Wild Dress:
Clothing & the
natural world
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Kate Fletcher
ISBN 978 1 910010 21 1
96pp, 234 x 142
paperback with flaps
2019, £9.00
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Reviews and articles
“Nylon anoraks and polyester fleeces might not seem like the types of garment inclined to inspire rapture, but they do just that for Kate Fletcher, a sustainability advocate and professor at the London College of Fashion. Her book Wild Dress: Clothing and the natural world may leave you longing to tramp through a field while mulling over the comforting ruggedness of an Arran knit jumper. Fletcher herself roams freely in her reflections on clothes, memory and nature. The most cited author in her field, Fletcher does not allow the prose in Wild Dress to be ironed flat for the sake of her academic argument: she offers up a selection of fractured sense impressions and ruminations about beloved garments and landscapes. Certain clothes belong to certain places: there is the sleeveless navy blouse worn in Macclesfield Forest, the billowing coat remembered while walking through the Goyt Valley. She tells us about a jumper inherited from her father and a jacket belonging to a neighbouring farmer—which bring her to an intuitive conviction that there is a ‘relationship between things’. For Fletcher, a garment belongs not only to the wearer, but also to its native community and the land from which it comes. These insights may appear simplistic when paraphrased, but Fletcher writes from the fullness of her sensory experience and the tenderness of memory.”
Shahidha Bari ‘Rewilding: Roaming freely in reflections on clothes, memory and nature’ The Times Literary Supplement
New writing on fashion and sustainability
In this collection of autobiographical writings, Kate Fletcher explores relationships between garments and human embeddedness in nature. Going beyond the idea that nature is a means to human ends, Wild Dress documents how we wear clothes in ways that add weight to and awareness of the natural world. Includes fifteen colour photographs of Macclesfield Forest and the Goyt Valley in the Peak District and Garsdale in the Yorkshire Dales by Charlie Meecham.
Kate Fletcher is Professor of Sustainability, Design and Fashion at the University of the Arts London. For more than two decades her work has been at the forefront of the movement for systems change in the fashion sector. She has written and co-edited seven books translated into as many languages.