Identity by Design - book review

Identity By Design: Tradition, Change, and Celebration in Native Women's Dresses

I have always sewed and the connection between clothes an identity has always fascinate me.  As RuePaul says "you're born naked and everything else is drag."  I found Identity by Design to be a great source of inspiration and a thoughtful commentary on the very act of sewing.  The large and high scale picture of the garments themselves and discussion of the evolution of the dress over time, provided a lot of information that I did not know. 

As S gets closer to her first moon time, I have always been thinking a lot about how we will mark this time for her.  I will write another post about that soon, however this book also provided some good context concerning the connextion of moon time and the sacred as expressed through the creation of clothing.

I has also been struggling as R wanted a jingle dress after seeing the woman and girls at the Pow Wow last year.  While I have really enjoyed this Making Regalia series, I felt that something was missing for me.  This books seems to make that connection to the sacredness of the act of creating a garment.  Even in my regular sewing I felt something lacking, I would work hard on something but not really care about it after.  I was always thinking about the next project.  I think this book spoke to the need to slow down and dwell in the act of creation.  While sewing clothes might be less consumerist, I still felt that I was stuck in that mode of always wanting more and new and different.

The essays in this book, especially the later ones, spoke to the spiritual connection in dressmaking as the explicit expression of family relationships and life transitions.  I was inspired to see the work of so many women and learn why traditional dresses have certain characteristics.  I was really taken when I learnt that indians were using european beads long before columbus and were also using dyes and coins for China to decorate their clothing. 

There is a picture of a little girl's dress where you can see she just had everything shiny sewed onto it and it was a lovely parallel to the lives of my little girls.  You could just see that continuity of spirit accross time.  In this section there was also a good discussion around the enjoyment of colour and embellishment by indians and the staged nature of some of the pictures from this time where people were told to dress down.  It reminded me of this piece in Muskrat Magazine by Zainab Amadahy speaking to the colonialization of dress and colour with bright colour being seen as savage and unsophisticated.  I like to wear bright colours and fascinators so I get a lot of comments about them.  That article made me think about those comments in another light. 

Overall, I found the discussion in this book about striving to create something meaningul and good as opposed to perfect, as a reminder that perfection is not the goal and it is ok that my beadwork does not line up exactly.  After reading this book, I want to sit with S and do a smudge and think about making her two dresses for her first moon time.  I want to engage with the sacredness of the creation of such garments and take that time to spend together with her.

Even if you don't sew I think there was alot of good informaiton in this book that many people could enjoy.  Click here for the online version of the show