Dressed in Time: In Conversation with Dr. Margaret Maynard & Dr. Elizabeth Kutesko

We know that time is central to our understanding of dress and clothing, encompassing questions of speed, slowness, production and consumption, and representation. Yet time and clocks are not neutral, but rather serve political, economic, technological, and imperial purposes in their everyday shaping of bodies and fashion. Who sets the dominant pace of fashion, after all, and how does this manifest in the surrounding visual and material cultures of dress, as well as how we research and write about them?

This conversation between Elizabeth Kutesko and Margaret Maynard arose from Elizabeth’s fascination surrounding the recently published book Dressed in Time: A World View (2022), and Maynard’s use of time as an interrogative tool to foreground the complexity of global dress practices that extend far beyond historians’ favouring of linear chronology and periodization. This conversation also responds to the current turn within the humanities—namely anthropology, history, material culture and museum studies, and design history—whereby time has become of central concern.