Kari-Anne Pedersen: Alteration in the clothes in one woman’s wardrobe 1925-1940
Sophie Coward, née Poulsson, had moved to the little village of Rjukan in Telemark in 1925 on her marriage to the ironmonger James Coward. Sophie came from a family og creative people, her sister was a textile designer, her cousin was a fashion designer and her uncle was one of the most well known architects of his day.
Her daughter, Unni, has donated a collection of sketchbooks belonging to her mother to Norsk Folkemuseum. These four sketchbooks contain sketches of the clothes her mother made to herself and to her daughter, in the years from 1925 to 1940. The sketches, about 190 all told, also show how clothes were altered, and this is documented on the drawing. Every set of clothes is given a number, and it is mentioned in the text “26, altered from 9”. The paper I plan presenting will discuss the everyday alteration of clothes in a woman’s wardrobe using this collection as an example. How are the clothes altered to fit new fashion? Or are most alterations done from grown-up clothes to children?
Finally, I plan to put the alteration of clothes into a cultural and chronological context. Whereas the alteration Sophie was doing was a part of the everyday economy regarding clothes, the alteration done in our day is on the most part done by designers and called redesign, and seem to belong to conspicuous consumption. I wish to set these two phenomena in contrast to each other, and discuss the possible causes for this change.