Uniforms and Uniformity: Virginia Woolf

In foregrounding fashion’s involvement with nationalist and corporatist political movements, this chapter on Virginia Woolf focuses on her 1930s writing—especially The Years (1937) and Three Guineas (1938), as well as related material in the Monks House Papers—to analyze Woolf’s engagement with fascist interventions in identity politics. In focusing on the depiction of women’s sartorial items in her writing, it shows how Woolf examines the relationship between the individual and the collective that fascist movements threatened to restructure by introducing increasingly uniform clothing. But while she revealed the dangers inherent in following regulations that aimed to standardize behavior and clothing, Woolf, this chapter shows, simultaneously embraced other forms of uniformity: her own rise to literary stardom in the 1930s, advanced by the Hogarth Press’ introduction of Uniform Editions of her work, provides a striking counterpoint to her critique of the standardized cultural productions of her time.