Remember me this way: the role of clothing in contemporary British death practice

This study examines the role of clothing in contemporary British death practice. It explores the way in which clothing supports the negotiation of loss and curation of memory in present-day Britain; considering both the historical origins of clothing practices and the reasons for their persistence. Having considered the clothes placed upon the dead body, the disposition of the clothes the dead leave behind, the clothes worn by mourners and the use of clothing as, or in memorials, the study argues that these contribute to a small number of critical objectives. They idealise the dead, refining their memory until they can be considered exemplary ancestors; they provide points of imaginal contact with these ancestral figures and they connect both the living and the dead to imagined communities which provide spaces within which the bereaved are permitted to mourn, and the dead are afforded a rudimentary kind of immortality. Despite the critical role played by clothing in personal and communal recovery from loss, this thesis also argues that clothing has affective power which, if not carefully controlled, may be experienced as a haunting.