When I want to conjure the image of my mother, I think first of her closet. The walk-in wardrobe at the mouth of my parents’ bedroom was its own world, practically soundproofed by its rails and rails of garments. My mother’s three-quarter half, filled with pressed trousers, flowing summer dresses, skirt suits and infinite denim, rows of the high heels she wore with everything, and on the top shelf, cloth sacks storing her beloved collection of handbags. When the mental picture I’m searching for finally manifests, it’s from the angle of the closet floor, Persian rug beneath my knees as I crouched there to hide, to play, to watch my mother dress.
My mum was a master embellisher. She was fully committed to selecting an outfit each morning, curling her hair into hot cylinders and caking her eyelids with shadow, even on days where she had nowhere to go. Watching her get ready was like a time-lapse of an actor in hair and makeup, transforming gradually into a character you recognise. It’s hard to remember the natural texture of my mother’s hair or her face without makeup; even we rarely ever saw them. My mother’s clothing, her appearance at large, was her armour, the shell she stepped into before meeting the world.
Only looking back can I see how she needed this external veneer. My mum was one of the most deeply sensitive people I have ever met, perhaps will ever know. She could be easily knocked off balance, made tearful or anxious by the interactions she’d have at the grocery store, in the school parking lot, on the phone. I wonder now whether presenting herself as so composed and in perpetual stilettos was a strategy; if by adding those extra inches to her height, she felt taller, stronger, protected by a sort of chain link made of costume jewellery and purse leather. In tandem, it might have also been a daily homage to her own mother, who died when my mum was twenty-one, who in the photos I was shown growing up often wore matching pantsuits and flowering blouses, carefully buttoned to the collarbone.
These are speculation, but almost certainly my mother was concerned with two things most intensely: being a good wife and mother, and being seen as one. She was preoccupied for years with the home she had built with my father and managed it with the same meticulous care she took with her wardrobe and her manicures. She packed our lunches and ironed our outfits every day without fail, planned parties where nothing went amiss, wrote thank-you cards by hand, and remembered everybody’s birthday. In so many traditional respects, she had succeeded at becoming the Ultimate Woman, a feat more impressive without the guidance of a mother of her own.
But on this, and with clothing especially, the two of us never quite saw eye to eye. From an early age I could sense her dismissal at my alternative leanings, a small rejection every time I strayed from the image and the outfits she had laid out for me, already predetermined. I recall one summer afternoon coming down the stairs in what I thought, aged six, was the perfect ensemble: a tutu from my dance recital paired with a T-shirt, hair extensions, and an array of plastic accessories. My mother, chatting over the kitchen island with a plumber or landscaper of some kind, chuckled embarrassedly — ‘someone picked out her own outfit today.’ The words seem innocent as I transcribe them now, but then, something in her tone slit like a paper cut, minuscule but painful.
The truth was, I didn’t want the corduroys, skirts and stockings my mum had chosen for me, mini versions of the kinds of clothes she’d wear herself. I was a fairy, a princess, a pirate captain and I needed to dress myself to imagine who I could become. But the mess of self-discovery was something my mother was not always open to. It threatened the shining image of herself and our family that she worked so hard to project, of which my sister and I were direct reflections. Of all the lessons she taught us, chief of all was Be Good, and it dictated everything: how we behaved and how we spoke, how we looked and dressed. We were to be perpetually clean, age-appropriate, without a hair out of place, just like she was. Though that reputation, the expectation to always have it together, was what bolstered my mother and gave her strength, it suffocated me, her challenging, fiery daughter.
The older I got, the more I questioned her, always sniffing for the truth and asking why the things she fixated on mattered. I poked holes in her delicate fabrics, searching for whatever skin she had in the game. I was too pompous, too stubborn, and still too young to see the part it all played, in the identity to which she clung, in the life she built around the loss of her mum. The visceral need to know who we are, and to belong in a world without a mother, our first and strongest anchor, is something I ironically can only relate to now that she’s gone.
My mother’s suicide nine years ago sent shockwaves beyond our family and blindsided our whole community. How could a woman so thoughtful, so lovely, so together, fall apart so fundamentally? I sought evidence, and solace, in her closet in the weeks after her death, finding nothing. We moved her clothes into the spare bedroom and eventually invited her friends to come over, to look and smell and touch and keep whatever items they wanted, as much as they could carry. Her clothes would never fit my sister and I, already several sizes too small.
I took my mother’s death on the chin as no one should. The depths of grief wouldn’t be revealed to me for years to come, but as a sixteen-year-old in a place where everyone knew what had happened, tragedy was the ultimate bargaining chip. I could finally be as misbehaved and opinionated as I had always wanted, now that I had an excuse. I dressed as I pleased, stinking like a vintage shop basement. I thought of myself and myself alone when I got dressed in the morning, when I wrote savagely optimistic blog posts dripping with subtext that I would not fall apart the way I was expected to, when I applied to go to university in England and got in. I refused to participate in keeping up with the Joneses, the pressure of which I was sure at the time had in part killed my mother. Instead, I was brash and ungraceful and messy, a damning combination I thought would have made her keel over. I would become her opposite to avoid her fate.
Years later, I can see that the character that crawled out of my grief was in part who I’d always been, but who I sensed would get me into trouble. I had skirted around myself, afraid to be rejected by my mum and her high standards and perfect clothes. I could only be good, nice, the golden child under her guidance. When that was gone, I was left incredibly untethered; lost but also free. No one was choosing my clothes for me anymore. No one took me to cut my hair regardless of whether I wanted it trimmed or not. No one was imparting or imposing their version of womanhood and its prerequisites onto me. It was a devastating loss, but in some small way, a relief, just a sliver, to be liberated from an icon you can’t ever live up to.
I see things differently now, the grief more processed and compassion much more accessible, as I walk through my own experience of womanhood without her. Whatever coping mechanisms and self-protection my mother’s sense of style might have been connected to, there were still glimmers of good, useful wisdom beyond that closet door. I admire my mum’s dedication to herself, never letting herself go even when she was busy or when things felt hard. I can appreciate now that her clothes were one of the ways she put herself back together, made sense of things; one of the few ways she exhibited pride in herself or a sense of self-worth. I feel grateful to have been raised by multiple generations of Italian women whose care for their appearances were a kind of self-care, before the term was even coined. I find myself reaching for that particular strategy on days when I’m overwhelmed by my business, or feeling heartbroken, or heading somewhere where I might need to remember my small importance.
Dressing myself with care is a tool in my belt, one I have to thank my mum for. I keep it next to the other inheritances she left me, like the ability to make conversation and forge relationships with just about anyone. I hold onto her generosity, her thoughtfulness, her ability to make people feel seen and remembered. I can’t bring myself to get rid of the last items of clothing she bought for me and the memory of those shopping trips — rushing around cramming clothes hangers through the cracks of changing room doors, someone always bursting into exasperated tears, the occasional, warm sensation of my mum and I being more like sisters, like friends. I’ll never forget the time in high school when I showed her a clipping from a magazine advert of a dress from Abercrombie & Fitch with white bell sleeves and a lace trim; she drove straight to the mall and bought it for me that same day.
These wise, kind little fragments are worth far more to me than the few items of my mother’s clothing that I kept, the handbags I never use, artefacts from a life I scarcely remember. But I turn the costume box of her closet over in my mind sometimes, wondering about the motives behind her fashion choices and the diligent self-presentation she upheld day after day until she could no longer. In doing so, I recognise something in my mother now that I hadn’t noticed before: a streak of personality amidst her otherwise constant effort towards mildness and modesty. An individuality and vibrance of character I think perhaps was never nurtured in her, the eldest daughter in a family that lost their own mother young. I often wonder who she could have become.
It’s that version of my mum that I like to think might have been a kindred spirit. Both of us deeply interested in aesthetics, culture, storytelling and self-presentation. Dressing ourselves, not in the costumes of Good Wife and Daughter, not ever to shroud the truth, but to step out into the world side by side as the women we alone have determined to be.
Issabella Orlando is a writer and poet whose work revolves around how the past shapes and remains tethered to our present lives.