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In the fashion industry, designers like to reassure their clients that until a woman slips into one of their garments, it’s little more than an unremarkable pile of cloth. Certainly there’s plenty of truth to that. Only a small percentage of garments look breathtaking hanging from a sales rack.

Most clothes have to be tried on to appreciate their true splendor. A jacket needs to sit squarely on a woman’s shoulders before anyone can marvel at how its strategically placed seams slim down a waistline. A dress must be slipped on and zipped up to appreciate how a classic bias cut caresses an hourglass figure.

But once a garment has been worn, once it has seen a woman through date nights, business meetings or a lifetime of child-rearing, does it retain some essence of the person?

A dress can spark memories, of course. And books have explored the way in which fashion serves as markers in our lives. A bride can take one look at her wedding dress and be transported back to that special day. Pull an old prom dress from the closet and memories of cheesy photos come flooding back.

The US photographer Jeannette Montgomery Barron, however, tries to dive deeper into the memories that are attached to clothes. Barron photographed garments chosen from her mother’s closet. Each dress, blazer, slip or swimsuit became a still life. Sometimes the garments were shot against a backdrop of plain fabric; sometimes they were laid out in the snow; sometimes they just seemed to float. She searches for personality, character, perhaps even a little bit of life spirit.

The result is “My Mother’s Clothes: An Album of Memories,” a modest book of 112 pages. It has the dimensions of a small photo album, something that one might have used to display vacation pictures.

Barron’s photographs — alongside her simple text — challenge readers to reconsider their relationship with clothes. After all, no other possessions are quite as intimate. A particular pair of trousers might call to mind the luncheon to which they were worn more than a decade ago. But they might also give us a clue to the wearer.

It’s a tall order for a stash of vintage frocks, but Barron had powerful motivation. Her mother, Eleanor Morgan Montgomery Atuk, a Georgia-born Southern lady with social standing, a down-to-earth spirit and an enthusiasm for fashion, was dying of Alzheimer’s disease. Barron grabbed hold of anything that seemed to jar her mother’s memory, anything that would, if only for a short while, bring her mother back.

The first garment she photographed was a white, sequined Bill Blass jacket. “It was one of her favorites, and she wore it a lot because she knew it would always work. That was her emergency outfit,” Barron says.

It’s impossible to know what the images might have whispered to Barron’s mother. But the way in which the clothes are photographed offer some hints about the woman who wore them. The fur coat, with her mother’s name “Ellie M.” embroidered in the lining, is spread out on the green grass. The princess lines of the coat swing out jauntily. That lush lawn emphasizes that the choice of fur by a woman who lived in Atlanta had little to do with practicality and everything to do with style and desire.

The gold brocade pattern of an Yves Saint Laurent coat competes with the gold and pine green print wallpaper in the background. It is a cacophonous image of indulgence. You can practically hear “Ellie M.” walking into a party, the swish-swish of her coat as it brushed against her legs.

Most of the images in the book were taken before Barron’s mother died, but a few were snapped afterward. Ivory trousers hanging in front of a window are illuminated by the sunlight streaming through.

But all the photographs are linked because they were taken without input from the woman who knew the clothes best. These are the daughter’s view of the garments, an expression of what the clothes — and the woman — meant to her.

“She wanted me to wear the clothes and I wouldn’t. I was a tomboy. I had a different style and attitude. I knew I couldn’t pull this stuff off. I’m pretty minimal. I love nice clothes but they have to be simple and understated,” Barron says. “But part of my stubbornness was probably just to spite her.”

Barron spent five of years documenting her mother’s wardrobe, hoping to spur her mother’s memory while creating new memories of her own. Her mother had a passion for clothes. It wasn’t one that Barron shared, but it still touched her deeply. 

The Washington Post