Women in Clothes

July 21, 2014
Thoughtfully crafted and visually entertaining, this collection, edited by Heti (How Should A Person Be?), Julavits (The Vanishers), and Shapton (Swimming Studies), uses personal reflections from 642 contributors to examine women’s relationship with clothes in a deceptively lighthearted and irreverent tone. Reminiscent of women’s collaborative book projects from the 1970s, women (and a few men) are quoted in survey responses, essays, artworks, and recorded snippets of conversation. Though the book satisfies voyeuristic pleasures, on a basic level, it also inspires meaningful questions by virtue of its structure; contributions are well-organized in short sections (participants like Lena Dunham and Cindy Sherman are granted longer entries) with surprising juxtapositions—for example, rapid-fire answers to the editors’ survey questions about shopping sit comfortably next to an essay on the political and personal implications of wearing a head scarf. The prose is spliced with striking visuals, such as photos of actress Zosia Mamet (Girls) imitating 50 poses from fashion magazine covers, and many passages yield deeper revelations: “What I Spent” uses a diary-style record of clothing and toiletry purchases to examine the effect that physical difference, such as scoliosis, has on self-presentation and confidence. A provocative time capsule of contemporary womanhood, this collection is highly recommended. B&w illus and photos throughout, 32 pages in full color. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency.

July 1, 2014
A quirky anthology exploring the meaning of clothes.Forget Anna Wintour, Tim Gunn and the fashion mavens on What Not to Wear. Believer editor Heti (How Should a Person Be?: A Novel from Life, 2012, etc.), Believer founding editor Julavits (Writing/Columbia Univ.; The Vanishers, 2013, etc.) and Shapton (Swimming Studies, 2012, etc.) are interested not in what women wear, but why. To that end, they sent "an ever-evolving" survey to hundreds of women, asking a variety of questions-e.g., "What's your process of getting dressed in the morning?"; "Do you ever wish you were a man or could dress like a man or had a man's body?"; "How and when do you shop for clothes?" Respondents include artists, writers, scholars, critics, nurses and doctors, mothers and grandmothers, actors, businesswomen, athletes and others from all over the world. Some are famous: New York Times fashion critic Alexandra Jacobs, restaurant critic Ruth Reichl, actor Molly Ringwald and novelist Kiran Desai, who reveals the time-consuming process of wearing a sari. Some flaunt attention-getting fashion choices: wearing silver Doc Martens; coloring their hair bright blue; buying a "florescent and hooker-ish" dress; altering a winter coat by trimming it with lace. One woman removes all tags and labels. "In some superstitious way," she writes, "I feel like this allows the clothes to become more fully themselves...." Another uses clothes "as a way to cast a spell over myself, so that I might feel special." Poems, interviews, pieces that read like diary or journal entries-all these responses help the editors fulfill their aims: to liberate readers from the idea that women have to fit a certain image or ideal, to show the connection between dress and "habits of mind," and to offer readers "a new way of interpreting their outsides.""What are my values?" one woman asks. "What do I want to express?" Those questions inform the multitude of eclectic responses gathered in this delightfully idiosyncratic book.

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September 1, 2014
The three adventurous instigators of this sartorial confabwriters and The Believer editors Heti (How Should a Person Be, 2012) and Julavits (The Vanishers, 2012) and graphic novelist and memoirist Leanne Shapton (Swimming Studies, 2012)asked hundreds of women from around the world about what they wear and how they feel about clothes. The trio now shares the 50 questions they asked and the 639 responses they received from artists, writers, editors, journalists, activists, and actors. The result is a delirious assortment of conversations, essays, journal entries, and photographs of everything from collections of hats and sunglasses to actor Zosia Mamet's hilarious Poses from Various Fashion Media. This big, busy book feels like a thrift store brimming with jumbles of clothes and accessories and alive with women's voices. Their comments and stories are canny, funny, incisive, twee, surprising, and caring, as thoughts and anecdotes about clothes touch on everything from gender to beauty, sex, mother-daughter relationships, aspirations, money, human rights, health, work, creativity, and violence. A uniquely kaleidoscopic and spirited approach to an irresistible subject of universal resonance.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)