The Haunted Wardrobe: Reflections on Clothing and Loss

I returned from my sister’s funeral wearing her clothes. I was keen to have them and her husband wanted them gone. We were both modern rational people and neither of us understood the power that these abandoned garments were able to exert over us. The clothing the dead leave behind can be talisman or phantom: wearing it gives access to the strengths of its previous owner, but many people find it so disturbing that they have no option but to lock it away. This paper uses material from written accounts of bereavement and from costume history to explain the uncanny power of clothing and the way in which the bereaved seek to harness or escape it.