Talking Clothes and Memory at Write in the Gallery

Notes from May's Meeting

May 14, 2026

I do a gig once a month at the local Art Center called Write in the Gallery. Each month I bring a 30 minute creative starter and then we break up, scatter around the room and have an hour to work on continuing with whatever the prompts have inspired or ongoing personal writing projects. We don’t read and share. No business meeting. This is a time for developing the habit of consistently carving out space in our lives for writing. For honoring our creative spirit. I thought it would be fun to share with you this month’s handout and the playlist I put together to support this month’s theme. So, here you have it:

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Write In the Gallery at Great River Arts
With Laura Hansen, May 8, 2026
Theme: Clothes with custom Playlist (Spotify: This Shirt)

First we played:
This Shirt (lyrics included on original handout not included here)
Songwriters: Mary Carpenter / Mary Chapin Carpenter
This Shirt lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Writing Exercise 1:
Think of a piece of clothing or an accessory that ties you to a specific memory, reminds you of someone, made or makes you feel confident/your best self, something irreplaceable now lost or damaged, an item of clothing that makes you feel comfortable or comforted, that one shirt or sweater you just can't throw out, as an aside: describe your closet, how is it organized, do you change it seasonally, what does it say about you, if you are writing fiction tell us about your character's closet. What clothes are must-haves for a trip? What clothes/accessories are your go-to for retail therapy? How do we use clothing as messaging to define us?

Remember Me? Creative Conversations with Clothes | Intellect Excerpt from...

Clothes are great conversationalists; “If dresses could talk, what stories might they tell?” (Weber and Mitchell 2004:3). Every garment tells a story: who made it, who wore it, what marks and alterations map its history. Clothes have great memories and just looking at a favourite item can transport us to another time, another place. Conjuring
memories associated with personal items of clothing can really allow one to ‘collapse time’ (Benjamin, 1999) and move backwards and forwards within one's life history; to “move through time, tardis like” (Stanley, 1992:54). I never tire of using garments to express stories, through taking them apart, embellishing them with print and stitch, creating images of them, writing about them and even writing on them; any method which gives them a voice. The dress I'm working on might reveal something of itself, perhaps a worn-out hem or ghost stitch marks, which in turn inspires me reveal something previously unexposed about myself. “Our clothes are full of memory and meaning. That's why we all have garments … that we haven't worn in years but just can't part with” (Spivak, 2004:6–7). Dresses are my confidants, they are who I pass on my family sayings and traditions to, who I tell my stories to. Perhaps they will stand in for my own descendants – passing on my stories to others after I'm gone.

Writing Exercise 2:
Look at the items on the display table. Pick one and use it as the basis for a character study or story.

The Shirt by Robert Pinsky
excerpt
The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians
Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking money or politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to the band
Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze
At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.
One hundred and forty-six died in the flames

See entire poem at https://poets.org/poem/shirt

The Plaid Dress by Edna St. Vincent Millay
excerpt
Strong sun, that bleach
The curtains of my room, can you not render
Colourless this dress I wear?—
This violent plaid
Of purple angers and red shames; the yellow stripe
Of thin but valid treacheries; the flashy green of kind deeds done

See entire poem at https://poets.org/poem/plaid-dress

“I remember every year of my life by the clothes that I wore—or at least the
ones that I wanted.” Julia Reed

Not long ago I pulled out the dress I wore to the party after my high school
graduation. It’s sheer and floaty with a handkerchief hem and water-colored
ferns. That night I wore it with high, high heels and my grandmother’s
diamond bracelet and snaked my best friend’s boyfriend. This summer, like
everyone else, I wore it with flats and a cross on a thong around my neck and
felt not vampish but waifish and therefore too sweet to snake anybody’s
anything.

(Excerpted from Lit Hub (Julia Reed on the Memories Woven Into Well-Worn Clothes) at https://lithub.com/julia-reed-on-the-memories-woven-into-well-
worn-clothes/)

The Introvert Tries On a New Personality
By Laura L. Hansen

Walking along in your go-to black
attire/you spot a brilliant shade of
yellow and become obsessed/and you
go into the store and slip on the dress
and are transformed/you are
hummingbird you are goldfinch/you
are satin and silk/you are both liquid
and sun/(a sun shower in summer)
you wear the dress everywhere until
one day someone/takes a picture and
steals the soul of the dress/and you
remember you don't look good in
yellow/it sallows your skin/and the sun
sets on your new self/which you will
put away in a closet along with the
dress/far in the back/hidden by the
black jeans and sweaters and
wide-leg pants/a sun behind a heavy
bank of clouds/faded and fringed
with dust.

Laura's Night Stack

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