I have been thinking all day about Women's Work and the cost and meaning of clothing, and how fabric once acted upon by skilled labor became so valuable that it was almost never discarded but continually reinvented. This is why we have so many garments that belonged to slender, wealthy skirt-wearing people; it's not that there weren't fat people, it's that plus-size yardage was expensive and you wore and turned and remade and retrimmed that thing until you passed it along to someone poorer and it died, or you cut it down for your daughter who was busty but not as hip-heavy as you, and so on and so on, but those remade pieces never make it into the museums. If you had a fairly slim, narrow shape, not as many people could re-wear your clothing, and it gained archival staying power.

It is in my mind that a Dhaka muslin gown cut Empire style, in a plus size, with appropriate drape in the hem, would cost thousands of pounds before anyone stuck a needle in it.

Edit besides we're not paying to italicize the entire paragraph: I worry my work focuses too much on the social signifiers of who has the skill to mend clothing/that person's projected gender/who is wearing what and how many times it's been made over. HI.