On gardening clothes



Whole publications, industries, lives even, revolve around the pleasure that some people get from the choosing of clothes. It would be foolish for me, who delights in many much stranger hobbies, to denigrate the millions for whom this is a joy-giving aspect of existence, but I must confess, the opposite is true for me. If the selection of clothes does ever bring me joy it is, paradoxically, when no real selection is required whatsoever. When, in anticipation of a day romping around lanes and fields where, if I am unlucky I might bump into two or three other souls, I can throw on whatever is closest to hand. I recall once, when back in the midst of my family, I threw on just such an outfit that consisted of an old shirt of my father’s, a jumper, scarred from active service on the frontline in the back of the wardrobe taking the battle to the moths, some tracksuit bottoms, a pair of wellington boots and a coat which, when I returned from said ramble, one of my sisters informed me, with horror, in fact belonged to her.

I call such get ups ‘gardening clothes’- although horticulture, realistically, here performs the same linguistic face-saving as it does in ‘gardening leave’. One might choose to tend to plants in such an outfit, but one might equally choose to burn or break down or simply ignore greenery altogether whilst adorned in whatever ragtag ensemble was thrown together on one’s return from the world of sleep. Gardening clothes are, to my mind, those items we throw onto our corporeal forms for no other reason than practicality- they adorn us not with beauty, nor do they signify position or authority: they are the direct inheritors of the fig leaves of Eden- they cover our nakedness, and no more. 

 Except, of course, there is more- they bring us comfort. Invariably, part of this is physical- I sincerely doubt many would choose corsets, or starched collars, or high heels as their gardening garments of choice- but it is emotional too. The comforting nature of, say, an old jersey is not necessarily in proportion to its material quality, but rather, inevitably, related to its role as a repository of memories. A rip here or an unravelling there are reminders of joys past- and so their presence echoes the reverberations of said joyfulness into the present, making them objects (or more properly, absences) that are joys in and of themselves. When there are whole wine soaked suppers that can be narrated using only the stains on a dress shirt then it seems only natural that a degree of affection for such a prop might develop.

Most of all though clothes like the my gardening outfit are comforting because they indicate a level, I suppose, of freedom. They are a statement that one is so at ease with ones surroundings and company that that the externals cease to matter. Of course, such a statement might also be made performatively; but I cannot believe that the carefully distressed mackintoshes of Shoreditch are really worn with the same internal glow of satisfaction as the moth-addled jumpers of Barsetshire. Comfortable clothes are not, then, just a matter of fabric softener, but indicators of where and when our very souls are most at ease. The next step to such logic, worryingly, might well be vacuuming in the nude- but I fear that the apparatus involved in such an activity is so fraught with the risk of all too real physical discomfort as to be not worth making such an intellectual leap.

There is, perhaps, a class aspect to all this- maybe those of us who are forced by the happy yoke of fate into positions of luck and responsibility where we are ordinarily expected to dress appropriately are the only ones for whom to wear simply what we wish, rather than what we have to, is a source of pleasure. A prisoner has little choice with regard to his wardrobe after all. But, such concerns are for another time, and another outfit. I recall an episode of Keeping Up Appearances, the plot of which gravitates around Hyacinth Bucket’s mistaking of a peer for a gardener. She was not the first, of course. My mind inexorably turns to Mary Magdalene, who, thinking him to be the gardener, misidentified not a peer, but a king. Strange gardening clothes then, those resurrected robes of white, but ones, I hope, we might all find to be to our comfort in the end.

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