Sweet Memories of Scent and Sweat

IAN WERE SWEET MEMORIES OF SCENT AND SWEAT Clothes and fabrics worn on our bodies retain their own memories in several ways. Clothes take on part of the wearer, a memory by way of perspiration, or traces of other bodily fluids, like blood – evident through a scent or stain. These can be fresh smelling, a bouquet really, or bitter-sweet or sour. Or, if left for a long time, strongly perfumed from bacteria, mixed perhaps with whatever the wearer was doing at the time, as in dust, food or grease from the day’s toil. Many clothes are made to get dirty; some are simply disposable, along with their memories. Hats and textiles often grow into the shape of the wearer: we’ve all seen a certain shaped head or body echoed in their apparel. Clothes can also leave a memory of themselves on our bodies. The mark left around the waist or stomach from a tight elastic band or belt, for example. Even images of fashion models with trim figures show such signs – pre-photo-shopping that is. On some people these marks appear as a semi-permanent reminder of something long-worn. The traces made from tight socks or the band of a wristwatch, or the altered hair shape or impression left on a brow from a hat worn all day. Likewise, a naked sun-tanned or sun-burned body can faithfully reflect an image of an item of clothing previously worn, a singlet or bathers – a simple photogram through exposure and development. On occasions the memory of a person can be vividly recalled simply by looking at an item of clothing. More so if touched and smelled. Remember the intense scene from Brokeback Mountain when Ennis, following the death of Jack, visits Jack’s parents? In Jack’s boyhood bedroom, Ennis finds the bloodstained shirt he thought he’d lost on the mountain. Realising that Jack kept it alongside the shirt Jack himself had worn during a fight they’d had, Ennis holds them to his face, breathing in their scent and weeping silently. His fresh saltiness merging perhaps, with Jack’s stale sweat. Our world is full of such evocative stories: writers and poets have written about them (Dickens’s heartbroken Miss Havisham in her degraded wedding dress is just one); artists have created work, and films have been produced. Or the stories may be more modest. I grew up in a house full of fabric and a pervasive memory is the ‘smell’ of my mother’s hat-making process, the steam, and the animal and spirit glues she used to create her hats. Both glues were pungent, but I remember the latter being particularly intoxicating. Bolts of cloth, half-finished hats and clothes, hat and dress-making equipment, and tissue dress patterns with cryptic markings were often lying around. My mother was a long-practised milliner and proficient maker of clothes. My grandmother, who lived with us, was an excellent knitter and R. Gibson (Ed.), The Memory of Clothes, 145–149. © 2015 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. IAN WERE crochet-worker. My mother’s younger sister started dressmaking for a small company in Adelaide when she was 14 and soon became a professional. She made and won prizes for smocking, an embroidery technique used to gather fabric to form elaborate patterns. A small, sepia photo that I have shows me, aged 3 or 4, wearing a smocked pastel-blue shirt that my aunt made. As I remember it, my favourite coat at primary school was one my mother made for me. Styled like a bomber jacket at my request, it was sewn using a thick, woven fabric flecked with multiple green threads. I felt enlivened in it and wanted to wear it all the time. When I was at art school my mother also made me a duffel coat of coarse brown woollen material. While the cut was modelled on a popular commercial coat, I loved the unique feel and texture of its cloth. The family also loved it and one of my female cousins wore it to see the Beatles’ 1964 film A Hard Day’s Night. At the time my father worked as a dress materials salesman at a large department store giving us easy access to, and sound advice on, fabrics of all kinds. My mother constructed her hats by forming, stitching and gluing segments of felt or bands of straw on an adjustable ‘block,’ an oval, head-shaped piece of carved wood attached to a stand. She steamed hats on the block – over a kettle on a pale-green Metters gas stove – to shape or remodel them, or sometimes just to freshen them up. And she added decorative objects such as brightly coloured fabric leaves and flowers. These hats were mostly created for fellow church-goers, acquaintances and relatives and her expertise was often sort after. They varied from small- to large-brimmed and were brightly coloured or subdued depending on the season or purpose. When I saw how lovely one of her hats looked on a friend – and heard admirers say: ‘What a beautiful hat’ – I felt very proud of my mother. Almost all the hats she made were for women. Exceptions were a couple of hats she made for me as a youth: a Robin Hood cap of recycled green felt (made after I’d seen a matinee replay of the famous Errol Flynn movie), and a Davy Crockett hat with ‘coonskin’ tail constructed of leftover rabbit’s fur, (made at the time of the Davy Crockett TV series and hit-parade song, The Ballad of Davy Crockett sung by Fess Parker). Like many men of his time, my father had a dozen or so dark-grey felt hats, all well-worn but never, it seemed, worn-out. Except for a gardening hat which was in the laundry, they hung on a modest set of coat hooks near our front door. My father’s felt hats were small-to-medium-brimmed and of various styles for work, casual wear and Sunday best. I found it satisfying to run my fingers over and around the felt and detect their unique scent. There were also a couple of brown straw hats for summer or the beach and, later, when he took up lawn bowls, an off- white one. They were no doubt freshened up from time-to-time by my mother’s skilled hands. Although I didn’t keep them when he passed (they were too small for my head), I can still sense his smell on them. A general odour as well as a stronger one from around the interior sweat-band; I remember it as warm and comforting. Their existence no doubt, led to my own interest in hats and caps. I have about 20 of them; mostly fabric and straw and one second-hand felt. Over time they’ve developed a smell close to those of my father’s, my sweat similar to his; memories running together. My father also collected a great variety of neckties 146 .

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