216 Making

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Everyone has worn something that felt like them. In this episode, that feeling starts with a teenage pantsuit made by Brenda’s mother, and widens into the question Claire McCardell asked in What Shall I Wear? : what happens when a woman dresses from self-knowledge instead of trend? The pantsuit is not nostalgia. It is the first proof that clothes can give you yourself back, when someone made them with you in mind. The stakes rise with Carol Tulloch, whose essay in The Culture of Sewing documents home dressmaking in the Jamaican community in Britain. The Windrush generation arrived dressed for the future they had been invited to build — handmade suits, dresses, skill, colour, intention — and…