The Psychology of Clothes

1950

Central GT521 FM39

London: Hogarth Press

‘It is through clothes that we form our first impressions of our fellow-creatures – visible at a distance as the face is not’. First published in 1928, J.C. Flugel was one of the first to write about the psychology of clothes. He noted that clothes are always socially significant, and ‘worn in much the same way we wear personality’. A person’s clothed appearance reveals several important social facts long before they speak, setting the scene for and limiting any social interaction. A believer in social evolution, Flugel and others in his era concluded that clothing is ‘destined to vanish from the earth’.