I have always loved clothes. I can remember some of the outfits I wore as a small child and the passionate feelings I had about them. I remember clearly my first pair of jeans (embroidered cactus on the back pocket), my first pair of knee-high boots (cherry red Docs) and my first leather jacket (heavy as hell). When I think back to painful or joyful moments in my life, I can usually remember what I was wearing.
So it was with understanding that I faced the fashion diktats of some of my feminist colleagues in the mid 1980s. Of course clothes mattered. Of course they said something about who was wearing them and how she saw herself and her place in the world. Of course lipstick was and still is significant. I just wasn’t sure we were all wearing or not weating lipstick for the same reasons.
I don’t question the importance of fashion. We argue about it intensely in feminist circles — and outside of them — because it has meaning for us. The way we dress matters, we just don’t agree on how or what we should be wearing.
As a therapist, I get to see amazing changes in the way people dress as they become more themselves. People who disregarded their own comfort by wearing what was too tight, too loose, too exposing or engulfing, seem all of a sudden to care about how their bodies feel. Women who covered up or over-exposed out of shame, begin to wear the clothes they like without fear. There are often changes in makeup. More or less, from none to some, or from a full painted face to a bit of pawpaw cream.
These changes are all significant and they all have meaning. But the most important meaning is held by the woman herself. One woman’s garment of liberation is another’s discarded shackle.
zoekrupka.com 
Thank you for writing thiss