ReDress

A two-year perfomance/life project that delved into how we adopt and discard identities over time and how we express these shifting identities through the things we buy and how we present ourselves externally.

Running from January 2016 to January 2018, the project began with a year-long performance in which I used clothes, hair, and mannerisms to revisit an identity from my past - one I had long since discarded - and explored how stepping back into that persona impacted me.

2016

For the whole of 2016, I went back to the look of my late teens.

In 1994, I was 16, had just come out as a lesbian, and started enjoying all the delights the Glasgow gay scene had to offer. Looking back, I see that my fashion, hair, choice of drinks, music, pubs and clubs all changed considerably following my coming-out.

I started becoming more masculine in my clothing choices, favouring baggy Levi jeans, men’s dress shirts, and my box-fresh brown Timberland boots. My hair was just above my shoulders, and I always wore it in a ponytail, with an undercut shaved in the back that I loved to show off.

When thinking about how I would reconstruct this look in 2016, at the age of 39, I decided early on that it wouldn’t work to completely re-create it but would be more interesting to reimagine what I would look like now if I had kept that look all these years.

So, I switched my red hair for a sharp silver cut from hairdresser Craig Mctear and went to Westfield picked up more masculine presenting clothes at Westfield.

It was a bit of a challenge, especially trying to find the right sizes (XL still wasn’t easy to find, no matter which department I was in!). I also wasn’t sure if I was even allowed to use the changing rooms in the men’s section since it wasn’t clearly stated as for men only. In the end, I’d lug everything up to the women’s dressing room and always feel a bit guilty knowing the staff would have to haul everything back down to the men’s section with all the stuff I didn’t want.

The Free Market

With my new look in place, I set about getting rid of all my old clothes by selling them at pop-up market stalls. Customers could ‘buy’ anything they wanted, but money wasn’t allowed. Instead, they paid with a conversation about their relationship with their clothes. I asked them to share a story or memory connected to an item of clothing they once owned.

I held these stalls at Camden People’s Theatre in London, Haphazard Festival in Manchester, and with the Drawing Shed in Walthamstow, London. During this one-one-one performance I had some amazing conversations with a wide range of people, and the whole process gave me a deeper understanding of how we think about what we wear and why. It was fascinating to hear how people connected their identity to their clothes and to think together about why we wear what we wear.

Love, Looks, and Shag Tags

I started Redress single, so I had no idea how a partner would react if I suddenly changed my entire look and style. Would it affect our relationship? Would they still find me attractive?

I did have to update my dating app pictures, though, because it felt strange to go on dates looking so different from the person in my profile.

In February 2016, I performed Picture Me as part of Cruising for Art in Helsinki, Finland. It was a one-on-one performance where the audience member dressed me in my new clothes and took a photo I could use on my Tinder and OkCupid profiles.

Before we snapped the pics, we talked about my transformation, and I gave them a few guidelines to help create the perfect shot:

  • Landscape photos with a good sense of body type get the most attention.

  • Photos featuring the left side of the face perform better than those with the right.

  • The most popular dating photos are the ones where you look straight at the camera and smile with your teeth.

  • Men are most attracted to women who show happiness (broad smile).

  • Women are most drawn to men who display pride (tilted head and expanded chest).

I think they nailed it.

After chatting with a lot of people about their looks, I became curious about how much what we wear impacts how others perceive us.

So, for one night only, at the queer club night Knickerbocker, the artist Catherine Hoffmann and I brought back a sexy ’90s Manchester gay clubbing classic, and a precursor to Grindr and Tinder—the Shag Tag.

Shag Tags were numbered stickers you wore in a club. If you fancied someone, you’d write down their number and send them a message through the Shag Tag Board.

These were all the rage when I first started going to gay clubs in the late ’90s, and I spent many nights checking the Shag Tag Board, hoping for a message with a number I could follow up on.

For this special 2016 Shag Tag experience, Catherine and I played matchmaker, asking the audience to fill out a form before receiving their Shag Tag. The form asked what they were looking for in a partner or hook-up in terms of looks and style.

There was plenty of debate about what was appropriate to ask, what was too much, and what was just right.

Back in the Day

Back in the Day was a series of walking tours, first in Glasgow for the BUZZCUT Festival and later in London for the Radical Ideas Festival at Rich Mix.

Glasgow
This was an autobiographical guided tour around my hometown, Glasgow, where I revisited the pubs and nightclubs I frequented in my late teens.

Through the tour, I explored past identities with my audience and sparked discussions about how we “choose” to inhabit our identities, and how those change over time.

Part of the experience involved reconnecting with old friends and members of those past pub/club communities. We reflected on their lives and the significance of those spaces and how what we wore helped us feel liked we belonged.

Worship This

This was a performance for one audience member at a time where I gave away an object I had kept for sentimental reasons, while we discussed their own relationship with objects and memories.

I was fascinated by how we fetishize objects, giving them meaning far beyond their value. I made myself into a shrine, but instead of receiving gifts, I gave them away.

The performance involved various religious symbols on my body, though it unintentionally resembled a Buddha due to the gold, which with hindsight is a maybe not quite rights so it was performed just once.

2017

Transformation on 26 February at the CUT Festival marked the start of the second year of the Redress project, where I revisited the look of my early twenties.

At 22, I found myself unexpectedly in a relationship with a man. My baggy jeans and dress shirts were swapped for tank tops, denim skirts, and pretty sandals. It was a fun but confusing time as I wrestled with questioning and redefining who I was.

In 2017 as I approached 40, I ccould’t help but wonder if I’m just going through the same process again!

ReDress was a messy, personal journey of transformation, questioning, and discovery. It was about looking back to move forward, letting go of old identities while embracing new ones. And it didn’t just give me a chance to reflect on my own journey—it sparked many conversations about how we all use clothes to shape, challenge, and express who we are.