" Clothes as text, clothes as narration, clothes as a story. Clothes as the story of our lives. And if you were to gather together all the clothes you have ever owned in all your life, each baby shoe and winter coat and wedding dress, you would have your own autobiography. You could wear, once more, your own life in all its stages, from whatever they wrapped you in when you emerged from the dark red naked warmth of the womb, to your deathbed.

As if the textile itself has memory, formed as it does out of its intimate closeness with our bodies, a coat or a dress or a pair of trousers is a witness to the fact that once we went for a job interview, or on a hot date. Or that we got married. The dress was there with us, it’s proof of who we once were. The clothes we wear, they comfort and protect us; they allow us to be who we want to be. "

― Linda Grant , The Thoughtful Dresser