I'm Ready for My Close-up: The Transformative Power of Dress

Orcutt, Lizzy ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-1781-4549 and Ripley, Julie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-4963-9977 (2025) I'm Ready for My Close-up: The Transformative Power of Dress. In: Dress Devolution 3: Still playing dress-up: age, clothing and costume, 3rd-4th July 2025, Falmouth University. (Submitted)

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Abstract / Summary

Recent studies have indicated that clothing is not only an indicator of age, status and gender, but is also a facilitator of abilities such as in sporting contexts (Cox et al. 2020) and an amplifier of confidence in professional roles (Tsaousi 2020) with potential cognitive and emotional benefits (Adam and Galinsky 2012). Older people, often excluded from mainstream fashion by pejorative discourse around ‘mutton dressed as lamb’ (Twigg 2013, 2018), as well as design and marketing practices (Lewis et al. 2011) have been known to express resignation or regret at opting for ‘safe’, ‘boring’ clothing which fails to express their individuality (Holland 2004). This disconnect between the inner and outer selves of elders contributes to what Featherstone and Hepworth famously called ‘the mask of age’ that prevents society from truly valuing them as individual subjects (1990).

Drawing on Orcutt’s thesis that visual selfhood is less about likeness and more about self-experience in the form of looking (2022), the authors conducted a series of workshops in which participants were invited to dress up in catwalk fashion and be photographed with full editorial control over the results, using Ripley’s 2018 ‘ethnographic field photo elicitation’ method to reflect in the moment on their new selves. This took place in the physical and metaphorical ‘feminist fitting room’ (Orcutt 2022) in which versions of the visual self are playfully tried out and tried on (Orcutt 2022).

This presentation explores some of the participant responses and analyses the transformative power and potential of dress to enhance the sense of self in ageing subjects.

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