Women in Clothes

by Sheila Heti

  8.15 I might have found the perfect T-shirt—from Everlane, online, for $15. It is boyish: short and wide, with a pocket. I buy three. $45

  8.16 Perhaps I am happier, or perhaps because I am dating a man who is largely uninterested in clothes, I am spending much less time wondering about another, more quirkily dressed version of myself whose clothes the real me finds hard to wear, and thinking about things I could use, such as tights, or an umbrella, or an overnight bag. • The managing editor sends me a link to a Fjällräven backpack which is 70 percent off. When the bag arrives, I find that it is small as a child’s. I wonder whether the managing editor thinks that, because I am small, I can pack light. $29.98

  8.18 CVS: cold and flu medication; prescription for antibiotics. $32.03

  8.19 Still groggy with a cold, I take off my diamond earrings in the bathroom and drop one of them down the sink. I am not grown-up enough to have a pair of diamond earrings. I write an e-mail to Steven Alan in the hope that it is possible to buy one earring; I know from past experience that I must replace the earring as soon as possible so as not to get mired in regret. It then occurs to me that I could take apart the sink. I ask my downstairs neighbor to help; he wrenches open the P-trap; the earring drops out. $0

  8.28 Cobbler. $32

  8.29 I am about to go away for the weekend to Martha’s Vineyard with Ben, who is now apparently my boyfriend, hence going away for the weekend with him. On the way to work I buy a top from Urban Outfitters without trying it on. The top—white, cotton, milkmaidish—isn’t that nice. So I return it. I must be wary of my need to buy unnecessary things before going away. $0

  SEPTEMBER

  9.10 My Everlane T-shirts have been lost in the mail! REFUND, $45

  9.7 A store on Atlantic Avenue has a luggage sale. There is a Fjällräven duffel bag reduced from $150. The managing editor approves, thank goodness. $75

  9.13 Polly has been telling me about the pleasures of her Wolford tights. I order some from Amazon. They are indeed magnificent. $46

  9.15 Alterations and dry cleaning. $84.45

  9.17 Rite Aid: deodorant, soap. $13.49

  9.20 I am looking for a pair of Chelsea boots to wear with my dresses and tights, but when I try on a few pairs, I find myself wanting something more supportive. I see a pair of G. H. Bass black suede shoes with navy soles, which will look good with a new COS dress my mother bought me, although I worry that they will not be right with my black Tibi dress. Why do I feel that, in order to be worth buying, these shoes ought to go with everything I own? $79

  9.25 Managing editor sends out a link to a Tretorn sale online; I buy a pair of all-black Skerry Wellington boots. Useful. $30

  9.30 I have cleared the summer clothes from my cupboard and moved my sweaters back in. The cupboard looks sparse, but when I open it in the morning, I see my new COS dress, which I have had altered to fit me, and my mac. Plus I have tights, and nice comfy new Bass shoes. I could wear this outfit all fall. $0

  SURVEY What was the first “investment item” you bought?

  A Prada wallet my one-year-old daughter plays with now. —SARAH ILLENBERGER • I bought a Martin Margiela sweater when traveling in Italy ten years ago, probably cost me a month’s rent. I still have it and wear it. —TRISH EWANIKA • A blue J.Crew sweater. I used to wear it with red jeans. It got eaten by moths in Cairo. —SOFIA SAMATAR • Black Versace sunglasses I bought at seventeen. I still have them, don’t wear them anymore. —RACHEL L. • I bought this gorgeous satin gown on an impulse. I didn’t need it, but it was so glamorous and fit so well I’ve worn it twice recently for performances, and I will wear it again. The style is ageless and it’s so soft against my skin. —MONIQUE AUBÉ • I bought $200 jeans and I thought it was a big deal. They were great for a few months and I started to think they were worth it. Then they ripped in the butt and I have maybe had my heart broken in the jeans world. —NICOLE LAVELLE • A golden bracelet. —SATENIK AVAKIAN

  PROJECT

  WEAR AREAS | ANNA BACKMAN ROGERS

  1 The circumference of my head is twenty-three inches—two inches bigger than my waist. I think too much and do not eat enough.

  2 Round indented scar where I burned off a birthmark that I didn’t like. I used to tell people it was a chicken pox scar, but actually it’s a mark of not being able to accept what is.

  3 Large bump on my ring finger. I never learned how to hold my pencil properly at school.

  4 Size 35 (5 in American sizing). In many ways, I still feel like a small child.

  COLLECTION

  MOLLY MURRAY’s vintage three-inch heels

  CONVERSATION

  YOU REALLY ARE THE MOST DISAGREEABLE GIRL

  PHOTOGRAPHER LUCY BIRLEY SPEAKS TO LEANNE SHAPTON

  LUCY: I always feel much more comfortable dressing the way I want to dress if I know I’m not going to be photographed. Knowing that you might be photographed is a real bridle, like having a martingale on. I don’t want to be revealed to the world in this, but I’m very happy to be revealed to my friends in this.

  LEANNE: Do you always know when you might be photographed?

  LUCY: If you’re going to somebody’s house, or somebody’s birthday that’s private, you can have much more fun than if you’re going to some party where they’re going to come up with a flash. I’m really allergic to it and I can actually sense where they are in the room, so when they’re coming nearer, I look down or avoid.

  LEANNE: It’s like an animal sense.

  LUCY: It feels like being hunted, I hate it.

  LEANNE: Have you ever dressed to calm yourself or gain control over a situation?

  LUCY: Yes. When I got divorced, I bought a pair of steel-toe Manolo Blahniks to face the lawyers. I needed those.

  LEANNE: Have you seen the armor for women at the Wallace Collection? It’s sort of a corset thing, with room for boobs, amazing. Constricting yet protective.

  LUCY: It sounds like McQueen. I think Alexander dressed women to go out into the world to do battle. He was all about giving women strength to go out into the fight, all about making them stronger.

  LEANNE: How did you come to know him?

  LUCY: I once lost this coat that I loved. I was at a party that a friend gave, but after about ten minutes suddenly the walls came up and there were hundreds of hookers all throwing cream pies at everybody, and it turned into this massive food fight. It was so hilarious, it was such fun, I absolutely adored it. But I was actually very pregnant, and I was really scared I was going to slip on the floor because the whole floor was covered in cream, so I hid under a table for a bit. Then everybody left covered in stuff. Most people were furious, actually, it was so weird. When I finally got out, my coat had disappeared.

  LEANNE: What was the coat like?

  LUCY: It was a red alpaca Dior with a fur collar. Very ’50s, A-line, lovely. Very light.

  LEANNE: Nobody steals a red coat by accident.

  LUCY: It was maroon, it wasn’t really a bright red. But I loved it. So my friend Issy Blow said, “I’ve just met this guy Alexander who has just come out of art school, maybe he can replace it and make you a new one. I’ll get him to come round.” So I was at home, doorbell rings, and this little skinhead-looking guy walks in with jeans and shaved head, book under his arm. We started talking and he said, “So what was this coat like?” I said it was alpaca, red, fur collar, and it was this kind of shape, and he went, “Okay, right.” Then he said, “Do you want to see what I’m into?” And I said sure, and he got this book out and I opened it and it was all pictures of, um, Vietnamese children who’d been disfigured by napalm, and people running out of towns during the war in disarray and bombs going off, and I just shut the book and I said, “I see.” I was so fazed, because I was expecting a lovely sketchbook with lovely pictures and drawings of coats and dresses, and I was so weirded out, but I thought, Well, whatever. I was embarrassed, and then he said, “Well, I need some money to get the material,” so I said, “Okay, how much do you need?” and he said £30
0, so I wrote him out a check and gave it to him and said good-bye, and he started making it. I didn’t hear from him for a long time, so I called him up and he said, “Yeah, the coat’s at Elizabeth Street, finished and everything.” I went round to Elizabeth Street, and the day before, the house had collapsed. It had fallen down. So I never got the coat. For years after that, whenever I’d see him we’d just go, “Alpacaaa!! Where is the fucking coat?!” But he actually did give me loads of stuff after that.

  LEANNE: Do you remember the first time you were conscious of what you were wearing?

  LUCY: It was a shift dress with strawberries on it. I must have been about four. I just wanted to wear it all the time. I think I wore it running through the fields and whenever I could.

  LEANNE: When do you feel the most attractive?

  LUCY: When I’m in the country and I get up in my nightie and go out on a summer morning with my gun and shoot rabbits. I love that combination of being in a nightdress and having a gun.

  LEANNE: What are you trying to achieve when you dress?

  LUCY: Well, it depends where I am. If I’m in the country, I’m dressing to keep warm and dry, or be able to ride or do some gardening. If I’m in town, I’m trying to look as if I’m in control of my life, tidy, and like I’m not completely mad.

  LEANNE: Whenever I see you there’s something you’re wearing that refers to some inner life, like you’re doing something just to please yourself.

  LUCY: I want people to realize I’m not a square, but I don’t want to look like everybody else, and I also want to feel comfortable and that I’m not going to get freaked out. So that might involve wearing something I love that has got me through some tricky situations before, almost like a talisman.

  LEANNE: The red velvet piece you’re wearing today does that.

  LUCY: It’s funny you should say that, because I probably haven’t worn this in three or four years. I like to throw it. Always.

  LEANNE: Tell me about being photographed by Mapplethorpe.

  LUCY: Well, he had been over to the house a couple of times, and he was going to do a picture for this Butler & Wilson shop in Fulham Road. They used to have a photograph on the side of the shop that they’d change every six months or so. I think when they found out he had AIDS they canceled it, but we did the picture anyway. I went down to 14th Street in New York, and I got out of the cab on the wrong side, and I’d been smoking a joint, and I nearly got run over by a lorry! So I was quite freaked when I got there. We sat and smoked a bit beforehand, and then he wanted not to see my body at all, so somebody in the studio had a black jumper that I put on. He had a little handheld Leica and he just said, “Right, okay,” and I sat down and he wanted me to move my head around, and he was kind of going around me. We were quite stoned so it was very relaxed. It was very quick. I don’t think he was that interested in taking the picture. He was like, “Okay, I think we got it.” I think he shot two rolls. Then he said, “Oh, I really want to show you my bedroom, come have a look,” so we went down a passage and into this room and the whole room was covered in different crucifixes and some weird African masks, quite threatening-looking things, almost devilish. It was a really intense room, there was a real juxtaposition between good and evil. And he said, “What do you think? Which side do you like?” And I was actually kind of freaked that he’d asked me that question. I said the crucifix side, and when I said that I thought he seemed relieved. Reassured. I felt he was looking for the right direction in some weird way.

  LEANNE: That’s intense.

  LUCY: He was very intense, but he was like a very, very clever naughty teenager. So quick. Very much the same kind of mind Alexander had. Very naughty, very confrontational, very funny, and moving so fast.

  LEANNE: Did your parents teach you anything about dressing?

  LUCY: No, they were too crazy. But my mother was very elegant and ladylike and always wore tweed skirts and jackets and headscarves and gloves. And the top drawer of her chest of drawers had sort of silky things and her jewelry and her scent bottle and all her feminine things, but I was never allowed to look at it. That was quite hurtful. I always felt that her femininity and her sexuality were things she cut off from me. And having three brothers, I grew up in a very male environment, and that’s kind of sad—I wish I’d had more of a girly relationship with my mother. But she used to lend me things. She had this beautiful pair of bright pink court shoes with great big buckles on the front, they must have been her best shoes in the ’50s for going to parties in. And I really wanted to borrow them. I must have been about sixteen, and she said, “Yeah, but please look after them.” And I went out to a punk concert in the Hammersmith Odeon, in probably fishnets and a short skirt, and they got absolutely trashed, covered in beer, mud, ash, really trashed. And she said, “Oh, how could you do that, you really are the most disagreeable girl.”

  LEANNE: What is your relationship to lingerie and feminine things now?

  LUCY: I don’t indulge myself in that way. I would love to have beautiful frilly knickers with lovely lace and satin in sort of beautiful colors, but I don’t allow myself that. Maybe if I was in a relationship with somebody where that was really important to them I would, but I’m not. (laughs) Actually, I remember going round to [Issy’s] flat after she died, with Lee and Philip Treacey, and we had to choose something for her to be laid out in, and there were three or four rails of clothes, and I remember Lee opening this drawer and there was all this amazing underwear in it, it was like a sweet shop or something. And Lee said, “Take it, take it all!” But I didn’t feel I could.

  LEANNE: When did you meet Isabella Blow?

  LUCY: I think when I was fourteen or fifteen at a party in Oxford. It was one of those friendships that click instantly, which doesn’t happen so much later in life. We were best friends from the moment we met. She came to live with my mother because she’d been kicked out of her own home and left school. We didn’t have any money, and we used to go down to Kensington Market, to all the vintage shops in the King’s Road. We did a lot of shoplifting. At least I did. She wouldn’t have the guts.

  LEANNE: Was she doing her own thing then?

  LUCY: She dressed in a much more overtly sexual way than I did, and she was a great encourager of making you push it in that way. She’d go, “Oh, pull your skirt up, ohh you’re really gonna get lucky tonight!” She was very sexually motivated in her dressing, and she always wore stockings and suspenders, or no tights. So we didn’t dress in the same way. But we used to go out together, and we had boyfriends who were friends before we both got married, so we used to go off to shooting meets and things together a lot. (cries)

  LEANNE: Sorry, Lucy. If it’s painful to talk, we don’t have to.

  LUCY: No, it’s okay, I’m fine, honestly, it’s just that growing up with somebody like that is not anything to do with fashion, you know, we just had a great time. We had a great time.

  LEANNE: Do you think she was an artist?

  LUCY: Well, we did a sculpture course together in New York, but we smoked so much dope before we went in that we couldn’t stay in the class, we were just hysterical with laughing. But yeah, she was very motivated by art, history, literature. And she loved Scotland, the moors and the big landscapes, the freedom. She was one of those people who’d get into a taxi in the middle of Cheshire and start talking to the driver about his family, his wife, and the guy would be completely bowled over by her. She just had this way of connecting with people, a totally genuine energy of wanting to know about people and what made them tick and what made them laugh, and it was such fun.

  LEANNE: So much is made of her depression and demons.

  LUCY: That was a tiny bit at the end. But as a teenager I remember my mum saying to me one day, “You know, with Isabella it’s either hundred-miles-an-hour fireworks and fun or she’s in bed with a hot water bottle having to have soup. There’s no middle ground.” So you would just wait for her to rest and recuperate and then it would be the sports car going again. She had t
his extraordinary energy and imagination and daring. I don’t think she had the discipline to sit down and concentrate on anything, really.

  LEANNE: What do you think gives people the motivation to dress to their own standards?

  LUCY: I think it’s part of being a creative person. I think you have to have the imagination and the vision and be able to visualize stuff. I think that a lot of people don’t. Not everyone is artistic or creative or thinks in that way. It’s easier for them to be told what to wear, and that’s fine, it doesn’t matter.

  LEANNE: I want to ask about your friendships with women.

  LUCY: My girlfriends have always been really important to me. I’ve got the same friends now that I had when I was a teenager. Sadly, a lot of my friends aren’t here anymore, because I’m obviously drawn to extreme people who burn out. I love being around my female friends who have daughters, and watching what goes on, because I never had a daughter. Four sons.

  LEANNE: What’s the situation with your hair?

  LUCY: Oh my god. I cannot believe that my state of mind is so dependent on what this stuff on my head is looking like. I just find it absurd, but I’ve accepted that if I feel that it looks terrible, then I’m going to feel terrible.

  LEANNE: It’s increments I would never notice.