It's that of a woman who wrote a book about costume and its connection to art which was published, I think, about the early 1970s.
I think she was a curator at somewhere like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
I wanted her name because I read the book long ago and was very struck by some of the things she said. Anyway, these ideas aren't mine.
It's often the case when people write about costume, particularly in the context of fashion shows, that they talk about its aesthetic qualities.
David Loughrey, writing about the International Emerging Designer Awards staged last week said it is ''part job interview, part opportunity for fashion graduates to roll out phrases like `big bold stripes' and `vibrant colour palette''', which is a good example (ODT, 23.4.15).
You can take this further and talk about particular items of costume, particularly accessories such as jewellery and hats as autonomous aesthetic objects, analogous to sculpture, independently of their role as costume.
It's rather harder to do this for garments, because they are so governed by their need to fit a wearer and, indeed, to be worn to be really articulated.
Even so, it can be done and the World of Wearable Art show, the annual event nowadays in Wellington, is focused on trying to achieve that.
But there are other ways of talking about costume which come closer to the aspect of it which the woman whose name I can't remember so interestingly discussed.
If you look in fashion magazines you will see terms like ''gamin'', ''bohemian'', ''preppy'' and ''sophisticated'' in descriptions of garments and ensembles.
Clothes of course are highly culturally determined, being indicative of periods, places, gender and social roles and statuses.
There are and have been numerous different subsets of these and what is a sign of something in one such subset may have no such significance in another or quite the opposite significance.
In European society, green was once a colour associated with sexuality. Later it lost that and red took on that role.
To return to ''gamin'', ''bohemian'' and the like, within a given culture or subculture, while a garment or outfit may generally conform to the prevailing dictates the choice of one or another may express something about the wearer: that he or she is, or wants to seem, youthful and carefree, or sophisticated and elegant, for example. People frequently choose with just such thoughts in mind. (There are things I wouldn't wear just because I think they'd make me look absurdly young, as if I were trying to disguise my age.)
But then there's something clothes can do which is very apparent when we look at stage costumes, or the sorts of things people wear to fancy dress parties.
They can be used to express a character which is clearly not our own. Sir Laurence Olivier did this when he dressed to play the part of Hamlet.
Elizabeth Taylor did the same when playing Cleopatra in the film of that name.
''Bishops and tarts'' used to be a popular theme for fancy dress parties and people dressed to project such personas with nobody supposing those were the wearers' real characters.
More subtly, without sending overt signals they are playing a part, people can use costume, usually things which are variations on those worn in ordinary life, to give an impression of character.
Choosing our own clothes, we're usually trying to express what we think our characters are, although people will sometimes aim to project a persona they are aware isn't really their own.
It was this capacity of costume which the author commented on in her book.
She observed it puts costume design on a par with portrait painting or creating a character in a play or a novel.
Not all costume achieves this but when it does it deserves to be taken as seriously as these other highly regarded art forms.
I took her point. There are portraits which aim to depict real people, and others which are entirely fictive.
Sir Anthony Van Dyck could paint King Charles I and make him look austere and noble, even though in reality apparently, he didn't project much of either quality.
The portraits were good likenesses. It's just they managed to project qualities the king didn't really have, or not to that degree.
When we're dressing ourselves, we are somewhat constrained, as Van Dyck was by his subject, by our own size, shape and appearance.
But a fashion designer creating an ensemble for a fashion show has more latitude.
They can choose a model who will best wear the ensemble. The results can be strikingly successful.
To judge from images in the Otago Daily Times, some of them are.
Peter Entwisle is a Dunedin curator, historian and writer.
