‘People want to control how they’re seen and I think that’s really dangerous because you can’t,’ writer, Wallpaper* contributing editor and Central Saint Martins lecturer Dal Chodha tells me over the phone from his home in London. ‘The clothes we wear used to help us know each other, but I don’t think fashion is interested in doing that anymore. That’s why we need to change how we think.’
Changing how we think about clothes is exactly what Chodha is doing in his new book, tellingly titled You gotta keep your head straight about clothes. Part fan letter, part cultural commentary, part personal history, part critical theory, the 85-page booklet suggests a new approach to how we dress by revisiting Cheap Chic, a do-it-yourself fashion manual published in 1975 by New York-based photojournalist Caterine Milinaire and writer and editor Carol Troy.
