How the clothes we love to wear go beyond fashion

Analysis: Desert Island Dress podcast guests talk about their visceral and emotional response to the items of clothing which have shaped their lives

By Dee Duffy and Katriona Flynn, TU Dublin

There are 5 million podcasts in the world and that's a fact. Well, as close to fact as 2024 stats can tell. So, you might ask, why on Earth do we need one more? We, too, are mulling over this existential question as we wrap up edits on the third series of Desert Island Dress, the podcast where we invite guests to choose four items of dress that have shaped their lives and they could not bear to leave behind on the metaphorical mainland.

The concept, inspired by Desert Island Discs, the iconic BBC radio broadcast running for over eight decades, is simple but effective. Each garment is an entry point to unravelling stories, memories and reflections from our guest’s life. The premise is deceptively simplistic, yet one guest described it as a hugely cathartic experience.

How could this be? Just sifting through some banal items of clothing, having a ponder on the final cut to bring to the desert island ... which, to be fair, is all entirely fictional, and we unfortunately don’t have the budget, nor the authority, to banish anyone off the Emerald Isle.

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So what is it that incites this visceral response? Anthropologist Dan Miller's work on the materiality of objects can shed some light on this emotive reaction. He argues that clothes are much more than fabric or fashion and are of physical, emotional, social and cultural significance in our everyday existence. Miller proposes that clothing becomes meaningful through the lived experience attached to it, more than through its symbolic or aesthetic value.

Certainly, we have seen this to be true. In series one of Desert Island Dress, we have a moving conversation with psychotherapist Niamh Fitzpatrick, who poignantly selects her sister’s navy RNLI beanie hat as her treasured item. Niamh’s sister, Captain Dara Fitzpatrick, died tragically when her search and rescue helicopter, Rescue 116, crashed off the coast of Mayo in 2017. Niamh speaks affectingly of enduring bonds and how garments, in a way, keep loved ones in our life, as proof they existed and that our love continues, despite their corporal absence.

While clothing can trigger deep emotive connections with others, it can also be valued for connecting with wider social and cultural occurrences in one’s life. Drag queen Davina Devine chose a dazzling red hotpants suit, an outfit widely shared in her iconic promotional photo with broadcaster Vincent Browne, to commemorate the legalisation of same-sex marriage in Ireland in 2015. This was a significant cultural moment in Ireland, and for Davina and the wider LGBTQ community, it gave them a sense of recognition and validation in Irish society.

What can be termed a material catharsis occurs, whereby an emotional release, relief or transformation is experienced through interaction with physical objects, in this case, meaningful clothing. Associated with material catharsis are ritualistic practices such as preserving, repurposing, letting go, and destruction.

By the nature of this podcast, many items discussed by guests have been preserved as keepsakes. One colourful Scandinavian childhood t-shirt belonging to playwright Enda Walsh is enshrined in a picture frame and displayed in his London home. Irish Times fashion editor Deirdre McQuillan shares captivating tales of navigating the Mekong River and communist Laos and meeting local craftspeople who gifted her a handmade silk scarf. She affectionately jokes "I would die if I lost it!"

There are stories of precious belongings passed on intergenerationally, from stylist Aisling Farinella being gifted beautiful white lace baby bibs from her Italian aunt to Garment Goddess Laura deBarra's emotive connection to her late grandmother’s pink embroidered cardigan. She shares how this well-worn, multi-mended woollen cardigan continues to offer her loving comfort in a New York City office, miles from her native home in Co. Cork: "It just gives me that nice little hug".

While many items evoked personal relationships and memories, other choices spoke to a transitionary time in their life, when the guest used the garment to push boundaries or reinvent themselves. Broadcaster Brendan Courtney recalls a red leather jacket he used to help redefine himself in a new secondary school after a period of bullying. Former senator, Marie Louise O'Donnell, tells of heady college days in Britain, traipsing out in colossal bell-bottomed trousers. It's a tale of coming-of-age escapism from the dull, unfashionable confines of a 1970s rural Ireland boarding school, decked out in shapeless gabardine coats and berets.

According to scholar-activist Sara Ahmed, the red leather jacket and swinging bell-bottoms can be considered charged, supporting the wearer to navigate unfamiliar social spaces and negotiate those power structures, be it school or state, that no longer serve the participants. The clothing is thought to be infused with emotional residue, "sticking" to the cloth and bodies, charged with histories of feeling.

Irrefutably, functional necessity might once have been the rationale for our Homo Sapien relatives to skin animal hide and fashion a sewing needle from deer antlers. However, as we evolved, it is clear that our relationship with clothing has become more complex and layered. Emotions, histories, memories and social transformations can be stitched into the material objects we select to dress ourselves each day. And for this reason, one more podcast to tell these stories can’t hurt, can it?

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Dr Dee Duffy is a Senior Engagement Manager in the Retail, Tourism and Hospitality Sectors at the Enterprise Academy at TU Dublin. Katriona Flynn is a Lecturer in Fashion and Luxury Goods Management at the College of Business at TU Dublin. They are the hosts of Desert Island Dress.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ

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