Category: NOTES & BOOKS

Something many may not know about Virginia Woolf is that she had a fondness for clothing. During the 1920s, fashion was changing for women, prioritizing comfort with looser cuts, dropped waistlines, raised hemlines, and more affordable materials such as jersey were becoming more widely used. Virginia Woolf embraced this increase in selection for women. She even considered “frock consciousness” to be one of the many states of consciousness we all have: “My present reflection is that people have any number of states of consciousness: & I should like to investigate the party consciousness, the frock consciousness.” She further explained this state of consciousness in Orlando when she wrote concerning clothing: “They change our view of the world and the world’s view of us.” So “frock consciousness” was the “impact that clothes have on both our inner and outer states of being.”