Women in Clothes

by Sheila Heti

  MASHA TUPITSYN The kind of dresses you see Sophia Loren wearing in neorealist Italian films had elegance despite being a hyperfeminine exalting of the female form. You see this in Fellini films, too, though Fellini had a kind of early-Gaultier approach to beauty ideals. He made everything beautiful, grotesque or strange. He deformed beauty.

  JUSTIN VIVIAN BOND I have an ill-fitting vintage ’60s puss-print coat that I might wear once a year because it makes me feel like Jeanne Moreau in Roger Vadim’s 1959 version of Dangerous Liaisons. I keep it as a reminder of how utterly glamorous and jazzy she was in that film.

  TRISH EWANIKA I’m drawn to the kind of glamour that gives women strength, with an elegance that is understated. Foremost would be Coco Chanel. Jacqueline Onassis figured large in my childhood because I was born just before John F. Kennedy was assassinated. And Grace Kelly. Then there was Greta Garbo—not so much for her style, as she is famously known for being inept at choosing her own clothes—but for her way of inhabiting clothes. The closest person I admire today who can do this is Tilda Swinton.

  MAIA WRIGHT When I started dating my girlfriend, I realized I could do better when it came to dressing myself. She has a great eye, and is so effortlessly glamorous. It’s been a process over the past ten years, but I think she’s definitely improved me in that department.

  AGNES BARLEY My grandmother and her friends were the most stylish women I have known. They were so elegant and ladylike that they float in my mind like film icons of another era. They were exquisitely presentable at all times, and represented my ideal of beauty and womanhood. They were each so capable, so pretty, so delicately scented, so carefully dressed. I did not realize until I was much older that I had been admiring them in their fifties.

  LIANE BALABAN The word “glamour,” in its original 1700s definition, means “magic” or “spell.” So it seems that for hundreds of years, our way of thinking about beauty and desire has been linked to revelation, insight, and knowledge. I think a lot of what we’re doing when we put on clothes, or create a personal aesthetic, has to do with the idea that we know something others do not, that we have a unique and sacred lens for seeing the world. When we see people who are put together in a certain way, it’s like they have their own special lens as well. Maybe they know something we would like to find out about, too.

  EDIE CULSHAW My British great-grandmother used to have enormous, glamorous parties, once turning her garden and house into New York for the night. The waiters were dressed as cops, and I’ve been told there was a real New York taxi as a prop.

  ELISE PETERSON Growing up, it was just me and my mom for a while. We were constantly together, and she was still really hip, I always thought she was so fashionable. She was a babe in the ’90s—had that whole Whitley Gilbert meets Lisa Bonet meets Jade thing.

  KARIMA CAMMELL If you look at the history of art and at pictures of women around the world, lots of archetypal women wear long single pieces of fabric—in India, Africa, Eastern Europe. That’s what I do, too. It seems a pointless practice in our modern age of waste, but the rationale is that by dressing in one long piece we’re conserving fabric for future purposes—the uncut panels can have many lives. Everywhere I go, people stop me and say, “I wish I could wear long flowing skirts like you do,” and I think, Why don’t they just go put one on? Some people have a fantasy of something romantic, but they end up wearing something conventional. There are some people who hide their inner life, and others who don’t have trouble letting it out.

  JILLIAN TAMAKI My grandmother, who was a belly dancer and nightclub owner in Montreal, was an extremely glamorous, incredibly beautiful woman. I remember showing friends old promotional photos of her lying seminude on bearskin rugs, and we had some of her dancing garb in our dress-up box. I was proud to be related to such an interesting, sexy woman. As I grew up, however, I started to recognize a dark side to my grandmother’s glamour, including a dependence on male attention, even when she was in her seventies. She made ultrafemininity look really hard and sad.

  SURVEY I feel most attractive when. . . .

  Honestly? When I’m drunk. —JENNIFER CROLL • When I’m slightly intoxicated. —ALEX • After I have had a few drinks with friends, I go to the bathroom and glance in the mirror while I’m washing my hands. —LARA AVERY • When my hair is clean and my hormones have agreed to let my skin be clear and glowy, and I’ve had maybe two large glasses of wine and I have matching underwear on. —ANA KINSELLA • When I let my concerns go and just own the outfit and the moment. This is usually accompanied by a dress and a cocktail.—ADRIEN J. • When I’m wearing a twirly skirt and liquid eyeliner, and after one glass of wine.—BRYENNE KAY • After a few glasses of wine. —DANKA HALL • When I’m half drunk.—AMY KEY • The day after I have had good sex.—SUSIE GREEN • After having sex.—MADELINE SMITH • I feel like a beautiful queen when lying naked after perfect passion.—DOROTHY DENISOFF • When my hair is nice, and I am wearing a comfortable, swishy dress, and I’ve just had some good sex.—RACHEL PRINTZ • When I have the softness of face and hair after a good nap—or that lazy calm after sex. —CHRISTY-CLAIRE KATIEN • Post-coitus: when I’m naked in bed with someone I find rampantly attractive, who plainly finds me the same way. —CLAIRE O.

  COLLECTION

  SARAH BRUBACHER’s handmade dresses

  CONVERSATION

  A PERFECT PEACH

  AUTHOR & FORMER RESTAURANT CRITIC RUTH REICHL SPEAKS TO HEIDI JULAVITS

  HEIDI: You used to disguise yourself to review restaurants. What would you do? Wear different outfits? Wigs?

  RUTH: All of it. My mother had a really good friend who was an acting coach, so I called her and said, “I need to get a wig.” She said, “I’m coming over. But it can’t just be a wig—if you’re going to do it, you’ve got to do it right. Who are you gonna be?” I hadn’t thought about it, so I just pulled someone out of the air—my ex-mother-in-law. I said, “I’m gonna be Molly Hollis.” The acting coach made me get clothing. I went to thrift stores, bought rings, watches, everything. Then, when I was finally decked out as Molly Hollis, she got a makeup person to come and do wig and makeup and transform me completely.

  HEIDI: That’s so interesting, to be shopping for another person, basically. So you would have her in your mind—would you think, “What would she like in this store?”

  RUTH: Yeah. And I would pad my body. I’d wear layers and layers of clothes so that I was much bigger. Then that person got known, so I had to do new people. I knew this wig person and I would go in and say, “I wanna be a redhead,” and she’d say “What kind?” and I’d say “I wanna be this wild. . . .” So she would give me this wild red wig and I would go buy hippie clothes—really colorful clothes. I would decide who all these people were going to be and then I’d go mostly to thrift stores. Then there was a moment when I said, “Everybody wants to be a blonde, I want to be a blonde.” It was the only time I bought a really good wig—real human hair. It was this pageboy, amazing.

  HEIDI: So what did she wear?

  RUTH: I still have her suit. I wear it all the time, actually. I found it at Michael’s, a fancy resale store on the Upper East Side. I got this cocktail suit, black, by Chloé. So I named her Chloe.

  HEIDI: Did she have a last name?

  RUTH: I can’t remember what her last name was. They all had credit cards. I had this incredible, beautiful black cocktail suit. Then, you know, she had to have nails, so I got extensions, and it was amazing to me because I’m not a clothes person, really.

  HEIDI: But you obviously notice how an identity might be formed through clothing.

  RUTH: Oh yeah—you’re in control of your image and people respond to who you make yourself. Before that job, that was just something I’d never really thought about. It was, ah, you are who you are. But doing those disguises while I was at The New York Times, I suddenly understood: You totally control how the world sees you, and they buy it, completely. Whoever you present yourself as, they reflect. For me, what was int
eresting was that you become that person, and people respond to you as that person, and then you respond back, even though you’re not that person, and suddenly you become that person, because that’s who people are seeing. The power of one’s image became really clear to me. I was on a bus one day and a woman got on—a bag woman, essentially—and she was old and she looked tired and she was carrying all these bags, and I got up to give her my seat and she said, “Oh, thank you, nobody ever gets up for me, I feel invisible.” And I thought, that’s what I want to be. Invisible. She got off and I followed her and I saw—she really was invisible. I watched her go into a store, and nobody paid any attention to her. I thought: This is the perfect disguise. So I got some Enna Jetticks shoes, and this really frumpy dress, and this shlumpy gray wig, and I made myself completely shapeless. I went out as “Betty” and it was really pathetic.

  HEIDI: Was Betty the only time you aged yourself?

  RUTH: No. I also did my mother—

  HEIDI: Did you wear your mother’s clothing and jewelry?

  RUTH: Yes. And my mother had beautiful silver hair. I never thought about how much I look like my mother, but I sent a photograph of myself dressed as my mother to my brother, and he said, “I’ve never seen that picture of Mom.”

  HEIDI: Wow.

  RUTH: She didn’t wear makeup, she didn’t wear wedding rings. She was unconventional. She didn’t wear (whispers) underwear! I remember once when I had friends over when I was in high school, she was standing at the sink in a wraparound skirt and it blew open and she was wearing no underpants. It was like (gasp)! She was not middle-class conventional. My mother went out and people paid attention. She didn’t take any shit. But Betty was just . . . pathetic. When I went as her to restaurants, anybody with me was instructed to call me Aunt Betty, and I would tell people, I’m not going to look at the wine list, so you order the wine, and you pay the bill, and I’ll pay you back. Betty just totally faded into the background. No one ever noticed her.

  HEIDI: Did you feel any residual effects from having been treated this way?

  RUTH: It was a relief not to be her anymore. I had two feelings: one, enormous pity for her, and the other was, You don’t have to take that.

  HEIDI: You were mad at her. You wanted her to take a little more charge.

  RUTH: Part of it was that I was feeling better about my mother, who was such a squeaky wheel. I felt that if you have to be one or the other, be the one who’s out there saying, “Pay attention to me!”

  HEIDI: It feels like something more people should do—dress up like their mother and go out as their mother into the world.

  RUTH: Yeah. Inhabit your mother and you understand her, in a way. Scary, uncomfortable, but I really began to appreciate her. She knew how to take pleasure in things.

  HEIDI: What kinds of things?

  RUTH: Really good restaurants, which I had become completely oblivious to. Being her, I would go to a great restaurant and it was suddenly: Ahhh! She was so happy to be there.

  HEIDI: So you were able to become her emotionally, too?

  RUTH: Yes. And I became mean like her. I channeled her and I was able to be the pain in the ass that she was, which I don’t think I am in real life, but I was also able to experience the kind of pleasure she took in things, which I don’t have so much.

  HEIDI: Was she usually very well dressed?

  RUTH: She was bipolar, so it depended: she was Betty half her life—her weight would go up and down. But really she was enormously flamboyant the rest of the time. Wore big hats with color. I wouldn’t say she was fashionable, but she enjoyed fashion. She dressed to be noticed. I mean color! She’d get off a plane and you wouldn’t miss her.

  HEIDI: You must think differently now about how people see you when you’re just being you.

  RUTH: I wish I had a better fashion sense. Having been in the counterculture for a long time, there were “the hippie years.” And then the Berkeley years, when we didn’t have three cents and it was kind of an antifashion time. Then we moved to L.A., and L.A. is such a weird place for people who don’t have a lot of money. We were two working journalists, it was around ’84, and we’d walk around Beverly Hills and look in these stores with this ludicrously expensive stuff and I felt completely left out. Then we came to New York, and we were trying to figure out how to make ends meet, and my sense of New York was going into fancy stores and feeling embarrassed, feeling so uncomfortable in Saks and Bergdorf’s. I would walk in and wander around, thinking, “I wish I knew what to buy, I wish I knew how to dress, I wish I had some sense of this,” but I didn’t really. Then, when I went to Condé Nast, suddenly I had a clothing allowance. I didn’t know what to do with it!

  HEIDI: Did you have to have someone take you shopping?

  RUTH: I should have done that, but what I really did was spend all my money on, basically, art. I bought all these Edwardian clothes, beautiful things. And things made in the 1890s, the 1930s. I spent my money on clothing that felt like art to me.

  HEIDI: Do you think back to times in your life and say, Oh wow, if only I’d owned that situation differently, if I had dressed differently, been more confident. . . .

  RUTH: Yeah. I feel I was good in the hippie years. I had a lot of fun and it was fine—I wore mismatching socks, I did all that. But I would have had a better time in L.A. if I had defined my look better. I couldn’t tell you a single thing I wore in the ten years I lived in L.A.

  HEIDI: Really?

  RUTH: When I got to Condé Nast I didn’t even know that I could have my hair blown out. I’d never heard of it. My PR person, in my first few months there, said, “Who cuts your hair? Who does this?” She took me to a salon and I came out and I had straight hair. Which, for me, was heaven. I didn’t know I could have straight hair. It was life-changing.

  HEIDI: I know you as somebody who has curly hair.

  RUTH: Also, before I got to Condé Nast, I never had my makeup applied, ever. My first week there they have a party and my publisher says, “We’ll send a makeup person.” I got to know this makeup person, and she was at my house once a week, and suddenly I’ve got makeup! I’d worn makeup to do the disguises, but never in my real life.

  HEIDI: Did it make you feel like you were wearing a disguise when you put it on?

  RUTH: Oh yeah, after three hours of makeup, I look like another person. It’s great that you can do that. It’s fun. But when I left Condé Nast, my makeup lady and the people who came to do my hair in the morning went away. Once you realize all the things people can do to themselves, you could spend your entire life worrying about your nails, your heels, your toes. But come on, we’ve got to have better things to do with our time than deal with all this stuff. Life is a choice. Who knows how it happens, but you decide that you’re going to focus on one thing. I’m not conscious of having decided to focus on food, but there’s no question.

  HEIDI: Did you eat differently as your characters? Did they have different food identities?

  RUTH: They did. Part of being a critic is that it’s not about what you like, it’s about the food. When I was Chloe—

  HEIDI: (laughs) She was watching her figure?

  RUTH: She was! You can’t understand what it’s like to momentarily be the shiksa goddess. So there I am, I’ve just come from having my nails and makeup done, and I’m sitting in a bar having a drink by myself and this guy picks me up. And I’m thinking, Oh, this is perfect.

  HEIDI: What kind of guy was he? Was he the kind of guy who had never hit on you before?

  RUTH: Guys didn’t hit on me. I wasn’t that kind of person. But I was this blonde and it was like a dream. I mean, I was married and I was going to have a meal by myself, which I did a lot as a critic, and this guy comes up and says, “Will you join me for dinner?” He was a complete jerk, but it was too delicious, because he really thought I was that person! So Chloe has dinner with him, and I suddenly turn into this ridiculous ditz! I’m (lowers voice) talking in this breathy little voice, and he’s coming on to me,
and suddenly I’m saying, “I’ll just have the filet of sole.” That’s the thing. We can disguise ourselves. And we do it every day. We’re these fragile little creatures behind these façades, trying to make our way through the world, and one of the ways we do it is with the clothes we wear, which say: Pay attention to me. Be nice to me. Don’t look at me, I’m tough. I’m vulnerable. Whatever. Most of the time it’s unconscious—but there’s no question that we see ourselves on a stage.

  HEIDI: Obviously, with food there’s literal taste, but what’s the difference for you between style and taste, in terms of food? I feel that in the fashion world it’s confused. Would you rather have good taste or good style?

  RUTH: With food it’s so clear—good taste in a heartbeat. Style in food is just pretty. Style, in terms of food, is pretentious. It’s just how it’s arranged on the plate. As opposed to taste, which is real and honest and inherent.

  HEIDI: That’s interesting.

  RUTH: In fashion terms, if something is tasteful, you think, “I don’t want to be tasteful in terms of my clothes, but I really want to have a style. I wish I had a style.” But with food, taste is the honest thing. Style is the pretentious, put-on piece of it. Because food is about flavor. Flavor and taste are synonymous. All food has taste, and really good food—like corn—you get a great ear of corn, it just comes out of the earth, and it tastes wonderful. You can play with something and can make it stylish, but you can never make it taste great. Taste is natural.

  HEIDI: But there are people who have cooking styles, right? You might say that a certain chef has an identifiable style.

  RUTH: Absolutely. They have a style and that’s fine. There are two major opposing styles now. One is the molecular fucked-with, and you manipulate food in every possible way. And the other is the Alice Waters, where the best food is the most natural, perfect stuff that was just harvested, just came out of the earth, and you do as little as possible to it, and it tastes of itself. Both of them are current and accepted.