Issues (vol. ii, no. i), which was a special issue devoted to the question of how to define Design History, a group of well-regarded and well-known scholars (one woman) aimed to deter- mine its nature and its boundaries. Although femin- ist critiques of the discipline were heavily drawn upon, there was no consideration of what had been happening to feminist attempts to redefine the sub- ject in the last decade. The feminist intervention in design history, which aims to claim fuller recogni- tion of women's complex relationship to design, has some way yet to go even though much excellent work has been done.

5 This is a term used by Pat Kirkham and Judy Attfield in the introduction to P. Kirkham (ed.), The Gendered Object, Manchester University Press, 1996, p. 3. It is particularly useful for highlighting the way that designed objects act as signifiers for memory.

6 b. hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics, Turnaround, 1991, p. 153.

7 hooks, op. cit.; D. Massey, Space, Place and Gender, Polity Press, 1994, S. Alexander, Becoming a Woman and Other Essays in l9th and 20th Century Feminist History, Virago, 1994; R. Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory, Columbia University Press, New York, 1994; M. Morris, The Pirate's Fiancee: Feminism, Reading, Postmodernism, Verso, 1988; C. Steedman, 'Landscape for a good woman', in L. Heron (ed.), Truth, Dare or Promise: Girls Growing Up in the Fifties, Virago, 1985; E. Roberts, Women and Families: An Oral History, 1940-1970, Blackwell, 1995; E. Roberts, A Woman's Place: An Oral History of Working-class Women, 1890-1940, Blackwell, 1984.

8 Feminists have been particularly interested in these questions primarily due to the implications of these for feminist historical and critical studies. See in particular: J. Flax, Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and Postmodernism in the Contemporary West, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990; and Morris, op. cit. For an amusing analysis of the motivations of those post- modern theorists who are engaged in decentring the subject, see S. Moore, 'Getting a bit of the other: the pimps of Postmodernism', in R. Chapman &

J. Rutherford (eds.), Male Order: Unwrapping Mascu- linity, Lawrence & Wishart, 1988.

9 Massey, op. cit., p. 215.

1o Alexander, op. cit., p. 107. -i Braidotti, op. cit., p. 238. 12 V. Woolf, A Room of One's Own, Hogarth Press, 1929,

pp. 72-3- 13 Steedman, op. cit., pp. 103-26. 14 Ibid., p. 104. 15 Braidotti, op. cit., p. 237. i6 Pat Kirkham has written on a similar theme in her

essay, 'The personal, the professional and the part- ner(ship): the husband/wife collaboration of Charles and Ray Eames', in B. Skeggs (ed.), Feminist Cultural Theory: Process and Production, Manchester University Press, 1995. Many thanks are due to Pat Kirkham for help and many useful suggestions for this article.

17 There has been a spate of recent newspaper articles covering the so-called 'crisis' in feminism, although as one writer pointed out, feminism has been described as being in crisis at numerous times throughout the century. However, as well as the classic post-feminist line that feminism is now defunct as the quest for equality has been achieved-there are other more persuasive argu- ments that it is overly academic, detached from women's experiences, and too middle-class. Argu- ably there is still a need to write accessible and interesting accounts of women's history which con- nect with their lived experiences. (See, for example, Linda Grant's 'Black, white and shades of grey' and ensuing letters in The Guardian, 3 June 1997, p. 8.)

i8 hooks, op. cit., p. 146. 19 Massey, op. cit., p. 10. 20 Ibid., p. 171. 21 Several writers have attempted to re-think 'the

home'. See, for example, E. Grosz, Space, Time and Perversion, Routledge, 1995; D. Spain, Gendered Spaces, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and London, 1992; B. Colomina, Sexuality and Space, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1992; and Massey, op. cit..

22 The preparation of fish for hawking was mainly done in an adjacent shed, although inevitably these activities spilled over into the domestic spaces of the home. The house in question was on Highfield Road in Hemsworth, West Riding of Yorkshire. Interview with my aunt, Betty Foster and my mother, June Buckley, 29 May 1997.

23 Interview with Gwenyth Batey, 30 January 1996. Letter from Gwenyth Batey to Cheryl Buckley, 5 December 1992. Mary Jane Skelton's Recollections

Theorizing the History and Significance of Making and Designing Clothes at Home 169

transcribed by her daughter, Gwenyth Batey, Feb- ruary 1996.

24 Braidotti, op. cit., p. 238. Braidotti uses the term "situated knowledges' to mean local.

25 Alexander,. op. cit., p. 234. 26 hooks, op. cit. 27 From T. Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, Curwen Press, 1931

(originally 1831) quoted in E. Wilson, Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity, Virago, 1985, p. 3.

28 Alexander, op. cit., p. 234. 29 J. Ash, 'Memory and objects', in Kirkham, op. cit.,

p. 219.

30 Pat Kirkham talks about this in the preface to her book, The Gendered Object, op. cit., pp. XIII-XIV when she writes about giving things that had been her mother's to friends and relatives after her fu- neral. The things given represented aspects of her mother's identity which had particular meaning and significance for those receiving them.

31 Ibid., p. 220.

32 Interview with Gwenyth Batey, 30 January 1996. Letter from Gwenyth Batey to Cheryl Buckley, 5 December 1992. Mary Jane Skelton's Recollections transcribed by her daughter, Gwenyth Batey, Feb- ruary 1996. I also have a number of family photo- graphs which Gwenyth and Rose allowed me to copy. I would like to record my thanks to Gwenyth for all her help, and to Rose and Gwenyth for access to the photographs.

33 I have a strong bond with my aunt after spending considerable time with her as a child before her own daughter was born. Typically, when my daughter, Kate, was born, she sent me a bolt of woollen 'tartan' fabric that she had bought on holiday in Scotland, for me to make up for Kate.

34 Interview with my aunt, Betty Foster, and my mother, June Buckley, 29 May 1997.

35 Apparently their mother was too busy looking after ten children to teach them much, although she did show them how to make peg rugs using waste pieces of fabric and old clothes. Ibid.

36 Interview, 29 May 1997, Foster and Buckley. Both Betty and my mother recall being bought new clothes every Whitsun. These were bought from shops or they were made up by a local dress- maker, Mrs Goodyear.

37 Ibid. 38 When I saw her on 22 August 1997 to look over

family photographs for this article, she drew and described numerous types of pleats that she had inserted into garments.

39 Shopping for fabrics usually took place on Barnsley

and Hemsworth markets. Foster and Buckley, 29 May 1997.

40 Ibid. My mother and Betty bought twin sets from his stall on South Elmsall market.

41 Ibid. My mother's was bought at the Bridal House in Leeds.

42 Ibid. 43 My father, for example, was in work throughout his

life until he retired from the mines in 1985. He was a faceworker and earned relatively good wages. My parents shared, relatively, in the increased prosper- ity of post-war Britain buying a television and 'fridge in the early 1960s, and a second-hand Morris Traveller in 1967. They never moved from their first house which they rented from the National Coal Board and subsequently bought in the early 1980s. Betty and her husband, Wallace, were in business after marriage, working with his parents hawking fish from a van around the nearby mining villages. They put down a deposit on a house in 1955, bought a Ford Prefect in 1956, and in 1957 bought a caravan. Foster and Buckley, 29 May 1997.

44 They shopped for clothes in nearby large villages such as Hemsworth and South Elmsall and at the Co-op in Barnsley. Foster and Buckley, 29 May 1997.

45 In my teens and early twenties I made many of my clothes including skirts, jackets, trousers, and I knitted cardigans and sweaters well into my thirties. I've largely given up now, although I still make curtains occasionally.

46 Living in a close-knit mining community and sur- rounded by a large family, clothes were an act of defiance for me in adolescence.

47 Mary Jane Skelton's Recollections transcribed by her daughter, Gwenyth Batey, February 1996, p. 11.

48 In Stoke-on-Trent, it was common to find small pottery businesses of this type operating from out- buildings at home. As Pat Kirkham suggests, this type of small clothing workshop was not typical in other parts of the North East of England, although it is typical of those in the East End of London, then a major centre of the garment trade.

49 Mary Jane Skelton's Recollections, op. cit., p. 14. 50 Ibid., p.i6. 51 Ibid. Moving jobs for better wages was certainly true

of the women whom I interviewed in the course of my work on the pottery industry. See C. Buckley, Potters and Paintresses: Women Designers in the Pottery Industry, 1870-1955, Women's Press, 1990, pp. 34-5.

52 Mary Jane Skelton's Recollections, op. cit., p. 17. 53 Letter from Gwenyth Batey to Cheryl Buckley, 5

December 1992.

170 Cheryl Buckley

54 Ibid. The fashion collection held by Tyne and Wear Museum Service in Newcastle upon Tyne has a substantial set of Haslam pattern boards and books covering children's wear, lingerie, blouses, skirts and accessories. Apparently these were patented by 'Miss F A Haslam, Ord House, Berwick-upon- Tweed & North East', as the 'Haslam System of Dresscutting'.

55 Ibid. 56 Mary Jane Skelton's Recollections, op. cit., p. 7. 57 The 'club trip' was the annual outing organized by

Havercroft Workingmen's Club. Normally the whole village would be deserted on these days.

58 Museums such as the North of England Open Air Museum at Beamish, County Durham and Tyne and Wear Museums in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Gates- head and Sunderland have begun systematically to collect working-class clothing and 'typical' High

Street fashions over the last ten or fifteen years. However, due to previous collecting policies there are huge gaps in their collections of this type of clothing which are also now harder to fill.

59 Roszika Parker, The Subversive Stitch, Women's Press, 1984, deals with embroidery, some of which was done at home, although interestingly it still focuses on the exceptional rather than the ordinary.

6o Sally Alexander writes of the way that life histories can 'suggest' the femininity of a particular genera- tion, however in my view particular garments or ways of home dress-making which were intimately connected with and sometimes marked out the stages of individual lives, can function similarly; see op. cit., p. 234.

6i Ibid. 62 Flax, op. cit., p. 221.

Theorizing the History and Significance of Making and Designing Clothes at Home 171