Sickness in Style: A Memoir of Distress and Dislocation through Dress

How can dress impact a journey through disabling illness and recovery from South Africa to London?

Navigating the development of her complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from her home in South Africa, to university in Oxford, and recovery in London, author Nica Cornell uses the garments she travelled with to reflect on her experience. Cornell explores the effect of garments such as her Ankara sheath dress, Sub fusc, and second-hand clothing, and how they influenced her experience of alienation, exclusion, and realisation.

Sickness in Style explores the challenges of dressing and how it can become an obstacle to accessing the external world, as well as how beauty can be rediscovered through second-hand outfits. This book is ideal reading for students of Fashion Studies, Disability Studies, Psychology, and Migration Studies.

© 2025 Lived Places Publishing (Ebook): 9781916985193

Release date

Ebook: 16 July 2025