Vivre Habille

Scientists and artists have long been telling us that our clothes are nothing but a mixture of fabrics designed to make our bodies presentable in public. Obviously, this highly social apparatus deserves some serious thought. Imagine that.Clothes are not just a repertoire of forms and patterns conveying to others who we are and where we came from, nor a mere collection of objects worn in combinations dictated for countless years by fashion. In automatically implying a way of seeing – our own perception and that of others – clothing becomes "to clothe": as much an act as it is an artefact. Clothing is the person clothed. That is why people are so inclined to believe that clothes have strange powers which become a part of how we use them on a daily basis: to speak, to deceive, to change, to educate, to travel, etc. Didn't the Goncourt brothers say that love is nothing more than a dream of a dress ? Observing clothes from a variety of perspectives is how the author has chosen to question our ways of being and living clothed.Odile Blanc, a Middle Ages historian, became irremediably attracted to the study of clothing and textiles. Since 2007, she has been working with the Institut national du patrimoine, with the Department of Conservators.