The ghosts of vintage garments : decentering the liberal subject through a hauntology of entangled relations in fashion

This thesis challenges the assumptions of liberal subjecthood that are present in the fashion industry and in scholarship by developing a hauntology of vintage garments. Such assumptions suggest that fashion functions as a tool of identity formation, is anthropocentric, and contingent on mind/body dualism. I use Jacques Derrida’s concept of hauntology to explore how garments previously worn by others impact the current wearer. I view haunting as a type of affect that is transmitted via the garment, causing the wearer to feel the presence of another while wearing vintage clothes. By using data from qualitative interviews with vintage enthusiasts, I propose that vintage garments are haunted as they become material memories of others who previously inhabited them. This theoretical claim serves as the basis for three parts of the analysis. I begin my analysis by discussing how vintage garments can cause the wearer to feel haunted and imagine the previous owner, pointing to non-linear experiences of time as well as feelings of nostalgia that were exhibited during wear. Then, I suggest that material evidence left behind by previous bodies, such as smell, stains, and holes in the garment, cause the wearer to feel haunted. Lastly, I discuss how haunted garments enable us to connect with others, challenging dominant systems of power through kin-making. I conclude by suggesting that people, vintage garments, and ghosts that inhabit them exist in an entanglement, thereby pointing to a relationality of vintage fashion.