Sandra Michels Adams is wearing a loose, chocolate brown halter dress in the manner of her idol, 1930s American designer Claire McCardell. Her feet are bare. The sharp edges of her russet hair fall against smooth, pale cheeks. Her glasses are tortoiseshell, her necklace and earrings clunky copper. She sits on a straight-backed couch in her study, surrounded by books with titles like Clothes Tell a Story and The Book of Beauty and Fascination, boxes of old Vogue magazines, rattan mannequins, and fringed scarves–the very picture of the fashionable and scholarly costume historian.
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Adams, who calls herself “obsessed with meaning,” weaves threads of psychological, philosophical, political, and poetic meaning into her lectures. All these things, she says, are closely related to fashion. A sampling of her thoughts makes the point:
The extent to which we decide to interact with society corresponds to how much we follow fashion. On the one hand, we want to make an impression on people, to fit in or distinguish ourselves. On the other, we want to be comfortable and lazy, we may even want to rebel or repulse.
“The relationship between looking good and a kind of spiritual well-being is very clear. In dressing, we put on symbols of our desires. We model ourselves after an idealized self or idealized others. There is a fleeting Eden which only being in a fashion can create.”
