The jacket reminded her of Nelson and, in some strange way, made her feel braver.

The Crossing Places, Elly Griffiths

It’s January and the sense of a new start, together with tantalising offers of sales from the shops, tempts many of us to review our wardrobes. I struggle with buying clothes: faced with what seems like endless rails of garments, I find it hard to discriminate; trying items on is an ordeal wherein I often feel the problem lies with the figure underneath, not the clothing. I have to be in a particularly positive frame of mind (immediately after a haircut is a good time), dart into the shops, look briskly and purposefully while the mental energy persists and then make a quick exit as soon as my mood starts to decline. Shopping trips are often brief skirmishes in an ongoing, inexplicable war. The small campaign victories can, however, be very precious: those garments which ‘work’ and become loved.  They are reached for from the wardrobe as trusted old friends and their wearing never fails to lift the spirits.

As soon as clothes move beyond the entirely functional, they are saturated with semiotics. Uniforms confer corporate identify and purpose; they are intended to diminish the sense of individuality and include the wearer within a larger common function. We use clothes to declare our loyalties to social groups, indicate something about how we want to be perceived and treated. ‘What does this say about me?’ we think, as we try something on.  Sometimes the message is overt and blatant: the main purpose of football scarves and hats is to declare team loyalty; I make sartorial declarations of my love for Harry Potter. The newest is a ‘Hogwarts Alumni’ sweatshirt.

But I am more interested in the secret semantics, the meanings and messages that clothes communicate to the wearer themselves. Continuing the Harry Potter association, I have a grey lambswool school cardigan which is pleasingly anonymous unless you notice the Hogwarts House colours in the rib.   These are secret signs.  They may be recognised by other Potterphiles, but for me their purpose is fulfilled just by the wearer’s knowing. I know it’s ridiculous, but wearing my unassuming, discretely Ravenclaw cardigan can make me feel calmer, better prepared, more assured. You may laugh, I may laugh, but most of us have, at some time, worn garments with magical properties.  Clothes can be talismanic.  We have a lucky outfit for an interview, or exam or first date. And if the garment links us to others – was given to us by someone we loved, or it is borrowed from a boyfriend, or inherited from a parent, then something of that relationship lingers and envelops and protects us.

Giving clothes to others is imbued with symbolism and meanings. For Christmas I knitted my son a cardigan.  With a handmade garment, meanings are woven through the garment as clearly as the stitched pattern. Here, in the evidence of time spent patiently adding row upon row, it tells of forethought and of enduring commitment. Here is concern for welfare. We can’t always be with our children, so we try to give them protection and warmth.  A cardigan is the closest you can come, as a mother, to giving your child a physical embrace which they can take away with them. It envelops them, surrounds and protects them.  Or course I try to choose attractive designs, to include interesting textures, cables and patterns, but I know that the end result is very simple, the semiotics are just one word. A handknitted cardigan simply says ‘love’.  It’s not knitting yarn, its just that one word, looping round and round, myriad small repetitions, stitches from the heart.

Footnote book recommendation: if you enjoy a good crime novel and are unfamiliar with the Elly Griffiths Ruth Galloway series, from which the quotation comes, then I recommend it to you wholeheartedly. The books are near the top of my ‘good reads’ and I have just discovered that they stand up very well to re-reading.