Women in Clothes

by Sheila Heti

  How does makeup fit into this?

  Makeup can make me feel polished but it also makes me feel dirty, like when you were little and your parents slathered you in enough sunscreen that it felt like a catsuit. I often want to rush home to scrub my face at the end of the night. But I recognize the difference between me with and me without makeup, even if I resent it.

  What’s the situation with your hair?

  I cut it all off a year ago, and it was the best thing I ever did in my life. I have always hated my hair—it’s dry and ornery and has no pleasing qualities. But suddenly, short, it has unveiled itself as pretty okay hair!

  Please describe your figure.

  On good days I am sturdy bordering on slim and on less good days I am chubby. On all days I have a high waist, a wide ass and fairly long legs. I feel lucky to have thin wrists and ankles, and less lucky to have three rolls of flesh on my stomach that don’t budge even in the face of extreme measures. I show myself naked on television a lot, but then I also had a terrible dream last night that my parents and sister had an intervention on me because my face was getting fat. They said I had gained “five to the face.” It’s all good.

  When do you feel most attractive?

  I feel most attractive at work, directing a scene that I’m not acting in—headphones on, monitor in front of me, focused on the frame and giving calm orders. I once saw a video of the late director Adrienne Shelly speaking about being a female filmmaker, and she called moving around set “a really sexy feeling.” I also love to wear nightclothes—to be just showered (so that I am no longer what my boyfriend calls “a dirtbag”) with clean teeth, pretending to read a book until he comes to bed.

  What is an archetypal outfit for you; one you could have happily worn at any time in your life?

  A party dress, velvet or wool, with thick nubby tights and flats. A good hooded coat. It makes me feel like I have put in proper effort but could get down on the floor or go out on a secret mission on a moment’s notice.

  Is there any fashion trend you’ve refused to participate in?

  I just won’t go there with a gaucho pant. I like a weird pant just as much as the next girl who grew up near the Issey Miyake store, but that feels like it’s a rejection of everything great about having lady legs.

  Would you rather be perceived as having great taste or great style?

  Great style. Taste, to me, implies you pick out the products that look and smell the best, you give great gifts, you know what’s in style, and people believe you when you recommend a store. Style is a feeling that no one else could have put on what you’re wearing that day because it sprang forth from your unique neon mind. I don’t always have the best taste. My friend Jemima says I’m like a man who has decided to rifle through his wife’s closet and cross-dress for the first time, selecting everything pink and shiny. She also says I am good to shop for because anything I’m handed I cry out, “I needed one of these!” But I do try to let people know I am with them, I am really with them, based on what I wear to meet them.

  What is the most transformative conversation you have ever had on the subject of style?

  I think just watching Jemima get dressed in high school, the ease of it, the confidence to make a strange move or perform some strange cultural appropriations or wear her pajamas with a heeled boot, gave me the juice that will drive my style for my whole life. My mother always wants to talk about clothes (she will call me up and say, “What’s your thought on oxfords?”), and it makes me insane, even though I love her look (think bejeweled ventriloquist dummy).

  What are some dressing rules you wouldn’t necessarily recommend to others but you follow?

  I like to be a character—schoolgirl, new lesbian, lapsed nun, Miami mistress. Not everyone needs that added layer, but it helps me.

  What are you trying to do or achieve when you dress?

  I want to inhabit the part I am playing that day—be it businesswoman, girlfriend with a life of her own, daughter at a holiday party, writer in a coffee shop. It’s mortifying but true.

  What are some dressing or clothing rules you think every woman should follow?

  Wear things you feel confident in, that you don’t have to tug at. Choose colors that make you happy. Be warm enough (but not too warm). I’d say stay comfortable, but the epic shoes may be worth it.

  What do you admire about how other women present themselves?

  I am easily impressed by women who smell fresh, with clean nail beds and many small minimalist rings. Those effects seem hard for me to achieve.

  Are there any dressing tricks that make you feel like you are getting away with something?

  I worked with one stylist who puts a tight belt inside the dress. She says it cinches you for photos and then you can take it off for the party. But it makes me feel like a big dumb liar, honestly, and then I just have to remeet my real waist again at the fucking party.

  What’s the first “investment” item you bought, and why?

  I know this! I know this! It was a Marc by Marc Jacobs leopard-print trench coat (circa 2003), and I still cherish it. About twice a year it makes an appearance, and it still gives me the same “I’m here for the cocktail party” feeling it did when I was seventeen.

  What is your favorite piece of clothing or jewelry?

  I have a nightshirt my friend Addie left at my house in kindergarten before she moved to Rome. It used to come down to my ankles and now it comes to approximately just above my ass crack. It’s covered in satiny, loving elephants.

  What item of clothing are you still on the hunt for?

  I am always looking for the denim jacket that makes me feel like someone else’s high school crush or role model. I imagine I’d walk a puppy in it, or put it on over my commitment ceremony dress to dance at the party later on.

  How has your background affected how you dress?

  I’m half Russian Jew and half Mayflower Wasp and the Wasp half makes me feel qualified to wear a lot of slouchy collared shirts and what my great-aunt Doad calls “dungarees.” The Russian Jew half wants Chanel C’s on everything, including the pillows.

  Do you look like your mother?

  I don’t. We used to have the same teeth—freak-tiny incisors and big buck fronts—but she capped hers. Her hennaed hair is so smooth and always smells like shampoo no matter what. Other people say we have similar faces and stances. Somehow, even though I’m fives inches shorter and weigh ten pounds more, we can wear the same clothes. They just “project” differently, as my father would say. (If it were up to him we’d all dress like boy toddlers.)

  What is the difference between dressing and dressing up?

  It should probably be a greater divide, because I think of dressing up as just dressing with more uncomfortable variables. A great daytime outfit gives me infinitely more pleasure than a nighttime look—at night it’s like “Duh, you look great because you worked on it for hours and are probably wearing an under-dress constructed of Spanx and duct tape.”

  What are things you need to do in order to feel presentable?

  A stain makes me want to go home immediately. It just feels like a big fat sign reading YOU GUYS, I’M FALLING APART.

  Do you have style in areas of your life other than fashion?

  Home design is my favorite hobby. I love arranging tchotchkes, sticking the perfect picture above the telephone table (see? I have a telephone table!). My style in that department is orderly mayhem. I hate leaving my home, and I want everyone else to feel the same way. I dream of a real home where each floor is thematically unified and intense. I also want a dirty-sexy toilet at some point.

  What dressing ideas or items have you stolen or borrowed from people you know?

  Jenni Konner runs my TV show with me and she is the most stylish woman I know. Just the way her jeans sit on her hips looks cool to me. I’m embarrassed to say that right after I met her I bought the exact same purse she had, and a bunch of striped T-shirts because I’d seen a stack in her closet. Somehow a
ll her shoes look like the coolest shoe in a fancy children’s store, and I’ve never been able to mimic it. She’s a really good mom, and that’s stylish.

  What would you say is “you” and what would you say is “not you”?

  Me: undone hair, cardigans, collars, showing my knees, a clunky flat, a witty print, full-size underwear, a little strip of belly showing “by accident,” and a tit falling out of a dress, honestly by accident. Not me (which doesn’t mean I don’t do it): stick-straight hair, boot-cut pants, turtlenecks, big-lady bags, tube tops, pointy toes, bangles, going to bars.

  How important is all this?

  Really important because no one can see me without seeing me, ya know? I feel I was put on this earth for a number of reasons, one of them being that I got the chance to see Sarah Jessica Parker in Once Upon a Mattress on Broadway in 1997. But the biggest reason is to help normalize a certain kind of body (and, therefore, all bodies) and the accompanying concerns. So even when I want to look beautiful, I want to look like myself. Even when I am uncomfortable, I want to look comfortable.

  PROJECT

  A MAP OF MY FLOOR | LEANNE SHAPTON

  OCCASION Taking part in a panel discussion of Withnail and I at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The bedroom floor displays the following tried and discarded items:

  1 Vintage tweed jacket, shrunk in washing machine, one arm needs repair, not enough time to mend, too rustic and outdoorsy for the occasion. 2 Red-and-white mini-skirt, bought in mall near Olympic Park, London, totally wrong. 3 Vintage purple-and-black woven pumps from Toronto, stand out too much. 4Vintage red Balmain A-line bouclé dress, fits well over baby bump and flattering but too Umbrellas of Cherbourg—too daytime. 5 Vintage Roger Vivier flats, found at an estate sale for $5, love but make legs look stumpy. 6 Margaret Howell lace-ups, immediately too collegiate preppy and remind me of something my friend Trish would wear to work. 7 Annoyed by the soles of my secondhand Louboutins, hate how they announce themselves, must paint soles black. 8 Vintage pink dress, still too large for second trimester, save for later in pregnancy. 9 Beige cardigan, feels suburban and boring. 10 Neon-pink dress, too modern and breezy. 11 Bespoke tweed jacket from Ireland, cheap buttons always disappoint slightly, looks like office wear. 12 Purple vintage sweater, right color, wrong shape. 13 Blue polka-dot knit cardigan, tight in the arms. 14 Vintage green knit cardigan, on theme for film about English countryside, but heavy and tends to itch. 15 White canvas sneakers, too casual and dirty. 16 Chanel flats, daytime. 17 Raincoat, wrong length. 18 Jogging pants, out of the question. 19 Tweed jacket, too much structure and too pale to wear over navy jumpsuit, looks weird over red dress.

  WORN Vintage floor-length navy jumpsuit with a beaded waistband. Worn with cowboy-style boots.

  ON DRESSING

  SURVEY DIARY NO. 1

  MARY MANN

  Associate editor Mary Mann read and organized the surveys we received. These are excerpts from the diaries she kept.

  JUNE 7

  Surveys tend to come in waves and each wave tends to have its own trend. Today I read three different surveys that all mentioned the appeal of menswear. After being in those three brains I was hankering to do the same, so I wore my boyfriend’s shirt to dinner with friends. I walked to the restaurant, and on the way it started to rain hard. I was wearing waterproof boots, fortunately, but I kept worrying about messing the shirt up. New York is really gross in the rain, and he cares for his clothes more than I care for mine.

  JUNE 8

  Reading five to ten surveys each day puts me inside the style brains of five to ten people. The effect is that when I leave the apartment, I’m looking at people and thinking about them more as I walk down the street. Two young women walking side by side have no underwear lines under their summer dresses, and they walk like they know this looks good. I catch myself looking at myself in a shop window. Goddamnit. In one of the surveys, someone wrote that her mom’s advice was to look at yourself before leaving the house so you don’t become “one of those women” who checks herself out in windows. I make a note to buy a full-length mirror.

  JUNE 11

  High heels are the great survey divider. Some women see them as a symbol of patriarchy, hobbling women, making them unable to run. Others see heels—and specifically the ability to walk in heels—as a superpower. So many surveys mention women who walk well in heels as style icons, and those people who do walk well in heels seem to know this in their surveys. The women who write about wearing heels actually come across as extra-confident throughout the survey. What came first, the confidence or the footwear? Does style confidence carry over into other parts of life? How does one learn to walk in heels?

  In the East Village tonight I saw a lot of women in heels and some clunked around or swayed, always on the verge of toppling, but one woman walked in them as though she was built to do so. I was drawn to her. She seemed like she would actually be faster than those of us in flats, maybe an effect of the leopardlike slinkiness that a good high-heeled walk bestows.

  JUNE 12

  Older women frequently write that they’re unhappy with their aging bodies, and say that they now dress for utility rather than style. Some don’t see the point of taking time to dress bodies they’re unhappy with, while others actively desire invisibility. Yet young women frequently write that they are inspired by fashionable older women. This disconnect makes me sad. I wish I could give these surveys to some of the older women and show them that dressing with style does not become pointless with age. In fact, it’s probably the opposite.

  I wonder if this is a new thing, this youthful veneration of stylish older women, and if it will change how young women today think about style and bodies as they age. How great that would be! That’s probably part of why it’s important for me to think about this stuff now. I’m building a foundation of style.

  JUNE 13

  After all this reading and thinking about the power of high heels, I’ve decided to teach myself to wear them by getting comfortable in narrow wedges first. I wore them all day today and felt extra-special, like a kid in Sunday clothes. End result: blisters. Even with trains, I did walk at least three miles by the end of the day, and that seems pretty good for the first day of wedges.

  JUNE 14

  Today I called my mom and we talked about style. As a young mom, her style was antistyle. She felt really strongly that she didn’t want her daughters to think they had to dress a certain way to be valued, so she wore a lot of T-shirts with environmental messages on them, and encouraged thrift over fashion. She told me that in hospice, where she works, “you notice sometimes people are happier when they’re wearing their favorite thing. Obviously, they can’t go anywhere. Nobody is going to see them. But still. It makes a difference.”

  JUNE 15

  Reading surveys makes me want new clothes. Or new ways to wear my old clothes, which, for me, is better. So yesterday I wore an old blue tube dress as a long skirt, with a black camisole. I think it felt especially good because it was a new silhouette for me. I usually wear knee-length or mid-thigh skirts and loose yoga tops (the kind that could double as maternity tops). It felt so good that I wore the exact same thing today on a trip to the Barnes Collection in Philly with Grace and Rachel. Grace said I looked sassy.

  There’s so much potential in my closet, but it’s hard to use it right. When I figure out one outfit that clicks, I wear it for days in a row because it’s so hard to find that perfect combination. It’s like being a good curator—like Barnes—getting the combination of everything so right that nobody even questions it; making a hard thing look easy.

  SURVEY I feel most attractive when. . . .

  When I’m dirty from hard work. No matter how nicely I might dress up for a special occasion, I never feel as attractive as I do when I’m covered with paint or dirt or grease.—STEPHANIE AVERY • When I look most like an architecture student.—LILI OWEN ROWLANDS • I feel most attractive after I’ve accomplished something. That confident glow that you get from b
eing creative—it’s like my eyes grow wider, my skin more luminous, and my heart more open. It doesn’t really matter what I’m wearing at those moments.—MAYA FUHR • I feel prettiest when I paint, and am convinced that concentration becomes me. Though no one is ever there to witness it, I feel beautiful when I am rosy, flush, and focused.—AGNES BARLEY • I really like that look of blurred makeup the next morning.—IVY KNIGHT • In the morning. —SARAH WHIDDEN • When I get out of bed in the morning and have on only underpants and a T-shirt and I walk to the bathroom and see my body in the mirror, every single day this same thought pops up: You are skinnier than you think.—PETRA KRUIJT • In the morning, looking in the bathroom mirror, once I am completely ready to leave but have not left yet.—CAROLINE EICK • I feel most attractive the moment right after leaving the house in the morning.—FAITH HARDEN • When I’m just about to leave the house in the morning.—AMÉLIE SNYERS • Looking in the mirror, dressed, about to leave the house.—MADELEINE STACK

  COLLECTION

  JOYCE WALL’s lipsticks blots

  CONVERSATION

  IT’S THIS MYSTERY, ISN’T IT?

  WRITER & JOURNALIST JULIET JACQUES SPEAKS TO SHEILA HETI

  SHEILA: I feel like a name is something that you wear, and I wonder how you chose your name.

  JULIET: It came to me when I was about ten years old. I’d never liked the name my parents gave me, and I think one reason was because it was a male name that didn’t have an obvious female equivalent, and I just had the name Juliet in my head. I think I liked the literary connotations of it, even though I’d never read Shakespeare, so you know, from a very young age I was sort of pretending to be more cultured and intelligent than I was. And I would write—on scraps of paper or whatever—My name is Juliet, then cross it out because I wasn’t allowed to be called Juliet. Then, in my twenties, I was living in Brighton and had started to come out as transgender but not transsexual yet, and I started gradually going out as a woman more and more. And sometimes my friends would say, “What do you want to be called?” I didn’t have that much confidence in this name, so I said, “Well, what do you want to call me?” And that’s quite a risky strategy, right? That could have ended friendships. Luckily it never turned out too bad. A friend of mine once called me Mina—I was reading Mina Loy at the time—and I really, really liked that. But when I started transitioning, I had to make a decision and stick with it, so it was Juliet. It instinctively felt as right at twenty-seven as it did when I was ten.