Why has (or has?) the cleaning and care of clothing been associated with the feminine? The film, My Beautiful Laundrette, tells the story of two male lovers, Omar and Johnny, who renovate a laundromat. Again, the care of clothing is feminized—after all, two males opening a laundromat could not possibly be heterosexual! In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsy's love for Daisy is never fully reciprocated. Is it because he has too many nice shirts?

Recovering himself in a minute he opened for us two hulking patent cabinets which held his massed suits and dressing-gowns and ties, and his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high.

'I've got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall.'

He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen and tick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher—shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, with monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to dry stormily.

'They're such beautiful shirts,' she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. 'It makes me sad because I've never seen such—such beautiful shirts before' (70).

For those looking to rent a new apartment or to buy a new home, the "walk-in" closet" is often an important selling feature. Companies like California Closets have gained a wide following of devotees looking to "simply life" and "find unity" in their melamine creations. Some like things a little more chaotic, however—they don't like to find things too easily. The sweater may be balled in a corner, a dress is hung inside out on a hanger or the creases of a pair of slacks have lost their edge from being stuffed under the bed.

In addition to being a place of order or chaos, the closet is also the domain of fantasy, secrecy and remembrance. It is a favorite hiding place of children—a place of must, mothballs and faint lavender scent. It is a place where one might go to nibble a secret bit of chocolate, or enter the world of Narnia. It is where is kept the fragrant cedar chest handed down by grandmother, or where, tucked away on the top shelf, a small mahogany box safeguards the first love letter ever received.

Our closets and what we keep in them tell stories about our lives. Saulo Cwerner states,

Identity, we are so frequently told, is what on e carries around; it is related to what one appears to be. But many, if not most , objects and signs that people use in order to express social meaning and identities (individuality, social class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, subculture, age, and so on) have to be stored away somehow when they are not in use (80).

The sociology of the closet is more than the study of how we store our identities, but the history of those identities. The closet, the chest, the cabinet, the box—each is its own little museum of the artifacts of our lives. By turning a knob or a small gold key, we enter a private space inhabited by ghosts. The ward of robes is the domain of imagination, desire, longing and being. To peek into someone's closet expresses a desire to know and to learn. If we feel a little guilty about having done so, it is because we have learned too much.

September, 2001

Selected Bibliography:

-Cwerner, Saulo B. "Clothes at Rest: Elements for a Sociology of the Wardrobe." Fashion Theory 5 (2001): 79-92.
-Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. In Three Novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Charles Scriber's Sons, 1953.
-Stallybrass, Peter. "Worn Worlds: Clothes, Mourning and the Life of Things." The Yale Review 81 (1993) 35-50.