A vehicle for expressing the change she wants to see in the world
Interviewed and written by Dr. Alexandria Vasquez
Herderin is a research and design studio attempting to understand the social and emotional relationship people have to clothing, and, if any, the relationship to identity that clothing facilitates and corresponds to. Herderin is branding this body of research: "Clothing The Self." We have conducted a series of interviews over the first half of 2025 that we are sharing in a story narrative format on the Herderin Journal. The following journal entry is from a Clothing the Self interview with Dr. Francis, a medical doctor, community organizer, and reproductive justice advocate.
Francis lives in a beautiful three-story Craftsman home in Mendocino County, California, with her husband. When I pull up to her residence, she is wearing an oversized Herderin sweaterdress in olive green. She is with her dog, Antoine, and her neighbor and his two dogs. I wave and park my car at her gate, and look up to find Francis not there - she has gone inside.
I walk myself inside, remove my shoes, and greet her husband with a warm hug. Francis comes back into view and offers me a glass of wine. She looks freshly showered and is wearing no makeup. Her striking features are visible to me, and I take a moment to think about how much I enjoy seeing Francis' bare face and dressing for comfort. However, Francis wants to change for having her photos taken. I tell her that she may wear what she has on, and she agrees, but says she wants to put makeup on her face. “I know you normally have people without makeup for Herderin, but wearing makeup is how I normally would look if people came over.” I told her to do what makes her most comfortable.
I explain to Francis and her husband that their interviews are separate and that the two should not interfere with each other’s responses, and that respondents should try their best to speak honestly even when their partner or other house guests may be present. Francis' husband decides to be interviewed first, and after the first question, Francis interrupts to add to his response. After this time, she no longer intervened verbally.
However, there is a clear influence of Francis in her relationship with her husband. As he stated in his interview, Francis had influenced the kinds of clothing he would wear once entering into a relationship with her. Francis would smile when hearing her partner mention her influence, and what I later became curious about was how Francis saw her influence on other people based on her physical presentation of dress.
There is sort of a glass shell with Francis – she is transparent and open and will tell you details of herself and life on a whim – and she will even get undressed right in front of you – and yet there is still this unbreakable, yet fragile shell with her. I can’t get through. She is putting on the Francis she seeks to represent. Something is deeper beyond that, and I want to know more. She was perhaps the most challenging person to interview thus far because of the sense that it wasn’t about what she was telling me, but also about what she wasn’t.
I walk with Francis upstairs to her beautiful bedroom that has panoramic views of the Mendocino countryside. It is breathtaking, as the sun has hit the time of day where the California glow seeps throughout the oak trees and green foliage glistens from recent rainfall. Antoine, her companion, this shaggy truffle-hunting dog, follows us upstairs.
She shows me her recent bathroom renovation, a Spanish-inspired neutral-toned environment composed thoughtfully with decorative plants. Francis tells me how much she enjoyed the process of designing it, and did not work with an architect or designer. “I could’ve imagined another life where I was doing just this.” She then asks me to give her a moment so that she can put on her makeup before being interviewed.
I take a seat on a large sofa in her room that has depth. Francis and I both share that we are rather tall, and even the depth of this sofa swallows our bodies in comfort.
Francis is surrounded by comfort: soft linens, natural fibers, big cushions, soothing color palettes, and natural settings. Her home is tidy, and does not have much space for storage, so she and her husband find ways to live with a little less clutter. “I hate clutter. There cannot be any clutter in a home.”
When Francis looks at me after getting her makeup on, she both physically and emotionally appears much different to me. Her blue eyes are lined with black liner on the lower lids, and she smiles at me in such a way that makes me feel her discomfort with the vulnerability of being interviewed. However, Francis was very clear not to give me too much in the interview, and found herself concerned when stating a sense of potential cultural superiority in her interview that she felt “did not sound good” when she discussed how she seeks to set an example for how to dress for her young, Latina workers.
Francis is a medical doctor. She works in a clinical setting that predominantly serves lower- and working-class patients. She expresses passion about reproductive justice and vocalizes her concerns about how President Trump threatens her line of work. “The policies that are occurring right now are scary. Especially for many of my patients.” Francis is also the co-founder of a nonprofit that focuses on public education’s approach to sex education: a model that rejects the efficacy of abstinence models in education and promotes realistic sex education for teens.
Francis takes a sip of wine and tells me that clothing, for her, involves more the expression of personal style and how she feels every day. “I dress for my mood.” Getting dressed in front of the mirror allows her to determine whether she is visually matching her emotional state. “I don’t look in the mirror after getting dressed… I look in the mirror while I am getting ready, and that is how I gauge if what I am wearing is working for me.” Francis has many roles: doctor, community organizer, Mendocino socialite, reproductive justice advocate, and wife. “I have a slinky dress for when I need to go to a party, and also formal attire for when I need to get dressed for an event with my husband.” Her wardrobe is diverse, and she says she mostly looks to buy from small, women-owned brands. “Supporting women-owned businesses is very important to me. Aside from looking at the material being natural, I care about ethical practices.”
Francis is, by many standards, an ethical American consumer. She has a hard time seeing some of her wealthy acquaintances purchase affordable clothing from fast fashion companies, and will have a different iPhone case depending on the event. “I know someone who has 20 cheap cell phone cases. What bothers me is that instead of having 20 cheap ones, why not just have 1 quality cell phone case? That is the kind of consumerism that bothers me.”
It’s not just about consumer choices for Francis, but also how one displays their choices in what they wear. For Francis, she wants to communicate her values, but she also wants to be doing the act of expression as a creative practice. “Being a doctor, it is hard for me to have a creative outlet, and so clothing serves that purpose. I want to express myself, from the colors I wear to the earrings I put on for that day.” And in expressing herself, Francis also wants to influence others in how they present themselves. “In the clinic, the younger Latina girls dress in a way that more exposes their bodies. Don’t get me wrong – I am all for showing your body, I love to show my cleavage, but I also want to show them how one can be stylish and still covered.”
Setting an example is important to Francis, not just in the choices of her clothes, but in how she wears them. For her, clothing is a political action and expression, where one has the opportunity to communicate their values and beliefs in the hope that it influences others' values and beliefs. What Francis does for herself is not just for her: it is a directive for others. Francis feels disappointed when she sees people of privilege not using their potential to influence others.
In some ways, clothing herself has much to do with communicative engagement; it is a form of using her clothing as a tool to influence society. Francis comes from a rural, working-class background. She believes that her privilege can be used to leverage social change. Francis seldom buys from large corporations when it comes to clothing. “My most sentimental garment came from my husband. He purchased an item that he knew was far outside of his spending comfort zone, but he did it because I liked it, and he also knows the company is not very big. It is the first thing I put on when I get home.”
Coming back to this concept of leveraging her privilege for influence, and back to Francis’s eye makeup. This glass egg. Francis believes in the public-facing self and its value in shaping society. She does not necessarily believe that one does not bring their back-stage self into public view, but that it must be done in such a way that shapes the world one wants to see. Perhaps this means, at the sacrifice of herself… the mask she must wear to be part of influencing the greater good. In this way, it feels as though Francis carries the burden of many other aspects of life that are less metabolized: surviving a traumatic divorce and subsequent cancer diagnosis, where many of her friends at the time were not present to help her heal, as she felt as present for them in their childrearing and acute illnesses. She often wakes in the middle of the night to traumatic nightmares where she is screaming, and her partner is holding her, calming her down. Though Francis had been raised on a farm in Idaho with 5 siblings, I never quite heard about them in the years I have known her. There is something about what had happened in Idaho during her childhood that is unknown, but deeply traumatic.
These wounds have been created; they have also been sealed. Francis’s life has become a vehicle for expressing the change she wants to see in the world, and the rest she keeps in her closet.