A Love Letter to Storytelling
Growing up, each night I’d religiously settle into bed with a book before shutting my eyes. At first, my parents would read to me - as most do with their toddlers and small humans - until I was capable enough to read alone. There was the book about a toy horse who came alive at night, and tales of adventures at sea. My first non-picture book was Mallory Towers and, before I knew it, I had devoured the whole series. Soon came the teenage girl spy series and, to my current embarrassment, the Twilight books with which I became unashamedly (at the time) obsessed. I’d race home from school, desperate to settle down into an alternate universe of multilingual teen spies racing around the world and vampire boyfriends. Like many other reading-obsessives, I would be caught with my book open well past my bedtime. In short, books became an incandescent joy.
At the same time as I was immersing myself in the world of teen literature, I discovered the world of newspapers and their supplements thanks to my dad’s Times subscription. Each weekend, I emulated my parents: sitting at the kitchen table with a croissant in hand, I’d open up the papers. Unlike my father who frequented the world news and sports sections, I was a devout reader of The Sunday Times Style. It was here that I first discovered Dolly Alderton, reading her dating column without fail every Sunday when I was still unaware of what ‘missionary’ meant. It was also the space in which my interest in nice-looking clothes grew into something far, far bigger.
Expertly curated edits full of colour and pattern not only whet my appetite for visual creativity, they also allowed me to dream of the day in which I was a sophisticated young professional, perhaps living in an exposed brick wall flat somewhere in New York or London. Meanwhile, the weekly Style Barometer introduced me to names previously alien to me: Alexander McQueen, H&M, Dior, Zara.
Pandora Sykes’s Wardrobe Mistress was a particular favourite feature of mine. Requests would be sent in by individuals facing a style dilemma: what should I wear to my youngest daughter’s second wedding, Mary, aged 50 and from Ramsgate, would ask. How do I dress for work without looking frumpy, someone else would question. These inquiries, all orbiting clothes, were yet another portal into lives far greater than my own - after all, I was a 13 year old stuck in the middle of the North Yorkshire.
My favourite of all the features over the years? On the very last page of the supplement would be a photo of someone accompanied by their name, age, profession, and a rundown of what they were wearing: where they bought their beret, how often they wore the jacket given to them as a gift from their late grandmother. Even if the jeans they were wearing had been bought two weeks prior from Next, there always seemed to be a story that accompanied each garment. It was as though the clothes were jars, catching and bottling memories with each wear.
This was what led me to view clothing as more than just things to hide our nakedness - although I certainly did not have the vocabulary to articulate this at the time. My own clothes are inextricably tied to an almost infinite number of feelings, moments, and remembrances - far, far too many to recount here. Perhaps this is why my own shopping tendencies have changed over the past decade. Once obsessed with the thought of going into Zara and Primark, I now can’t stand it; the stories attached to the clothes before I have even bought them unsettles and scare me. These are tales of environmental and social neglect, the emotional connotations of which I just can’t shake.
Alice Aedy, the climate activist and filmmaker, is an advocate of storytelling to drive change. Forever wanting a well-defined, formulaic approach, I struggled to see how this could actually manifest productive action when I first read about her thoughts - I could only see this ‘power of storytelling’ as a shapeless concept. However, I now realise that it is exactly what has propelled my life and passions over the past 10 years. Storytelling is the reason why I find such joy in meeting new people, travelling, and studying the degree I do. Above all, it is at the core of my passion for slow, conscious fashion - the culture, histories, stories, and relationships it contains within those stitches - and it will likely always be at the core of my life. Now in my early twenties, I find myself having turned towards clothing, using and viewing it in the same way as I experienced books when I was a child. Books will forever be my first love, but fashion? I think I’ve found my storytelling soulmate.