THE POWER OF CLOTHES IN ORLANDO BY VIRGINIA WOOLF

This article revisits a central aspect in many of the researches on Orlando (1928), the novel by Virginia Woolf (1882-1941): the analysis of the dress-up game in which its protagonist participates over more than three centuries and the singularity of identity acquired by his/her constant mutations of gender, changes of clothes and particular circumstances. Based on the idea that clothing influences a person's materiality, psychology and the acquisition of a certain idiosyncrasy, this study provides a re-reading of the multifaceted resource of clothing in Woolf's novel in order to highlight the modernity of the writer's literary proposal and to describe the constructive process of a hybrid personality that is forged in time and space. Beyond the apparent transsexuality and transvestism of the character, in Orlando the option of androgyny prevails. This quality is presented as the utopia of an existence that strives to elude the traditional sex-gender dichotomy and that is a distinctive mark of every writer and of an important sector of the fashion of our time.