"Begin with yourself" can be a frightening, but at the same time challenging concept. In order to look at the dress of other cultures it is essential to look at the dress worn here in north-western Europe, and more specially, in our case, in the Netherlands. At the end of 2006 the TRC decided that it should collect Dutch dress. But what is meant by Dutch dress?
Dutch military in their woodland uniform, Pul-i Khumri, Northern Afghanistan, 2005. Photograph: Willem VogelsangInitially we started to collect Dutch regional dress, namely garments from villages and towns such as Huizen, Marken and Volendam, but it soon became apparent that there are other important aspects to Dutch dress. What about uniforms, outfits worn by sub-cultures, daily urban dress, high-fashion? The latter, fortunately, was not a problem because two museums in this part of the Netherlands, the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and the Gemeente Museum, Den Haag, have specialist departments for haute couture and 'court' dress. So it was not necessary to duplicate their work.
In the autumn of 2007 it was decided that the TRC's Dutch dress collection would be divided into three:
- Dutch Regional Dress
- Urban Dress to compliment what was happening at a regional level
- Dutch uniforms/non-uniforms
But why uniforms? In general, a uniform is a means by which it is possible to identify and join together people who belong to a particular social, occupational, or professional group. Such as the clothing worn by a judge or a university professor, a KLM employee, or more obviously, the fire brigade, police or the military. As can be appreciated there are many different types of uniforms within Dutch society, but all have very strong messages with respect to Dress and Identity. We have already been given various uniforms including examples of army, navy and more recently, police (we would like to thank the Leiden Police for their kind gift). We are now actively looking for more examples.
But there are also un-official uniforms such as the outfits worn by sub-groups, as for instance the Goths (black, romantic clothing), students (t-shirts and jeans), and so on. These are generally worn as a statement that they do not belong to the main stream of (Dutch) life, but have their own social conventions and appearances. Ironically, they are still wearing a form of uniform. By concentrating on Dutch uniforms/non-uniforms it was felt that we can provide another vision on Dutch life, past, present and future.
