Dressays
Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2026 | ISBN: 9781350473249
Dressays is an anthology of thought-provoking essays exploring how clothing can reveal the complex, deeply felt bonds we have with ourselves, our communities and the worlds through which we move. These deeply personal narratives demonstrate how, whether saturated with emotion or charged with political significance, dress both bears and shapes meaning. Collectively, they show how dress is as inextricable from shared cultures and histories as we are from the garments we wear.
The contributions in this anthology articulate what is often felt but not seen when it comes to dress: how it ties us to other people, how it hides us even as it makes us visible, and how it helps us navigate and participate in our communities. They offer insight into a wide spectrum of human experiences, including how clothes relate to experiences of disability, chronic illness, religious faith, self-alienation and grief; of caring for a loved one, of being racialised, of coming to terms with one's sexuality, and of custodianship of the natural world. By revealing how garments and accessories form the threshold of our experience of the world, these essays show just how entangled with both they are.
Dressays is available worldwide via Bloomsbury Visual Arts.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Dressays, Rosie Findlay
1. The Look, Anne Anlin Cheng
2. Darning Mark's Jumper: Wearing Love and Sorrow, Karena de Perthuis
3. The Same Yellow Dress, Amy Key
4. We Have Lost Too Many Wigs, Desiree Cooper
5. High Functioning, Esmé Weijun Wang
6. The Work of Human Hands, Fiona Wright
7. Wisgaak Gokpenagen: A Black Ash Basket, Robin Wall Kimmerer
8. Things to Think About When You Are Buying Clothes, Meena Kandasamy
9. Under the Weather, Jane Tynan
10. A Stitch Between Reality and Imagination, Thao Thai
11. Paradise Engraved, Krys Osei
12. The Men Who Dressed Me, Honor Wilson
13. Sartorial Misdirection, Rosie Findlay
14. 'The Cool', Yomi Ṣode
15. On Losing Something Precious: Of Talismans and the End of Love, Stephanie Danler
16. A Leg to Stand On: Prosthetics, Metaphor, and Materiality, Vivian Sobchack
17. Rummaging: Losing and finding myself in clothes, Ellen Sampson
18. Material Ambiguities: Time, clothing and grief during terminal illness, Isabel Mundigo-Moore
19. A Life in Clothes, Ruth Gershon
References
Notes on Contributors
Credits
List of Illustrations
Thematic Index