Worn in: How the clothes and textiles we live with make us feel at home

What is it about?

What makes a place feel like home? The clothes we wear, the bedding we sleep in, or the soft furnishings we live among play a deeper role in our sense of belonging than we usually recognise. Cloth is not just functional or decorative. It absorbs the physical traces of our lives, creating a kind of intimate space the author calls the 'textile-sphere'. Drawing on psychoanalysis, philosophy, and examples from contemporary art, this article explores how this accumulation of physical traces generates a sense of home and connection, and how the loss of those traces can feel like a profound displacement. It also suggests that as 'smart' and virtual textiles become ever more present in our lives, it is more important than ever to understand what ordinary textiles have always done for us, and what we risk losing if we stop paying attention.

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Photo by Alexandros Giannakakis on Unsplash

Photo by Alexandros Giannakakis on Unsplash

Why is it important?

We live in an age of displacement. Mass migration, remote working, distributed families, and the dominance of digital screens have all unsettled our relationship with physical space and the material world. This article offers a new conceptual tool, the 'textilesphere', to help us think through what is at stake. This work crosses disciplinary boundaries in ways that open the topic up to a wide range of readers, providing a timely framework for evaluating what we should carry forward from our existing relationship with everyday material – cloth and clothing – and what we risk leaving behind.