Data were gathered using innovative ethnographic and qualitative methods including qualitative interviews, 'wardrobe interviews', observations and visual and sensory approaches. The research was conducted across three Kent care homes, and fifteen domestic households. ‘Wardrobe interviews’ involved interviewing people with dementia alongside their wardrobes, and using their clothing as a prompt for discussion. Various visual and sensory prompts were used to elicit discussion in interviews and reminiscence groups, including vintage garments, photograph albums, images and samples of fabric. The study also involved observations and informal discussions, which facilitated the inclusion of people with more advanced dementia. In addition, qualitative interviews were conducted with family carers/relatives and care-workers. The sample included 32 case studies of people with dementia, 29 family carers and relatives, 28 care home workers, and representatives from two clothing companies. Data were analysed using qualitative thematic analysis, assisted by NVivo qualitative software.Dementia and Dress explored the significance of clothing and dress in the lives and experiences of people with dementia and their carers, deploying innovative methods to explore questions of identity, personhood and embodiment. Clothes play a central part in identity as expressed at a day to day level, and the study aimed to extend that understanding to people with dementia whose lives have not traditionally been analysed in these terms. As such it is part of a wider movement to humanise the study of dementia, to rethink how we understand and support people with the condition. It aimed to understand whether – and in what ways – clothes were important to people with dementia and their carers, how clothes are managed in care-settings, and tensions around clothing in dementia care, for instance, between ‘comfort’ and continuity of self. The study is based on interviews, observation and ethnographic work with people with dementia and their carers living in care homes and domestic settings. It places the person with dementia at the heart of the enquiry, and also draws on the views of care staff and carers/relatives both to obtain a fuller picture of the life of the person with dementia, and to explore their own concerns.

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