Women in Clothes: Why We Wear What We Wear - Softcover

Julavits, Heidi; Shapton, Leanne; Heti, Sheila

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1846148359 ISBN 13: 9781846148354

Publisher: Particular Books, 2014

Synopsis

Women in Clothes is a book unlike any other. It is essentially a conversation among hundreds of women of all nationalities-famous, anonymous, religious, secular, married, single, young, old-on the subject of clothing, and how the garments we put on every day define and shape our lives.

It began with a survey. The editors composed a list of more than fifty questions designed to prompt women to think more deeply about their personal style. Writers, activists, and artists including Cindy Sherman, Kim Gordon, Kalpona Akter, Sarah Nicole Prickett, Tavi Gevinson, Miranda July, Roxane Gay, Lena Dunham, and Molly Ringwald answered these questions with photographs, interviews, personal testimonies, and illustrations.

Even our most basic clothing choices can give us confidence, show the connection between our appearance and our habits of mind, express our values and our politics, bond us with our friends, and function as armor or disguise. They are the tools we use to reinvent ourselves and to transform how others see us. Women in Clothes embraces the complexity of women's style decisions, revealing the sometimes funny, sometimes strange, always thoughtful impulses that influence our daily ritual of getting dressed.

Sheila Heti is the author of five books, including the critically acclaimed How Should a Person Be?. She writes regularly for the London Review of Books and is an editor and interviewer at The Believer.

Heidi Julavits is the author of four novels, most recently The Vanishers, winner of the PEN/New England Fiction Award. She is a founding editor of The Believer magazine and an associate professor at Columbia University.

Leanne Shapton is an illustrator, author and publisher based in New York City. She is the author of Important Artifacts and Swimming Studies, and winner of the 2012 National Book Critic's Circle Award for autobiography.

About this title

Review:

Like the very best non-fiction, Women in Clothes leaves you convinced that its subject might, in fact, be a way of understanding everything worth trying to understand. More extraordinarily, it also manages, through the cumulative power of all these individuals' words, to do what the best and most honest fiction does: it makes you feel less alone (Guardian)

I can't put Women in Clothes down. Like a cross between Edie, Our Bodies Ourselves + The Gentlewoman: ADDICTIVE. (Miranda July)

Offers extraordinary, and unusual, insights into our relationship with clothes ... the collection of experiences is broad and unfiltered ... so many voices might have been overwhelming but together they make a surprisingly consistent and companionable chorus (Jo Ellison Financial Times)

If you buy one book about personal style, make it this one. Women in Clothes... is an admirable and earnest attempt to unravel the snarled thread that runs between the way women look and how they feel about it... The cathartic urgency with which the book's contributors write suggests they themselves didn't realize they had so much to say about clothes. Maybe it was just that nobody ever asked (Elle)

From an initial conversation between three girl crush-worthy authors, a book appeared: Women in Clothes is a look at why and how we wear what we wear, in 600+ meticulously and beautifully designed pages of essays and conversation, with every possible permutation of women exploring their personal history through their clothing choices. (Elisabeth Donnelly Flavorwire, 25 Must-Read Books)

Rich with detail, the must-read anthology shows how daily sartorial decisions speak volumes (Lucky magazine)

A gloriously eclectic account of fashion choices (Sunday Telegraph)

A refreshingly honest and often complex look at how we present ourselves visually to the outside world. And at a time when fashion and feminism frequently appear in the same sentence, it's an important book for women (Style.com)

Women in Clothes looks like a novel, reads like a passed note from your best friend...Seeing the breadth of answers in the aggregate is fascinating, and comforting...It's nice to know how many people live as I do: with piles of clothes on the floor but nothing, ever, to wear (Grantland)

A thoughtful, droll and often moving tome ... amusing, enlightening and often startlingly honest (Interview)

About the Author:

Leanne Shapton is an artist, illustrator, and writer who was born in Toronto and lives in New York. She is the author of several books, including Swimming Studies, The Native Trees of Canada, Women in Clothes (with Sheila Heti and Heidi Julavits) andImportant Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry. She has contributed to The New York Times, Harper's and The New Yorker among other publications, and teaches creative writing at Columbia University. She is one of the founders of J&L Books, a non-profit imprint specializing in photography.

About this edition

• Publisher: Particular Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1846148359
• ISBN 13: 9781846148354
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 528