Paper Short Abstract:

The object biography of a green leather jacket – once part of a police uniform, then punk fashion and finally an archive object – serves as a springboard for reflecting on textile storytelling and the power interwoven within it.

Paper Abstract:

One piece of clothing can contain a whole universe of stories. This paper focuses on the plentitude of stories written into the green leather and red lining of a jacket from the Ludwig-Uhland-Institute's Archive of Everyday Culture in Tübingen (Germany). Taking the materiality and visuality of the jacket as a starting point, the paper explores the biography of the object: while as an archival piece it tells the story of punk culture and its role within post-folklore-studies, turning the jacket inside out and unwriting it reveals its first purpose as part of a police uniform. The garment is witness to processes of appropriation and reinterpretation – of how culture is literally made, shaped, written, rewritten and unwritten through vestimentary practices. Once it symbolized the institutionalized power of the state. By willfully destroying and reshaping the jacket, the new owner came to terms with the system the garment symbolized and recoded the power inscribed in it. The paper follows the textile story-telling the jacket materializes and is an invitation to reflect on how the materiality of dress objects writes and unwrites cultural history. A particular focus is placed on the question of how we as cultural anthropologists use this narrative capacity for our own sakes and purposes: How does a jacket become a textile storyteller? How does the materiality, style and appeal of a garment turn into a mouthpiece? And how do vestimentary practices materialize power, how do they write and unwrite (hi)stories?