Memory cloth | Threads of Family, Stories of Home
Memory is a slippery thing. It can haunt and delude you, take you down false turns full of false accusations. But it is also a warm and tender container – of the perfect day, a fond meeting, a dinner with friends. It is a carrier of legacy, a conduit for dreaming, and a place where feeling and fantasy meet – and play.
Lately, I keep having this thought:
Memory cloth. Memory cloth. Memory cloth.
It’s becoming obsessive.
I have a dress in my cupboard that I’ve never worn. But I can’t bear to get rid of it, or to rehome it, and likely, I never will. This is because it belonged to my mother. It is a black linen shift dress, cut to the knee. In all the years it’s been in my possession, I’d hoped there would be a time I could slip into it – my mother’s frame much slighter than mine. And now I have outgrown it: my style has changed, and I find myself, time and again, making the same choices: comfort over all else. I cannot bear anything too cinching; it cannot touch my belly, it cannot hug my arms. The looser the fit, the freer I feel. The more room I have to move, the more room I have for everything else. I am a cloth person – I work for the cloth, so to speak – but I am fussy about how it lands on my skin. Or, perhaps because of this, I am fussy about how it lands on my skin.
I know that I will never get rid of this dress. It has followed me through three changes of address. It has travelled with me to Italy and to Spain, where I had the notion that I could use it to slip into a different skin – into another place, and another time. Travel opens up these kinds of romantic prospects; the ability to change yourself at will, on a whim.
Memory cloth. Memory cloth. Memory cloth.
I have in my possession a fairly vast and enviable collection of Mungo textiles. Some are one-offs or samples – strokes of creative genius that didn’t quite make the cut. Others accumulated over the years with a sense of I must have this thing. This thing feels luxurious and special. Linen bedding being one of them.
The first to be mine was the Summer Towel, woven in a vivid Cobalt Blue. It was 2019, I was fresh on the block, and slowly penning my way into the role of Mungo’s copywriter. “You work here now, you have to take home a towel. That is the deal. That is the rite of passage,” I was told.
Although I’ve accumulated several others over the years, that towel is still my favourite. It’s soft and organic, and the best reference to the old textile term ‘lofty’. And it has a story. It’s woven on a 130-year-old Lancashire loom – one that makes an incredible sound and stands sentinel at the front of the Mungo Mill. This loom is history in motion: a century ago, it clattered away in a different world, in an English weaving shed, powered by steam.
It’s the loom gifted to Stuart over 30 years ago, on which he began weaving limited runs of kitchen cloths from a small studio where passers-by would watch him work. Those were the early days of Mungo – one man and a loom. Now, we’re 100-strong. That loom, and that towel, have stories to tell. And what’s life without a little story to it, a little swing and song?
When my father died, it is the whispering of cloth that I remember. I received a phone call on a Thursday morning, at a time too early for any good news. I was in bed, and slipped off the sheets as if sliding down a wall, taking in three words that changed everything, all at once. I went to my mother – she was in bed, the duvet ruched up around her. Her bedding was always warm, always smelt like her, and always felt like home. We put sunflowers out for him on a square of linen. I do not remember the faces that came and went. I remember the sunflowers, and the linen.
Memory cloth. Memory cloth. Memory cloth.
When my niece was born, there was only one thing to do. I could not be there to count her eyelashes and her toes and her starfish fingers. I could not be there to hold her – but I could give her something that could. Her Mungo baby blanket is two years old now, and so is she. She still carries it with her into the lounge, the end trailing on the floor, her fingers curling into the folds. That cloth is part of her story now – it is memory in the making. Perhaps one day my Mungo Bakuba Throw – by then a vintage piece – will bear witness to my own children. It will swaddle small feet in bed, or add a sense of ritual to Sunday movie nights.
I hold no sentimental value to the uninteresting, mass-produced t-shirts in my collection. And this is perhaps a failing of their design – they won’t become hand-me-downs, or heirloom goods. They might briefly extend their life by being rehomed to another. And then, at last, they will see out their days somewhere they shouldn’t – the home no designer or clothmaker intends for their garment: the sprawling, and yet largely invisible elephant in the room – landfill.
But a Mungo cloth is a textile to be treasured. One that is timeless. One that will last. One that has a story – because I know how it was made, I’ve seen it on the looms, I know the face behind the cloth and six years later, I still feel very soft about working here.
Memory is a slippery thing. (I was right about the sunflowers. Was I right about the linen?)
But I do know its power, its beauty, its story.
I know its ability to turn a simple cloth into something much, much more.
Memory cloth. Memory cloth. Memory cloth.
More from our blog:
The Subtle Magic of Scent with Tres Nagual | Winter Reflections | The Story Behind the Double Cloth
