Dress-led: Recognizing the affiliative quality of dress as a research framework

Researchers have recognized that dress displays the intersection of various influences affecting a society at any time. Dress reflects our interpretations of the physical setting, relationships (including with self), culture and known memory. Garments are also the culmination of their production processes – today, most dress is often tethered to spaces outside the society where they are used. In this sense, dress is both a localized indicator of the characteristics of its society and, more broadly, an indicator of the globalized fashion industry. The authors propose that a dress-led framework (DLF) is an unidentified strategy already used by those undertaking dress research. DLF is a conceptualization, data collection and analysis technique that begins with dress (e.g. written and visual representations, artefacts and practices) and capitalizes on the affiliative qualities of dress to discover, document and understand aspects of society and culture. This article first discusses how DLF is employed in common dress research methods. Then, the framework is illustrated with two case studies. The first example applies DLF to field research documenting dress practices in a Tz’utujil Maya municipality in the Guatemalan Highlands. The second example discusses DLF as applied to a material culture analysis of five extant European and Euro-American gowns from the 1790s to the 1820s. In both cases, leading with dress throughout the data collection process permitted the studies to move forward in a manner that revealed dress’ broader affiliations. Further leaning into the affiliative qualities of dress illuminated unexpected findings that might otherwise have gone unstudied. In summary, this article aims to recognize, exemplify and validate the affiliative dress-led approaches used by dress scholars.