Clothing and Jewellery

This chapter explores the close attention that Lawrence paid to clothing and jewellery. Lawrence had a keen eye for dress and adornment: for its utility, aesthetic qualities and assertions of identity. He saw the ‘interior decoration’ of art hung in homes, of which he wrote in his late essay ‘Pictures on the Walls’, as of a piece with the exterior decoration on/of the human body; indeed, he likened the need for changing pictures to that of refreshing one’s clothes. While at once admiring of the expressiveness and innovativeness of clothing and jewellery design, he was also critical of fashion’s perversion by consumerism and materialism: fashion for the sake of fashionability rather than beauty and renewal.