On the occasion of Couture Comix, no. 150, Lucire has asked me to write a little about how they came into being.
I have always been curious as to why humans wear clothes. Of 8·4 million species identified on this planet, humans are the only ones who dress themselves daily. They even like to dress their pets in sweaters, shoes, cold weather coats and rain gear.
We are the only species who do laundry, shop for new clothes and have closets and drawers to store them. We create shops to sell them, elaborate shows to introduce them, factories to manufacture them and computer programs to design them. We have farmers to grow the cotton, worms to make the silk, and oil to make the synthetics; furthermore we have garbage dumps for the outcasts. We have invented fashion, which comes in and goes out like the tides. We have brands that we confuse with who we are. Or are we?
When I was merely nine years old I became obsessed with the question: why do we wear clothes? Are we ashamed of our bodies? I was not. With my thigh-length hair dyed hot pink, I planned to go to school as usual. I pictured myself getting on the school bus without clothes. A friend with long blonde hair even agreed to join me.
Well of course we never did it for fear of being in trouble. We couldn’t know if it would be the bus driver who stopped us or if we would make it all the way to school. What would all our friends say? Would they join in? Or be horrified? These were the social norms that fogged our way to actually doing it.
Comix are similar; they can state something without actually doing it. A joke is not meant to be real. It raises questions, causes one to think.
I have never been satisfied with an answer as to why we have evolved to wear clothes and have been making jokes and asking questions about it ever since. Is it a grand case of shame, embarrassment, modesty or prudence? Do we want to hide our identity, pretend to be someone else? Is it protection from inclement weather? Perhaps it is for sanitary reasons, or to dissuade perverts? We have nations happily wearing nothing or little. We have run around in Roman togas, Grecian chitons, Chinese hanfu, Japanese kimono, desert thawbs, English tailoring with pants, and furs in cold countries and caves. I do not aspire to dissect the reasons here but want mainly to point out my eternal question and how I came to fashion the ‘Couture Comix’.
My other unanswered question, since everything on the human body is said to have a reason, why do men have tits?
Paula Sweet is a regular contributor to Lucire, with her photography, writing, and illustrations (which often manifest in the form of the ‘Couture Comix’ each week). She created the Muslin Mink, iconic enough that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC has a three-quarter-length one in its permanent collection.
To commemorate the 150th ‘Comix’ entry, Paula is offering some of the favourites printed with archival inks on 285 g acid-free textured watercolour paper. Other sizes are available on request by email. Check them out here.
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