THINKING WITH/IN THE WARDROBE

Abstract

In this paper I discuss different scale-making practices related to the wardrobe. I will firstly discuss how locating a potential for more sustainable clothing futures within the wardrobe can be understood as a re-scaling project, shifting attention away from industry defined macro scales towards the micro scale where people’s engagements with their clothes are located. Based on a short vignette from my own fieldwork with five first-time mothers and their babies’ wardrobes I will then present the heuristic device thinking with/in the wardrobe, which I developed to think through different scales of abstraction found and applied to my empirical material. In the last part of the paper I will then take a critical look at my analytical approach thinking about the problems I encountered once I started transforming my analysis into my dissertation argumentation. To overcome the obstacles that an analysis on multiple scales confronted me with, I present the conceptual idea of wardrobe encounters as a way of presenting my findings coherently while allowing the complexities that emerge when diverse scaling projects merge, to unfold.