The science of clothing so far has never been developed; it is something new,
almost pioneer scientific work. The personal science of clothes and of being
clothed, then, is the topic on which I would suggest a few considerations
from a somewhat technical point of view.
It includes, as I shall consider it, two phases, first, a physiological psychology of clothing, and then the beginnings of the applied psychology of clothing.
These complement each other. All this is a new application of psychology
(the general science of how to live), and one of which the great public is
much in real need. The public, to be sure, does not realize this need, any
more than it knew that it was in pressing need of information on diet or on
sex or on other things. The public does need basic scientific information on
how to clothe themselves properly so that they will be both more efficient
and more happy, because continually more comfortable.
I. The Satisfaction-Efficiency Ratio – Underlying this whole matter of the
physiology and the psychology of clothing is an ancient idea which is of
fundamental importance throughout the whole matter. In the lectures to my
students I give it the technical name of the then-euphoric index or ratio –
but we wont worry about the name. Sthen and euphor are two Greek terms;
sthen stands for strength or energy, and euphor for well-bearing, contentment,
well-being, happiness; while ratio, of course, or “index,” is the relationship
between the other two. The old and simple enough idea then, is, to put it
wholly outside of scientific terms, that one expends more energy and is therefore more efficient in many ways when he is contented and happy, using the
word happy as a symbol for the broad translation of the general Greek term
euphoria. When a person is satisfied, contented, in good humor, when he is
“happy,” in short, he expends more energy, has more initiative, and is
altogether more efficient than when he is unhappy, worrying about something,
Freedom from discomfort underlies it. It importantly underlies the psychology of clothing in particular, without any doubt at all, because personal comfort is absolutely essential “in the long run” to a high-grade of efficiency in the long life-run. This is not so much true of an Eastport man for example feeding sheets of tin to a sardine-box stamping machine, but it is true of any kind of work which involves the optimum action of the “higher” and freer phases of the mind and skilled body. Comfort in general is indispensable to ideal behaviour that is at all free. Comfort has both a physiological and a psychological aspect; but both aspects underlie efficiency in a way which is measurable even in dollars and cents. The factory-managers, as you already are aware, not many years ago started out to prompt their employees and operatives to maintain better health, to keep them in better “condition;” finding that it was a “good policy,” even as income was concerned, to go so far as to hire a “doctor” at two or three thousand a year to help keep the employees well. . . . The present discussion concerns first the physiological psychology of clothes. My approach in this knowledge is mostly that of pure science from the universities and from the psychological and physiological laboratories, although no actual researches that I am able to hear of have as yet been done in a scientific laboratory on the psychology of clothing . . . . . . There is much more physiology in the science of adequate clothing as a process than most men, even the physiologists, would at first suspect. And yet it is obvious, on thought for a moment, that any covering as heavy, as complete, and as relatively rigid as an average suit of clothes or a proper gown could not help having multiform influences within and without over the body which wears it. Because so universal and so continuous, these influences are of noteworthy scientific and practical importance. The reason in a nutshell for this is that one’s clothes are one of the important things that intervenes between the individual personality and his environment, and you understand that life itself in a sense is a reaction of an individual to his environment. As Webb puts it, “As a matter of fact, our artificial coverings have become so much a part of our life that one may perhaps be allowed to apply the methods of the naturalist to their consideration, and deal with them as if they were part and parcel of the creature which wears them” – as pragmatically they are. We might almost consider clothes as a vicarious or artificial skin, almost an extension of the individual’s boundary, involving important relationships between the person and his environment, spiritual as much as material. And that is the reason, the deeply fundamental reason, why there is so much real science in the physiology and the psychology of clothing, subjective and objective, personally and socially and industrially.
Let us take up first then the discussion of the physiological psychology of clothes in three groups of relations: 1. to the skin; 2. to bodily action or behavior; and 3. to body-temperature. Since the centuries – those slow, groping, aspiring centuries – when manhood and womanhood were new and our preprogenitors were covered with a fairly thick mantle of hair, the human animal man has been a naturally naked creature. He naturally is so, still. For a reason none too easily apprehended, there seems to us something ludicrous in this nakedness of the nâive savage. Thomas Hood the Younger, for example, almost blushes as he tells us “And their principle clothes were a ring through the nose And a patch of red paint on the forehead,” while other poetasters less known to fame than Thomas Hood, and escaped missionaries and cartoonists innumerable have almost vied with each other in expressing in memorable phrases the insistent natural nakedness, always adorned, of natural man. This interesting and important negative phase of our subject we must for the present all but ignore. The human animal is naturally, if you please, then, and normally a naked animal, and up to within about three hundred years ago people were allowed to live in corners of Europe, specially in Ireland and in Germany (Rudeck), naked. Up to three centuries ago, at least, the nakedness of the primeval man had not become so entirely “immodest” that it was prohibited by enforced law. Man is naturally a naked animal, and it takes a very long time indeed to adapt an organism to artificial, “acquired” new conditions. Furless and with little hair was primeval man; and he still likes to be so. In clothing him, therefore, one has to respect and not ignore this natural nakedness; and especially the basal fact that man gets his highest comfort when naturally warm environmental air is freely playing over and on his skin. You all know, of course, the delight of exposure to the breeze, and to warm showers, and to other conditions of the natural environment, when you are naked. Now, this basic principle of the physiology of clothes, (that man is constructed for efficiency-with-happiness, primally as a naked animal) requires that he be rather careful in adapting ideal clothing to his requirements, because man, after all, is a highly sensitive being. His efficiency is an intricate and a rather susceptible thing, and has to be catered to, if he is to get the most out of his few and flying years.
Freedom from discomfort underlies it. It importantly underlies the psychology of clothing in particular, without any doubt at all, because personal comfort is absolutely essential “in the long run” to a high-grade of efficiency in the long life-run. This is not so much true of an Eastport man for example feeding sheets of tin to a sardine-box stamping machine, but it is true of any kind of work which involves the optimum action of the “higher” and freer phases of the mind and skilled body. Comfort in general is indispensable to ideal behaviour that is at all free. Comfort has both a physiological and a psychological aspect; but both aspects underlie efficiency in a way which is measurable even in dollars and cents. The factory-managers, as you already are aware, not many years ago started out to prompt their employees and operatives to maintain better health, to keep them in better “condition;” finding that it was a “good policy,” even as income was concerned, to go so far as to hire a “doctor” at two or three thousand a year to help keep the employees well. . . . The present discussion concerns first the physiological psychology of clothes. My approach in this knowledge is mostly that of pure science from the universities and from the psychological and physiological laboratories, although no actual researches that I am able to hear of have as yet been done in a scientific laboratory on the psychology of clothing . . . . . . There is much more physiology in the science of adequate clothing as a process than most men, even the physiologists, would at first suspect. And yet it is obvious, on thought for a moment, that any covering as heavy, as complete, and as relatively rigid as an average suit of clothes or a proper gown could not help having multiform influences within and without over the body which wears it. Because so universal and so continuous, these influences are of noteworthy scientific and practical importance. The reason in a nutshell for this is that one’s clothes are one of the important things that intervenes between the individual personality and his environment, and you understand that life itself in a sense is a reaction of an individual to his environment. As Webb puts it, “As a matter of fact, our artificial coverings have become so much a part of our life that one may perhaps be allowed to apply the methods of the naturalist to their consideration, and deal with them as if they were part and parcel of the creature which wears them” – as pragmatically they are. We might almost consider clothes as a vicarious or artificial skin, almost an extension of the individual’s boundary, involving important relationships between the person and his environment, spiritual as much as material. And that is the reason, the deeply fundamental reason, why there is so much real science in the physiology and the psychology of clothing, subjective and objective, personally and socially and industrially.
Physical Connections between the Body and Dress
Let us take up first then the discussion of the physiological psychology of clothes in three groups of relations: 1. to the skin; 2. to bodily action or behavior; and 3. to body-temperature. Since the centuries – those slow, groping, aspiring centuries – when manhood and womanhood were new and our preprogenitors were covered with a fairly thick mantle of hair, the human animal man has been a naturally naked creature. He naturally is so, still. For a reason none too easily apprehended, there seems to us something ludicrous in this nakedness of the nâive savage. Thomas Hood the Younger, for example, almost blushes as he tells us “And their principle clothes were a ring through the nose And a patch of red paint on the forehead,” while other poetasters less known to fame than Thomas Hood, and escaped missionaries and cartoonists innumerable have almost vied with each other in expressing in memorable phrases the insistent natural nakedness, always adorned, of natural man. This interesting and important negative phase of our subject we must for the present all but ignore. The human animal is naturally, if you please, then, and normally a naked animal, and up to within about three hundred years ago people were allowed to live in corners of Europe, specially in Ireland and in Germany (Rudeck), naked. Up to three centuries ago, at least, the nakedness of the primeval man had not become so entirely “immodest” that it was prohibited by enforced law. Man is naturally a naked animal, and it takes a very long time indeed to adapt an organism to artificial, “acquired” new conditions. Furless and with little hair was primeval man; and he still likes to be so. In clothing him, therefore, one has to respect and not ignore this natural nakedness; and especially the basal fact that man gets his highest comfort when naturally warm environmental air is freely playing over and on his skin. You all know, of course, the delight of exposure to the breeze, and to warm showers, and to other conditions of the natural environment, when you are naked. Now, this basic principle of the physiology of clothes, (that man is constructed for efficiency-with-happiness, primally as a naked animal) requires that he be rather careful in adapting ideal clothing to his requirements, because man, after all, is a highly sensitive being. His efficiency is an intricate and a rather susceptible thing, and has to be catered to, if he is to get the most out of his few and flying years.
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