Eight of us in person were joined by three on Zoom. It was lovely to see that they were able to join in, despite their health adventures.
We discussed “Patch Work: A Life Amongst Clothes” by Claire Wilcox.
Claire Wilcox visited the V&A Library as a child and loved it. Later she spent over 20 years at the V&A Museum, where she was a major curator of fashion and has significantly restyled its offering. She was responsible for introducing successful live catwalk events in the Museum in 1999, which persist to this day, and she curated many high-profile exhibitions including Vivienne Westwood, Freda Kahlo.
The book is in part a love letter to the museum. Claire loves exploring the narratives that come with everyday objects. The idea for the book arose whilst navigating the grief of the death of both her parents and preparing an exhibition of Alexander McQueen that dealt with anger and loss as expressed through clothing.
Claire loved “The Borrowers” as a child and continues to collect miniature objects.
“Patch Work” is a piecemeal set of reminiscences that travels forwards in time, with many reflections back to the past. Some of us really enjoyed the journey, the mystery and the memories of our upbringing and era that it triggered. Others (perhaps the majority) found it too bitty and hard to unravel the threads of her life and deal with the time shifts.
We all seemed to agree that the language and writing were its strengths.
We all liked the Prelude which set the tone for the focus on objects and handling them (with bare hands, not kid gloves). “We have so much to learn from the delicate touch of fabric on skin.”
Her life and family events feature in passing. The focus is definitely on objects, garments, memories of clothes.
We teased out of the book that Claire is married to a successful potter, has two daughters, one of whom had a significant illness and a son who died young.
The last chapter, especially the last paragraph, is a poignant musing on the effect that had on her. “…my imagined mothering, sustained by what-ifs, if-onlys, and what would life be like now, a conversation that cannot be had anything other than internally, eternally.”
We could all have picked out passages that meant something to us.
A final thought – “Patch Work” or a rag-bag?!