Women in Clothes

by Sheila Heti

  HEIDI: You live in both worlds. You have these costumes you put on, but also, right now, here beside me, you’re an ear of corn.

  RUTH: I’m an ear of corn. And really, I just want to be an ear of corn. Or a perfect tomato, just picked off the vine. Or a perfect peach. That’s the hardest thing to get. You get one every ten years or something, but when you get a great peach. . . .

  HEIDI: What’s the last great peach you had?

  RUTH: Oh god. It came from Frog Hollow Farm in California. But a perfect peach—it’s really hard to get. Yeah. That’s what I want to be.

  CONVERSATION A brief conversation about dressing.

  SHEILA: It was so hard to decide to buy that leather bag, but you were so encouraging. Of course, I wanted it because you have the same one. But I still can’t look at the stain at the bottom. I have to avert my eyes from the body of the bag. Even though I take it everywhere and I think it’s the perfect bag. LEANNE: But mine is in worse shape than yours, no? SHEILA: You have to tell me how I cannot have a bad feeling because of the stain. It makes me feel dirty and schlubby! LEANNE: Describe that. SHEILA: Well, it makes me feel like I’m a sloppy person. And a dirty person. Like I don’t notice there’s a stain. It feels like I’ve got something on my face. LEANNE: Look at me! (pulls at her sweater—it has moth holes and a rip, held together with a safety pin) SHEILA: But the holes looks so artful! LEANNE: No. It makes me feel like—not caring. And I like not caring. I care so much about so much stuff that when I have something on me that says “Fuck it,” it gives me more confidence. SHEILA: Really? LEANNE: Yeah, and it makes the item blend in because it’s not spanking new. There is some part of me that feels rootless. My mother isn’t from Canada and we had very few traditions, so I want things that have some affectation of legacy or tradition. SHEILA: Like somebody handed down that sweater to you. LEANNE: Exactly. Even though nobody did. I went out and bought it. So I’m a total poseur. SHEILA: Did you rip it? LEANNE: No. I got it at a flea market. It was already ripped. But it’s something I’m attracted to. Maybe if you feel so strongly about something, you’re trying to conceal something. If I feel so strongly about things that look as if they’ve been worn and used and passed down through generations, it makes sense: I’m a first-generation Canadian. SHEILA: But I’m first-generation Canadian, too! LEANNE: I know. But did you grow up with a lot of used things? SHEILA: No. And I don’t think that’s the explanation in your case. With you I always think of that Italian word sprezzatura. LEANNE: But if you saw me carrying the bag, would you go, “Ew, it’s stained!” SHEILA: No. But all your choices seem so deliberate to me that I’d never question it. LEANNE: That is insane! Maybe you give people too much credit. SHEILA: Of course I do. I know I do. LEANNE: That’s a lovely, generous thing, too. SHEILA: I know, but I should see that the same thing applies to me. LEANNE: Yes! You don’t have the Japanese version, wabi-sabi, and you’re not minimalist, but your clothes don’t look like they came from anywhere specific, which is a good thing. You look clean, so I can see how something stained would make you feel like there’s an unraveling. SHEILA: Like there’s food on my face. LEANNE: But remember when we were in Montreal and you had that parka? Like a secondhand parka? SHEILA: Oh yeah, Martha’s. LEANNE: There was something about it. One dirty thing is kind of lovely. And maybe it gives you this little question. Like, is there a sentimental story behind that thing? It adds a little mystery. That’s why I like used stuff. It’s my obsession-with-ghosts thing. You really like new things—new art, new forms. It gives me security to have old crap on my body. I think you should get the purse cleaned and see how you feel. SHEILA: I don’t know if you can clean leather. LEANNE: You can clean leather. SHEILA: But because we were talking about going outside our comfort zones. LEANNE: Why? Someone saying, “I’d never buy it—there’s a stain,” I can totally respect that! SHEILA: No. I think I have to keep it and adapt to it.

  COLLECTION

  JANE LARKWORTHY’s lip balms

  SURVEY

  SMELL

  “Every once in a while I smell my kindergarten teacher and when I turn around I’m a bit disappointed it isn’t her.” —STAR SPIDER

  LAURA SNELGROVE I wear perfume every day, and rotate through three lovely fragrances. Two of my regulars were gifts. The third I smelled on someone at a house party in Berlin. I deduced it was the hostess who smelled so incredible, and proceeded to smell all the bottles in her bathroom until I located it. Then I bought it immediately at the duty-free on the way home.

  LAUREN SPENCER KING After my mum died, for four years I preserved her closet exactly as she left it. Sometimes when I was home, I would just go in there to look around, or have a good cry, because it still held her smell.

  KARIMA CAMMELL I used to be a huge fan of Laura Biagiotti’s perfume Venezia. As soon as I had kids, though, I realized that so much of our communication was based on scent. I wanted my kids to know what I naturally smelled like. As they get older, I think about exploring perfumes again.

  AMANDA STERN Everything my best friend Stephen Hara wore and owned, I wanted. I coveted even his personal scent (Derby by Guerlain). He was a beautiful boy, and I coveted him, too, but he was gay and unavailable to me. We had clothing swaps, and when I was at his house, I’d steal things from his closet and shove them into my bag. Soon enough, I had to go through a Stephen Hara security checkpoint before leaving. He died of AIDS in the late ’90s, and when I discovered eBay, I found three bottles of Derby by Guerlain and bought them so I could smell like Stephen Hara whenever I wanted.

  DAPHNE JAVITCH My perfume has been tragically discontinued. I’m down to my last few bottles. I treasure it. I like to spray a little in my hair before bed.

  FRIEDERIKE GIRST Since I was fifteen, I always wear the same perfume. It is Jil Sander. I always admired Jil Sander. Of course I could not afford her clothes back then. The olfactory should not be underestimated. I love it when people tell me I still smell the same.

  STEPHANIE DINKMEYER I love perfume cautiously. I am hyperaware that whatever perfume I’m wearing will be forever inextricably tied to whatever happens to me that day. I could tell my whole life story with a trail of perfumes. I’ve gladly abandoned many scents throughout the years.

  SANCHARI SUR Perfume is so bourgeoise. I have never bought perfume for myself. The perfumes I own have all been gifts.

  HALEY MLOTEK Buying the Embryolisse moisturizer felt like paying a membership renewal fee. I used it when I was studying to be a makeup artist, and it smells exactly the way I remember it, like eight a.m. classes, and having another student brush it on my face, and smelling traces of it under my fingernails after class. Makeup school was the first time I’d ever done something really creative instead of mostly cerebral. I miss it.

  MIMI CABELL My house burned down (it was arson) when I was in grade ten, and my mother wore this vanilla oil for the six months following the fire. That was fifteen years ago, but whenever I smell vanilla oil I am instantly transported back to the rental house we lived in while our home was getting rebuilt. I reexperience the feelings of suppressed rage and sadness I felt about losing all of my things.

  NINA MOOG I own a wax-covered coat that reminds me of Scotland. It smells of outdoors and sheep and rain, rain, lots and lots of rain, and black coffee.

  HEATHER BLOM Like lingerie, perfume is the icing on the lady-cake. Some women just smell SO GOOD.

  BRITTANY BROWN Scent really can change the way I feel or the way I present myself. I have a ton of different oils with different scents and combinations. I find it exciting when I choose something and let it be the theme of the day. I’m currently wearing one that’s called “Sacred Whore of Babylon.”

  SHALINI ROY My maternal grandmother greatly influenced my sense of style. She wore beautiful chiffon saris and printed silks in the hot days, and heavier materials at night. I played with her cut-glass necklaces. My favorites were the midnight-blue and the aqua-and-pink refracted ones. She had a dressing room and it smelled like her soaps and perfumes and talcum pow
ders. She was the owner of Calcutta Chemical, a toiletries manufacturer.

  CARLA DU PREE I always wear a hint of cologne in all the right places. I like for my husband to find my scent, even when he’s not looking.

  CLARE NEEDHAM I regularly rip out the sample perfume strips from magazines and put them in my drawers, but I’ve never purchased any expensive perfume. I’ve worn The Body Shop’s White Musk for over a decade, and love it because while I can’t smell it on myself, other people can smell it on me. A friend of mine told me it makes him hungry, and taxi drivers and people on metros around the world have correctly identified my scent as White Musk.

  RUTH GAIS I’ve worn White Musk bath oil from The Body Shop for years now. It’s the only thing I’ve ever worn that people ask about all the time. The downside of it for me is that I can’t smell how nice I smell. It’s a very soothing and affectionate scent. My mother always wore Joy by Worth. She said that it was the one fragrance that cabdrivers always asked her about.

  LEAH DIETERICH When my husband and I lived apart for two years, I began wearing his Old Spice deodorant. Partly because it smelled like him and that was comforting, partly because I liked smelling like a man, and partly because I had just transitioned from my old antiperspirant (because of the aluminum-cancer correlation) and it was easier to use his than to find a new brand for myself. Four years later, I’m still using it. It’s a part of my scent now. I also have a men’s cedar-scented cologne that’s made in Bermuda. It reminds me of the smell inside churches there—my family used to go to Bermuda every summer. One of my other perfumes is also from the Bermuda Perfumery, made with frangipani, which I believe is in the jasmine family.

  LISA GUNNING I wear perfume, but not girly perfume, more unisex things that smell like leather, incense, old libraries, or dubious sexual parts.

  ALEXIA CHANDON-PIAZZA I am afraid my sense of smell is not refined. Most scents, when put on my skin, incommode me, as if I had the smell of someone else stuck to my body.

  TAYLOR SMALL Once—I think I was sixteen or seventeen—I made a friend smell every perfume I owned and tell me which ones turned him on the most. We were just hanging in my bedroom, getting ready to go out. I put on Daisy by Marc Jacobs while I finished getting ready. He remarked on how I smelled. He focused on how the way I smelled was different from me as a person. He said that the smell specifically turned him on, not me. It didn’t prompt me to change perfumes, but I think that I do usually wear Marc Jacobs for dates now.

  HENRIETTA ALTMAN Perfume is a must! Even to bed!

  LINDSAY PAGE I wear perfume but I never want to be someone whose fragrance announces my presence. My current boss leaves a trail of something that smells like W hotels for about ten minutes before and after her. This triggers a tremendous anxiety in me, knowing that she is on her way, or was just near.

  PETRA KRUIJT When I know that I smell good, it gives me self-confidence. Also, I love the moment when I smell myself and think for a split second: What smells so good? Then: That’s me!

  COMPLIMENT

  “WALLET”

  One p.m. on a Saturday at a Staples store in downtown Manhattan. Kate is paying for batteries.

  WOMAN: Oh, I like your pink wallet.

  KATE: Thank you!

  WOMAN: Do people comment on it all the time?

  KATE: Yes, sort of.

  WOMAN: It’s great—so fun. You should get a lipstick that matches it. And some shoes . . . no, that would be too much, maybe just the lipstick. You know how it’s nice when there’s just one little thing that matches, and people can’t tell if you meant it or not.

  KATE: You’re right, I should!

  WOMAN: You could find one at Sephora. They have them in Pepto-Bismol pink too, but this color’s more. . . .

  KATE: More of a neon, with some orange in it.

  WOMAN: Yeah! My friend has lipstick like that. She has a darker complexion than me, so she can wear it. And you have a lighter complexion than me, and it would look good on you. But on me . . . no.

  KATE: You can have your own color. Maybe. . . .

  WOMAN: I like burgundies and maroons on me. I don’t even wear lipstick, but if I did, that’s what I would wear.

  KATE: You should get one for yourself! It would look great.

  COLLECTION

  PAULA BLACK’s hair elastics

  ON DRESSING

  SURVEY DIARY NO. 2

  MARY MANN

  JUNE 17

  When I’m reading surveys, the calmest ones come from women who know their real bra size because they’ve been fitted. It’s lulling, the idea of having this one basic thing nailed down. So between looking at surveys I looked at lingerie websites. I thought this would make me feel better, like I was getting a handle on adulthood, but instead I felt worse, like some weirdo looking at porn on a weekday afternoon. Why are lingerie websites so porny? I imagine it’s women mostly shopping for lingerie, but maybe not.

  JUNE 24

  There were a handful of surveys today from women who hold up their dads as style icons. They have shopping traditions or clothing conversations or maybe they just admire their style. It’s nice and sad for me to read. My dad and I don’t have a relationship like that. As a preacher, he had a uniform for work: robes every week, three different kinds—cassocks, surplices, and chasubles—and black shirt, black pants, and a white collar underneath. He always smelled like the myrrh they burned in church. The vestments are such an important part of religious ritual, and it’s funny to think that so much is invested in them—heavy embroidered fabrics, gold thread on the stoles, the bishops’ crazy hats. These fancy clothes sort of legitimize the rituals, and the rituals legitimize the religion.

  JUNE 25

  One woman wrote that she chooses her underwear to give her extra oomph for what she needs to do that day, and different pairs of underwear bring different kinds of luck. My underwear is all just different color variations of the same thong that I bought from Lululemon back when I worked there and it was cheap. But that was two and a half years ago! While I worked on my computer today, I kept taking “underwear breaks” and Googling to see if I could find some really nice-looking stuff that wasn’t too pricey. Later I asked my boyfriend if he had preferences in the realm of ladies’ underwear. He said he liked what I have. I said, “But if I had all the kinds of underwear there are, what would you like to see me in the most?” He said, “I don’t know, the sexy kind,” which doesn’t mean anything. When I pressed him he said, “Maybe red?”

  JULY 1

  No surveys today, which feels weird. I’ve gotten used to the survey responders keeping me company as I work from home, but today the only voice in my head is my own. After a few hours of work I went to a yoga class. The class was wonderful. I even managed a handstand—I felt so strong. I sweated right through my black tank and leggings, and afterward changed into a loose white dress and tied my sweaty hair back and felt like a hundred dollars.

  JULY 6

  A survey arrived from my mom today, and I had lots of trepidation about opening it. I put it off almost all day. What if it said something I didn’t want to know or revealed something distasteful through her writing? But when I finally read it I found it to be pretty cute. She’s a sweet lady, and it was a relief to see that she is also sweet on paper.

  JULY 20

  Living with a partner means that he sees you looking not so hot sometimes. Over the last week or so I’ve been thinking about this, and worrying that maybe the romance will get lost in the mix of smelly exercise clothes and eyeglasses and dry feet. I had always felt sort of judgey of women who dress for men, yet the other night I told him that I was concerned that seeing me with zit cream on or whatever would make me less attractive to him. He said: “But that’s the real stuff.”

  The surveys go both ways on this issue: (a) Dress nice to keep the romance alive; or (b) Be sloppy because it’s more real. I don’t agree that the equation is as simple as sloppy = real, but it does seem nice to share a whole spectrum of my ways of be
ing with this person I care about. This morning while he got dressed for work, I put on a black sundress to work from home and some mascara. He noticed and remarked that I looked good. I told him he looked good, too (in a black collared shirt and tan pants). It was nice being barefoot and admiring of each other at seven a.m.

  AUGUST 2

  Feeling attractive, according to one survey, comes down to being tan in a foreign country and not having anything to carry. I told this to my boyfriend as we headed out for the night and he was struck. “Not having anything to carry. . . .” He said it slowly, frowned, then nodded seriously. We decided that for the rest of the summer, whenever we go out on Sunday night, we will leave our phones and bags and purses and books at home.

  AUGUST 24

  We have so many surveys now. I can’t believe I’ve read all of them, and can even quote from some. There are 400, at 4 pages average each, so 1,600 pages, longer than War and Peace. Most of the surveys teach me something, which is pretty amazing. The ones that speak to me the least are the ones where the respondent is crafting an image. They make an attempt to conceal flaws or give off a sexy or cool vibe that doesn’t sound true, but I understand the impulse. I have it, too. But the really sexy and cool ladies seem pretty flawed on paper.