Clothes were first mangled (7)
I believe the answer is:
garbled
'mangled' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'clothes were first' is the wordplay.
'clothes' becomes 'garb' (garb is a kind of clothes**).
'were first' becomes 'led'.
'garb'+'led'='GARBLED'
(Other definitions for garbled that I've seen before include "Confused, disjointed" , "Distorted - muddled" , "Disjointed, incoherent" , "Mixed-up" , "(Message) corrupted" .)