Haunted Threads: An Exploration of Tension, Deterioration and Storytelling in Garment Construction

Abstract

This research delves into the nature of deterioration and emotional storytelling in garment construction by exploring how garments can carry a hauntological presence. My exploration of this focuses on reinterpreting traditional hand-stitching within a 21st-century context, drawing from Arts and Crafts philosophies, artisanal methods, storytelling and the lingering spectres of history. The work explores how clothing can embody fragility—how it holds spectral traces of time and emotion, blurring the lines between past and present.

The creative inspiration references include Victorian mourning clothes, silhouettes from the late 19th to early 20th centuries, and designer alignments with Yohji Yamamoto, Ann Demeulemeester, John Alexander Skelton, Paul Harnden, Oliver Church and Elena Dawson.

The project examines the interplay between organic disintegration and structured precision through slow, deliberate hand-stitching, controlled seam manipulation and the experimental process of rétrécirage (intentionally shrinking and distorting woven wool). I question whether clothing can exist in the liminal space between control and collapse.

Fashion is more significant than simple body ornamentation; it is a poetic artefact that can hold personal and societal histories in its very fabric. I am not alone in this quest to bring quality, heritage and narrative contained within clothing to the forefront of conversations around fashion design. The importance of making with integrity is one championed by the designers I align with, and it is becoming increasingly significant in the world today with fast fashion empires like Shein asphyxiating the fashion landscape.

This research contributes to the ongoing conversation around fashion’s ability to embody fragility, trauma, and the poetics of decay through interlacing historical references with a contemporary subversion. Can clothing carry ghostly traces of time and emotion? Perhaps fashion is not just a means of dressing but a haunting conversation between history, memory and the body itself.