Collection: Issued to the Confined

Every other family in this archive dresses somebody to do a job. This one dresses somebody to be held. The garment is issued by an institution to a person who cannot refuse it, cannot alter it, and in most cases handed over their own clothes to receive it — and that exchange, rather than any feature of the cloth, is the subject of the collection.

The design decisions follow from the exchange and are remarkably consistent across four very different settings. Nothing fits, because nothing is sized to an individual. Nothing fastens securely, or fastens at the back where the wearer cannot reach. There are no pockets. Everything is marked, and the marking faces outward. A hospital gown and a prison suit are not similar by coincidence.

This is the most sensitive material on the site and it is presented as record rather than as illustration. Nothing here is captioned with an interpretation the catalogue does not support, and where a plate's circumstances are not documented, the caption says only what the archive says.

Four chapters. The contents are public; the plates and the inventory are for subscribers.

Sample

Up to five plates from each of the 4 chapters, in full, free to anyone. Every one is credited to the collection that holds it and links back to the record.

Prison inmate

Hospital patient

Institutional and asylum

Refugee and camp issue