Why is clothing so important to us? Why does it speak so voluminously? The answer lies perhaps in the answer to the question, why do we wear it at all? We’re the only animals that do. (Even orangutans use tools; a variety of animals including crows and dolphins are known to communicate with each other using a kind of language.) Far from modesty and protection, clothes first became important to us because they were linked to eroticism, magic and adornment.

The street-level experience, the consumer experience of fashion and clothing as it manifests in suburban shopping malls, factory outlets and vintage fairs, is home ground for Mel Campbell’s Out Of Shape (Affirm Press, 2013). Sick of the ‘repetitive, confused and anecdotal ways we talk around size and fit’, Campbell’s debut full-length work begins by expressing a frustration with the cluster of different issues relating to clothing, size and fit that characterises such discussions.