Women in Clothes

by Sheila Heti

  RAMOU: I think, especially for black girls, it can be very contentious—natural or not natural—and people are very sensitive about their hair. But I’m realizing that before I cut my hair, it was more about my own worries. Like, nobody cared about my hair. And now that I’ve cut it, I just feel more confident with it, and it feels like more of a style, because I was very self-conscious when it was straight. It was very damaged and I would straighten it all the time and I would always wear it pulled back. So it’s a whole different look for me. I do get a lot of compliments on my hair now.

  AURELIA: I got more compliments when I cut all my hair off, which was weird. I thought it was gonna be the opposite. When I cut all my hair off, I got a hundred percent more attention from men. But at some point I decided that’s not how I want to look anymore, so I grew it out. I constantly have this idea in my head of what I want to look like, and I just go with that.

  ALESIA: There’s four different types of hair on my head—like, curl patterns. I’d say my hair ranges from 3c to 4c. When I let it do its own thing, no one wants to see that, apparently, because I get no compliments. Other black women are like, “Good for you!” But I know they would never do it. But when I have my hair in twisties or a braid-out, where there’s a defined pattern, I get a lot of compliments and I’m just like: “Save it. I know why you’re complimenting me!”

  FATIMA: My confidence grew when I stopped straightening my hair and started wearing it in its natural state. One, probably just because I was less exhausted from all this damn straightening, you know? (laughs) I looked better because I looked fresher—I was getting more sleep! And I wasn’t constantly worried in the summer, when it’s humid, about my hair going back to its natural curly state, or if it rained—all that stuff you worry about when your hair’s straightened. It just went out the window. I’ve now cut it after about five years of growing it out, and I realized I should have kept it short the entire time, because I once again feel very free. There’s this idea about very long, curly hair, and it being ideal, and I think I bought into that, even though it was more work for me, because it didn’t really have a shape.

  RAMOU: It’s funny, we all have these similar hair journeys. I think the problem is . . . I know for me, I didn’t grow up with a lot of black girlfriends with natural hair, or black girlfriends period. So part of my struggle with cutting off my hair was I felt, Oh I don’t know anybody else who’s going through this. But it does seem like this is a very kind of common thing that black girls go through.

  ALESIA: What’s really sad about that is that, yeah, I didn’t have a community of black girls until very late in life. I mean, I’m not sixty, but until recently. Especially when I was transitioning from relaxed hair to natural hair, I was looking for a community to guide me through it, and I was lucky enough that I found someone who gave me this book called Thank God I’m Natural that’s written by a black woman who has all these natural recipes and she tells you what to do straight up. Because looking at the blogs, they were so vicious, it’s a miracle I didn’t just say whatever and put my hair in a fake Yaki weave or something.

  AURELIA: I went natural because there were enough people out in the world, at the point when I decided to do it, who were natural, so I got to see it more and say, Wait a minute, this is exactly what I’m trying to accomplish getting these relaxers every six weeks and getting straw sets. It looks exactly the same!

  ALESIA: That’s an advantage of living in an area that’s populated by actual black people. (laughs) You get to see other black people living relatively normal lives, with bangin’ hair. I only found natural communities because I was having scalp issues and I knew it was probably related to getting relaxers, and I was just Googling, and I was like, What else can I do? Then I found natural hair, and I kind of just waded my way through the murk.

  ALESIA: I think that’s why when I see someone in a really bad . . . sorry to keep talking about bad weaves, but they’re ruining our community. (laughs) It’s a real problem, you guys! When I see people who have terrible weaves, I’m just like, Look, there’s a better way. Which probably comes off as weird, but. . . .

  FATIMA: My hair now looks healthy and it has a style, and it’s manageable, and I just feel better. I just feel more like myself.

  RAMOU: I think in the last few years I’ve also figured out what my style is. I sometimes like looking at fashion blogs and seeing trends, and figuring out which trends work for me and which don’t. But I’m also somebody that, if I like a trend, I’m not going to stop wearing it next season or whatever, right?

  AURELIA: Yeah. When you find something you like, it goes into your personal fashion library.

  RAMOU: Like leopard. I’m never going to stop wearing leopard. I’m just always going to wear leopard, I think.

  ALESIA: I’m so with you on that.

  RAMOU: I’m wearing leopard underwear right now!

  ALESIA: Most of my lingerie is leopard. My favorite nightie is this leopard-print Betsey Johnson negligee. It’s got hot-pink bows on it, it’s so tacky, it’s so Peg Bundy, I love it.

  AURELIA: That sounds amazing, are you kidding me?

  COLLECTION

  ODETTE HENDERSON’s raincoats

  CONVERSATION

  I’M ALWAYS ON THE FLOOR AND WORKING

  FASHION DESIGNER MONA KOWALSKA OF A DÉTACHER SPEAKS TO HEIDI JULAVITS & WRITER/CHILDBIRTH EDUCATOR CERIDWEN MORRIS

  CERIDWEN: When you think about clothes, do you think more about day-to-day, practical, non-event-focused dressing?

  MONA: I don’t really care so much about looking sexy or smart. People want to feel a certain way. That is almost more important than how things look. So I try everything on, because I want the clothing to feel a specific way. I do all my own pattern-making, I do all my own muslins. I like to feel strong in my clothes.

  CERIDWEN: I just turned forty-five, and the look that’s being pitched to me is about being MILF-y, sexy—but whatever you do, don’t look like you’re forty-five. Like the idea of being a capital-W Woman is not so great. We should all look twenty-eight.

  MONA: And the result is these terrible human collages. Sometimes you see someone from the back and they’re all worked out and wearing skinny jeans and then they turn around. . . .

  HEIDI: Eep! And they’re seventy!

  MONA: I’d prefer someone dressed in a dowdy way.

  CERIDWEN: I feel like the stuff you design is younger than anything else out there, in the sense that it’s childhood young. I recently tried on your dress with the ruching around the bottom. You said the design was inspired by the act of tucking your dress into your underwear.

  MONA: My assistant from Australia always tucked her dress into her underwear. I thought, That is so smart, so I did it, too! Now if I’m wearing something fluid in the summer I always tuck it into my underpants, because I’m always on the floor and working.

  CERIDWEN: There’s this youthful aspect to your clothing and at the same time it’s very much about being a grown-up woman. Everyone else is seeking to be right in the middle, at twenty-eight. Which, by the way, is a wonderful age.

  HEIDI: It’s not a wonderful age, actually.

  CERIDWEN: It’s a rough age, that’s true. Thirty is a bit better.

  HEIDI: I feel like forty is the best age.

  MONA: I was at a dinner in France recently. Most of the women at the table were in their late fifties, and at some point somebody said, “What age would you go back to?” And all of them said forty. It was amazing. They could have said anything! They could have made themselves sixteen. Everyone said forty. You’re at the top of your game, you’re at the top of your career, you’re at the top sexually. But here in America we don’t have this appreciation. I don’t find America particularly youthful, for all the emphasis on youth.

  HEIDI: You really appreciate the influence of older women.

  MONA: That ruched-bottom dress came from the “Grandma’s House” collection. I feel like one’s grandmother is a big clothing influence.
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  HEIDI: More than one’s mother?

  MONA: I think so. A grandmother is your first contact with vintage. Grandmas are pile-ups of the old thing, the acrylic thing, the crazy thing. There’s the thrill of sorting through Grandmother’s stuff.

  HEIDI: What was your grandmother like?

  MONA: She was a very elegant woman. One of the things in the collection inspired by her was this big wallet. She used to wear a big wallet between her bosoms. When she needed money, she would, just like a magician with a rabbit, pull this wallet out of the top of her dress.

  CERIDWEN: I store lots of things in my bra. I have my phone in there. Credit cards, money, keys. When you don’t have pockets, you have to stick it somewhere.

  HEIDI: Was your mother an influence?

  MONA: My mother was head of an atelier. There were two companies that dressed all of Poland under Communism, and my mother worked for one of them. She had a lot of private clients, so there were always women in and out. You know, wives of party members, who could afford to have clothing made. Our apartment was the size of your pocket, so when someone arrived, that’s what was happening that day. I remember her doing wedding dresses. She thought it was a particular kind of gift to make a wedding dress.

  CERIDWEN: Have you ever made a wedding dress?

  MONA: I made one for one of my oldest customers, a person who supported me when I first opened. But I would never do it again.

  HEIDI: You had misgivings about the dress?

  MONA: I didn’t. I just don’t have a lot of connection to the idea of the wedding dress. I planned my wedding in two days. I wore a ’40s silver jacket and black pants. So I wasn’t connected to the intensity of choosing a wedding dress. You know, when a person is trying on a wedding dress, we say it looks nice, and then we have to start over and say it again. It’s this “You look great” loop that goes on for two hours.

  CERIDWEN: I have one of your sweaters and it’s a little itchy, and there’s something about the itchiness that’s so intentionally contrary to the Juicy Couture comfy adult sweatpants culture.

  MONA: I wear those sweaters on bare skin because I’m such a maniac. I always say, It’s nice to feel your clothes. If something’s a little tight on your bum, I don’t think that that’s an issue. You’ll walk differently that day. Like a little panty line, and that funny way of walking. . . .

  HEIDI: I love the panty-line detail. When you moved to Baltimore, was your mother still making your clothing?

  MONA: Not so much. We moved in the 1970s, when I was nine.

  CERIDWEN: Baltimore has a specific aesthetic—the whole John Waters thing. Was that relevant for you at all? Or ’70s American culture in general?

  MONA: Just ’70s American culture in general. I really have an appreciation for that era. That was when we finally took the remaining stuffing out of the clothes. After the ’80s, it’s more about bulking up again, but in the ’70s we were almost naked. There was this feeling: a little bit naked—powerful and naked. If I think about clothing, the 1970s is one of the decades for which I have a deep appreciation. I think it’s the decade that influences me the most. Although it’s less about the way the clothing looked. It’s more about that feeling of a sense of freedom. No bras, a natural body, you’d always see somebody’s nipple. I have a girlfriend, she has a big bosom, and if the dress permits it, she’ll go without a bra. I think that looks great.

  HEIDI: Do you wear bras ever?

  MONA: No. I mean, I’m so tiny!

  HEIDI: You work in the back of your store. Do you ever come to the front and give customers advice when they’re trying on your clothes?

  MONA: Generally I try not to give advice. I don’t really want to worm my way into people’s lives and closets in that way. If I say something to a customer, it’s usually along the lines of “That dress looks really beautiful with your hair color,” because I think sometimes people don’t see those things. Someone with dark hair will try on a navy dress, and all of a sudden their hair has this blue cast and it looks really beautiful. But rarely do I give advice like “You should wear this with this,” because I don’t know. I don’t know what people should wear. You don’t know about people’s lives.

  HEIDI: Do you ever learn things from watching people try on the clothes?

  MONA: Women love pockets. Sometimes when we do sales, a buyer will try something on and I’ll see her do this (hands-searching-for-pockets gesture), and then I will add pockets.

  HEIDI: Are there other people who’ve inspired you?

  MONA: I worked for Sonia Rykiel in Paris, and she was really into the accidental discovery. She was the first person who did the inside-out seams. I think she just put her sweater on inside out one day. As a designer, you pay attention to these accidents.

  CERIDWEN: What are some of your best accidental discoveries?

  MONA: One day I walked out of the shop and saw an older woman with her raincoat on. She’d put her dickey on over her raincoat, and I thought, Ah!

  HEIDI: What’s a dickey?

  MONA: It’s just a little partial shirt, it usually has a turtleneck, and you wear it under things. But she wore it over her coat, and I thought, “She couldn’t find her scarf and so she just threw that on.” She was a little Hispanic old lady, she wasn’t doing a “look.” I pay attention to older women. I find they just do these things.

  CERIDWEN: What was the first thing you owned that you were excited about?

  MONA: I remember some jumpsuits I had when I was in high school. I had one that was made in India.

  CERIDWEN: Did you listen to the Abba record Arrival? The Abba ladies really worked the jumpsuit.

  MONA: I had immigrant parents, so we had no music at the house. When I said I wanted a backpack, they were like, Oh my god, no, you’re going to look like a runaway. So I couldn’t carry a backpack or wear jeans.

  HEIDI: Do you always wear heels?

  MONA: I prefer heels. Last week I wore Birkenstocks and at the end of the day I just felt so bad about myself. Like, Okay, my feet don’t hurt, but my morale is really low. I think I’d rather have feet that hurt a little bit but a higher morale.

  HEIDI: Do you think about how the body gets canted differently depending on the heel height? That posture becomes part of the whole look.

  MONA: I have one pair of try-on shoes, they’re a pair of old Miu Miu shoes that have a high heel and a very simple banded front. They are in horrible condition, they are so beat, but if I try on a muslin and those shoes are not there, I am almost in tears. I turn over the whole back room, like, “We gotta find the try-on shoes!” There’s something about the way these shoes sort out my body—all of a sudden it’s the proportion I want to see. It’s that extra three inches on the leg. It’s not about the shoe so much. It’s the proportion that shoe creates.

  CERIDWEN: Since I’ve got bigger boobs, I like to wear bigger shoes. Because if I come down to a point, I’m feel like I’m teetering.

  MONA: If you made your hair big, then it would be nice to teeter.

  HEIDI: Do you ever make super-delicate shoes?

  MONA: I prefer a strong, sexy shoe. I like things that aren’t just one thing. When you accomplish that in a design, it allows everyone to find themselves in it. I like these dualities. They’re open-ended somehow. People will come in and they’ll say of a dress, “It reminds me of something my mother used to wear.” That sense of finding yourself in something is important. That’s where the resonance comes from.

  CERIDWEN: Sometimes you need fishnets to balance the wool sweater.

  MONA: I think about the very beautiful woman who dresses down. She could dress up and be a total babe. But people like a more complicated presentation of themselves, I find.

  HEIDI: How do you balance wanting your aesthetic to be embraced by many women with that proprietary feeling of, “Hey, fuck, that’s my look.”

  MONA: I only have one thing about which I feel proprietary. When I wear men’s shirts, I turn the collar in. I have a friend who does it and i
t makes me crazy. It brings out the teenager in me. You know why I resent it so much? Because I share everything. For example, I make a little dish rack for my house, and then I make it for the store because it works so great. I share everything! So that collar thing makes me so crazy. I want to say, “Let me just have this one thing.” Oh, it just makes me so cross, you have no idea.

  COMPLIMENT

  “WATCH”

  Shibuya, Tokyo. Saturday night in a department store. Two young Japanese saleswomen stand together. One is wearing a black miniskirt, tights, and a loose gray sweater. She is also wearing a watch with a brown leather band and, in its face, golden exposed gears and parts.

  KATE: I like your watch!

  WOMAN: Oh, thank you!

  (The woman and her coworker giggle.)

  HER COWORKER (in Japanese): Her watch is handmade.

  (The woman holds it up for the others to see more closely.)

  WOMAN: Handmade by an artist in Japan.

  KATE: It’s beautiful.

  WOMAN: Thank you!

  PROJECT

  WEAR AREAS | GINTARE PARULYTE

  1 I am obsessed with cleaning my ears. When I was small, my mum used to roll a small bubble of cotton onto a matchstick and clean my ears with it. My brother developed the same obsession, probably for the same reasons. A few years ago, during my shopping routine in an organic supermarket, I stumbled upon a tiny tool: a small Indian hairpin-looking device to clean (or rather internally massage or tickle) the ears. I couldn’t believe my discovery. This small nothing represented to me the materialization of my siblinghood, a secret obsession we share and always will.