Dressing and Undressing Sherlock Holmes:
A Study in Costumes
Keywords:
adaptation, clothing fetishism, costumes, fashion, gender studies, performativity, period costumes, psychoanalysis, Sherlock Holmes, visual cultureAbstract
The present article provides insight into the uses and functions of selected costumes in the BBC television series Sherlock (2010), analysing clothes as part of re-enacted fetish performances, in which gender roles are investigated or questioned in order to cope with
cultural fears and anxieties. Drawing upon specific studies on fashion, clothing fetishism and visual culture, I explore the representational politics of the clothes of the detective and various icons of femininity, including the dominatrix, wife, bride, and sister. It will become clear that clothes actively participate in the act of reliving the past, highlighting conflicts related to a construction of identities that is suspended between past and present
