Our identities are exemplified through dress. It exposes a language of gender, ethnicity, class, social, religion, culture, and race. The dress provides us an intimate feeling and an exhilarating experience of the self. In principle, it is through our dress we position ourselves in society and that our identities are revealed or even concealed from others. Dress choices almost always generates tension between individuals and the social discourse.
A dress or a garment on a mannequin leaves a notion of absence and no feeling – which is half understood. Therefore, the idea of body and dress are inextricable from one another. Dress is so intimately connected to the body, which brings me to how a dressed body is closely linked to identity. The identity is manifested through the body, dress, and self; and these are perceived simultaneously as whole. Dress provides layers of meaning to the body and the body in relation to the dress. Would dress be defined as a static cultural object? True to some extent when not on a body but this would still reveal a narrative of someone’s identity based on assumptions. (Pereira-Ares, N. 2018).
I am a British Asian Indian born in the UK and my identity was shaped by my parents up to a certain age. As a Sikh woman and since a young age it had been hammered into me not to forget who I am through religious practice and through clothing. Yet strangely, I have not worn a sari or salwar and Kameez to work or as a student. I also do not see many South Asian Indians wearing their cultural dress at university. Why is that? I feel there is a deep narrative behind these reasons, and there could be many reasons such as, uncomfortable, wrongly judged, and the discomfort feeling through exclusion.