Dress and the Embodiment of Age in Everyday Life

Clothes lie on the interface between the body and its social presentation. Getting dressed is an everyday body practice, one of the ways in which bodies are made social, given identity and meaning. When we get dressed, however, we do so within the bounds of a culture and its norms; and these include ones in relation to age – as they do gender also.  The presentation which draws on an ESRC project published as Fashion and Age: Dress, the Body and Later Life, Bloomsbury, explores the role of dress in the day to day performance of aged  - and gendered  -  identities.