Dreaming About Clothes

The detail people bring back from clothing dreams is almost always a mismatch: dressed for the wrong occasion, wearing something that belongs to somebody else, unable to find a single thing in a full wardrobe. Clothes are read in the tradition as the version of yourself you present in public, which is why the wrongness registers so sharply.

Wrong clothes, missing clothes

Turning up underdressed or overdressed is one of the most widely reported anxiety dreams and is generally understood as worry about fitting a role. Standing at a wardrobe unable to choose suggests indecision about which version of yourself a situation is asking for. Wearing another person's clothes is linked to borrowed identity, a role inherited rather than chosen, and it turns up often among people who have taken over a job or a duty from somebody specific.

The condition of what you were wearing

Old dream books put a great deal of weight here. Torn or filthy clothing was read as damaged reputation, which tells you plenty about the societies that wrote those books and is worth taking with some scepticism now; a modern reading is more likely to be about feeling exposed or worn down. New clothes suggest a change you are trying on. A uniform of any sort is associated with belonging to a group and with the trade that belonging involves. Layers being removed, or added, are taken as openness and defence respectively.

Fashion, memory and the individual garment

Clothing is unusually personal as a symbol. A coat that belonged to a grandparent, a dress from an occasion that went badly, the shirt you were wearing on the worst day of last year: these carry specific memory, and the specific memory is the interpretation. People who work in fashion, retail or theatre dream about clothes constantly and mostly for occupational reasons. If a garment in your dream was one you actually own, its history in your life is the first place to look.