Women in Clothes

by Sheila Heti

  SARAH MANGUSO My clothes are divided into inside and outside wardrobes. I teach one day a week, so when I use my outside wardrobe, it’s an occasion.

  THANDO LOBESE I clear out my closet when I feel claustrophobic. Then I feel so light. It might feel like you’re losing your identity, because you’ve worn this dress so many times, but now you have to move on to another level. Instead of dragging the whole closet with you.

  ON DRESSING

  A “MUFF DOG”

  GILDA HABER

  Sumptuary laws have, throughout history, been used to permit, forbid, or enforce the wearing of clothing or identifying marks among specific groups of people, including women, the lower class, and minorities. Sumptuary laws were (and still are) enforced, and transgressions against them are punished, but women often have found ingenious ways to circumvent them.

  The Greek statesman Solon, in the sixth century B.C.E., ordered that women not wear more than three garments at a time in public.

  In 215 B.C.E., a law was passed that forbade Roman women from possessing more than half an ounce of gold. In Florence in 1536, peasant women were prohibited from wearing any gold.

  Julius Caesar prohibited women from wearing pearls. In Venice in 1306, a sumptuary law forbade women from wearing pearl ornaments in their hair. Servants couldn’t wear pearls at all.

  Nobles’ belts were heavily jeweled in Europe. In the eighteenth century, watches were hung on these belts or girdles. Women were forbidden to carry gold or silver watches on their belts, and in Nuremberg, they were forbidden to carry more than one watch.

  In sixteenth-century England, Queen Elizabeth I permitted starched ruffs, a new invention, to nobles only. The size of the ruff depended on the wearer’s rank. Royal guards closely monitored the use of ruffs.

  European lower-class women were forbidden to wear linen. When linen became easily available, the rank at which linen was permitted was lowered. When muslin was invented, only upper-class women were permitted to wear it, and it was forbidden to the lower class.

  Silkworms were smuggled from China to Byzantium around 552. In fourteenth-century Nuremberg, women were not allowed to wear silk garments. So they wore silk linings. They were then forbidden to wear silk linings.

  In the sixteenth century, the French king Henri III allowed only the highest-ranking female aristocrats to carry a fur muff. Other women had to make do with velvet. A lower-ranking woman might therefore wear a velvet muff, inside of which she carried, for extra warmth, a tiny dog, which was called a “muff dog.”

  In eighteenth-century Bern, some maidservants were permitted to wear a fur cap, but only if it was made of skunk.

  Venetian aristocrats of the fifteenth century forbade women to ride in carriages. Women countered by wearing zoccoli, platform shoes that raised them as many as twenty inches from the street mud, but wearers of these shoes required slaves on each side to support them. A sumptuary law then forbade the use of zoccoli, piously claiming that pregnant women might fall. However, women had the last word. They requested that their zoccoli be buried with them, a symbol of freedom.

  In medieval England, lower-class females more than fifteen years old had to wear dun, brown colors. Later, Queen Elizabeth I forbade the new crimson to all but nobles and cardinals.

  In Zurich in 1390 and 1744, laws forbade lower-class women to show more than two inches of skin, especially at their throat or shoulders, so as not to tempt men of the upper classes.

  Nobles were absent from their wives for long periods of time, carousing at castles, in debauchery, off hunting, or at war. Many were killed in battle, or in jousts or tournaments. Noble wives were locked into chastity belts during their husbands’ frequent absences. These often caused infection, since the women could not clean the vagina. Inbreeding between nobles may also have reduced fertility and increased infant mortality. Many noble houses died out for want of heirs.

  Male noble rulers passed sumptuary laws and appropriated for themselves all innovations, such as starched ruffs, watches (miniature clocks), and the color crimson, forbidding their use to others. One innovation they did not appropriate was gunpowder, as it was considered dishonorable to royalty, who honored face-to-face fighting. This, in part, caused their demise and the rise of the wealthier among lower classes.

  For the most part, sumptuary laws on clothing are not currently practiced. However, ranking by clothing may have been transferred to ranking in bureaucratic location and office furnishings. A high-ranking man, particularly in private companies, will have a fancier office location, better furnishings, and a better-marked parking space than women of the same rank. Female colleagues, grateful for their own high rank, will rarely complain about this discrimination, or about their lower pay for doing the same job as a man, or poorer working conditions, even in our society, which is proud of its equality and democracy.

  COLLECTION

  KIM BOST’s tights

  ON DRESSING

  COVET DIARY: REGARDING THE DRESS OF ANOTHER

  LEANNE SHAPTON

  I saw a dress on a woman at a party and wanted it for myself. It was a long, printed dress. It looked comfortable and light and cool and inscrutably chic. When I asked the woman about the dress she said it was Isabel Marant. She said it sort of apologetically, acknowledging with a faint, resigned smirk that while it looked vintage—could have been ’70s Yves Saint Laurent or handmade—by being off-the-rack designer it was less interesting, cheating somehow. The fact that this was communicated so quickly and silently was interesting. It must have been then that I realized that I, too, might one day own the dress.

  Later that day I was with a friend, C, and saw the woman again and spoke to her. C knew her a bit. She lived in the country but worked as a stylist in the city. I admired her hair: worn loose, flecked with gray, and her manner: warm, thoughtful, sincere. She wore no makeup, and the dress, which was sacklike, lent her a modesty I liked. We spoke about our children. Then, in a lull in the conversation, I came back to the dress, complimenting it again. She nodded, knowing. Then I did something that surprised me: I leaned down and picked up the edge of her skirt and touched it, marveling aloud at the light, smooth fabric.

  I have never touched another woman’s dress like that before. A fur sleeve once, but I’ve never had that grasping, clutching impulse. I wondered if it had something to do with my post-pregnancy confusion about my body, its new aches and shapes. My breasts are mysterious, they have moods and urgency and look like sea creatures. My body gives off new smells and I picture an orangutan when I think of my nursing posture. Though my pre-baby weight is within spitting distance, my relationship to clothes has shifted. I don’t know quite who I am anymore, and yet I am more defined than ever. In the past, when I looked at clothes, I’d imagine a version of myself in them. Some part of me has always thought I could wear almost anything and look good, but photographs of me always disappoint. The dawning knowledge of my asymmetries and lumps, my perceived flaws, has been somehow kept at bay until now. Now I see them and accept them, I’m just not sure how to dress them.

  I touched this woman’s dress and marveled, then the moment passed, the sun went down, I changed my daughter’s diaper and headed home. A week and a half later, after thinking about the dress in an abstract way on a regular basis, I typed “Isabel Marant dress” into eBay. After a few pages of scrolling I found it. It was $360, marked down from $1,200. I checked the return policy—fourteen days—and bought it.

  I felt weird after clicking BUY IT NOW. The whole process went so fast. Seeing the dress on another woman, ascertaining its provenance, touching it, then going after it. I’d never bought something like that before, never had that “It could be mine” feeling about the clothes of a woman I’d met. I had that feeling after seeing things in print or on people I did not know, but I’d always felt it was only fair to let a woman, from vaguely one’s own social circle, own the dress if she found it first. Maybe it’s my competitive-swimming background, but I go around thinking in terms of firs
ts. It’s only fair.

  Was it to do with childbirth, this slackening of my own rules? After depending so heavily on other women, more than I’d ever had to before, was I coming to realize how shared an experience mothering was, and so didn’t feel so bad copying another one? I’ve always been interested in how women mimic and copy one another. I’d copied things I’d admired before: cumulative lessons in being myself. I copied the way a friend placed tulips in a beer stein in 1993, the way another woman sitting in front of me on an airplane wore men’s trousers in 2001 (it turned out to be Phoebe Philo). The way yet another said “Please” when ordering in a restaurant in 2007.

  I wondered if my feelings also had something to do with admitting I want something. I’ve struggled with admitting what I want most of my life, not admitting until the last possible moment that I wanted a child. Admitting I flat-out wanted this dress was new to me. I was nervous.

  When the dress arrived I laid the small package on the bed and looked at it. I still felt it was someone else’s discovery. I wonder if the lovely woman had any sense of how much covetousness her dress inspired, that in fact I would hunt down and capture her dress. Would I have still wanted it if she’d been unfriendly? I wondered if men did this to other men’s women. Or if women did this to other women’s men.

  I opened the package. All folded up, the dress looked deflated. On the woman’s body it had been large, airy, and flowing. The fabric was very fine and thin, so the entire thing squashed down to a little pancake. I fluffed it out. It was still great. I put it on. I loved it anew.

  I kept the tags on in case I changed my mind. But the next morning, in a rush to get to the passport office, I threw it on. It felt soft and cool against my skin. The cut felt above par for so uncomplicated-looking a garment; there wasn’t too much material across the shoulders, chest, and arms, but plenty from the armpits down. I was worried about the size, but it fit perfectly. I slung my baby into her carrier and set off. By the time I reached the passport office I was sweating and my daughter had drooled down my chest. The dress was giving off a “new dress” scent: something gluey; sizing and thread and tarpaulin. I worried about my daughter sucking on it and moved it away from her face, then worried about her breathing in factory fumes and regretted I hadn’t washed it before wearing it, something I usually do with my new clothes.

  After the passport office, I walked to my designer friend R’s studio to pick up a tape recorder. We stood chatting and passing around the baby. While I was talking to another woman, I felt R touch the dress. When I got home I washed the dress, then put it straight back on.

  I wore it the next day to get an ice cream cone with a friend. And the day after that, to a show in Brooklyn and a late dinner.

  On both of these occasions I felt good. The good of knowing I had on something that was attractive to me. It didn’t matter if I thought I looked attractive in it. In fact, I think I looked merely okay in the dress. I wonder what wearing a designer piece bestows on the wearer, because what I was feeling I can describe only as designer security. I was leaning on the fact that I’d paid a lot for this security. The “thingness” or value of the dress made me feel protected and attractive in a lazy way—the mass security of doing what other people do, or buying into the “Expensive is good” mindset. I suppose I expected the dress to do some of the heavy lifting.

  The specifics of the dress: It is a long-sleeved, printed dress, made of a silk and cotton blend. The colors are olive greens and navy blues and the print is imperfect and messy, an Indian/Liberty pattern that includes tiny pomegranates and vines. There are a number of pin-tucks across the shoulders in the back and along the collarbone, making the top part tidily but comfortably tailored. The dress unbuttons to the belly and has a tiny frilled collar. The sleeves have short, buttoning cuffs. It has two hip pockets and a drawstring. It delivers a demure, feminine, slightly hippie feeling and falls to just above the ankles. It’s sensuous, with its almost transparent fabric. It has a quality I love in clothes—of being a platonic ideal of an image of something, an illustration. It evokes David Hamilton photographs, Wales in the ’60s, Woodstock, early Laura Ashley, libraries and flea markets. There is something gauzy and French ’70s about it, like it should smell a little, and warmly, wonderfully, of b.o.

  There is reliable drama to the idea of two women wearing the same dress. It’s considered a faux pas, documented in movies and stories as a mortifying event, and more recently and efficiently in the cruel “Who Wore It Best?” features in celebrity weeklies. A woman need only own the same expensive dress as another, and wear it weeks and miles apart, to be shamed in a photographic comparison.

  What I felt in the dress was a deep dread of running into the woman I had coveted the dress on, and also C, who was with me when I first saw it. It’s hard to explain this dread other than that of being caught red-handed, of appearing to not have my own mind when it comes to dressing. As these things go, on the fourth day of possessing the dress I ran into C at a coffee shop where I was meeting another friend, A.

  When I saw C across the room I felt a jolt of panic before relief that, finally, I could make my confession. I pointed at the dress as she approached and said “I found it!”

  She said in reply: “You found it.” Then told me she had looked for it online for my birthday. She touched it and asked if she could borrow it someday. We told A about the dress at the party. She admired it and declared that it looked perfect and she wanted it and was going to look for it, too.

  That night, I wore it to a farewell party for a friend, P. She and I had had a strained relationship for the past year, and in deciding what to wear that night I chose the dress as a sort of protection.

  I went to the party carrying my daughter in a sling, which provided a little more armor, too. The heat of her little body was comforting, and the thin material of the dress kept the inevitable sweatiness manageable. On arriving, P told me that a man I’d been involved with ten years before would not come to her party if I was there, that he was waiting until I left. On top of the existing tension between P and me, this cast an uneasy feeling over the evening. My daughter fell asleep against my tense chest. I stayed for an hour longer, growing defiantly aware of some tension my presence was creating. When I saw P and another woman look at me and whisper into each other’s ears, I left, feeling downcast. Walking home, I texted two of my friends, who were in Korea, and told them I missed them. When I got home I bathed my daughter and put her in her crib, took off the dress, and pumped breast milk.

  The next day involved a long drive, stopping to breast-feed at a gas station. I put on the dress once more. My husband and I met a painter friend, J, for lunch, and we talked about discernment and nostalgia. I told him about the dress, that I was disappointed I didn’t uncover it in a vintage store but bought it for its approximate qualities to a perfect version of a dress you’d find in a vintage store. He immediately said the colors of the dress were ideal for me. As we were leaving, he touched the dress and said it really was a very good dress.

  We arrived at a friend’s house in the early evening, in the rain. By this time the dress felt like a part of me. I’d forgotten about it, which I took to be a sign of its true integration into my wardrobe, the way that, in “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” F. Scott Fitzgerald has a character say something like: If you are conscious of what you are wearing at a party, you made the wrong choice. The material soothed me, and the cool, wet breeze blew the skirt out in gentle billows. I knew it smelled of milk and baby vomit and me and car, but I wore it for a few hours more, dropping some pulled pork and slaw onto it, finally taking it off for a bath before bed.

  The coveted dress.

  SURVEY Please describe your body.

  I have an amazing body! I won the genetic lottery. Do I sound like a horrible asshole? I don’t mean to be a bitch, I mean to be infinitely grateful for the body I was born with. I am tall and have a tiny little rib cage, nice hips, perfect breasts on the large side, small waist, long legs. I am curvy a
nd feminine. I do struggle with being heavier now that I’m a mom with kids, and I miss being thirty pounds lighter, as I was in my twenties, and I now have a dimply thing happening in many locations that is pretty horrifying in a bathing suit, and sure, I am critical of many features. But really, I have nothing to complain about, and I thank God for this body every day. —VALERIE STIVERS • Small and strong. —AMY BRILL • My husband says I still have good-looking legs. —CAROLYN F. • I have a scar running down the left side of my face from a traumatic train-hopping accident. —SARAH GERARD • Feminine. —ANNA WEBBER • I am short and of average weight. I try every day not to obsess over it or my diet. I like to run a few times a week so I can eat what I want and not give it too much thought. —KERRY CARDOZA. • I have fairly pronounced muscles, presumably from my field-dwelling ancestors. My sister and I both have bendy legs (hyperextended), which are often caught in photos we send to each other. Self-love and good food is the right path, surely. —ALEXA S. • My body can do things, it can run, and lift, and push, and pull, all of which usually makes me pretty happy with my body. —CAROLANN MADDEN • Tall, slender, a pleasant derriere. —JENNA KNOBLACH • Old. —PAT JONES • My body resembles a Coke bottle, the three-liter size. It used to be like the old small glass bottles, not far from the 36-24-36 ideal of the fifties. I now resemble something closer to a nude bather from an eighteenth-century painting. —DEBORAH KIRSHNER • Sometimes I think my body looks like a T. rex. I have a small upper body, small breasts, small waist, and a decent-size butt and thigh region. I’m not very tall (five-four). I think I have a slightly athletic build, pretty curvy, fair skin. —LINDSAY ALLISON RUOFF • I have lost my girlish figure. “My chest has fallen into my drawers,” as they say up north. My flat rib cage has gone, my waist, too. I need to sit most of the time. It’s a long time since I wore high heels: joint replacements make them unsafe and uncomfortable. I seem to have assumed someone else’s body, one that is sagging and stooped. —ANITA ABRAMS • Waistless. I am straight with overall softness, which translates as not one particularly slim or special body part. —AGNES BARLEY • When I was a child, people said “big-boned,” but I knew what they meant. I grew up to have an hourglass shape—big bust and hips, small waist. I like my shape and think that it, in part, explains my love of vintage clothing, as it is often designed for women of this shape. How I perceive my body changes depending on my mood. Sometimes I’m surprised to see my body when I’m naked and look at myself in the mirror. It looks so small and pale to be the vessel for all my wild feelings. —VANESSA BERRY • It’s never been in better shape. —SARAH MOSES • Tall and slim with great curves and proportions. Flaws include visible varicose veins on the surface of my legs and a dimple from a partial mastectomy in 2008 due to a breast infection. — ANN BOGLE • Small-framed, sloping shoulders, swan neck. Sort of lumpy thighs, awkward knees, coarse hair, nice feet, on the slender side but never quite in shape. —KATHARINE HARGREAVES • On a harsh day, I describe my body as a hot dog on a stick. —ANNA COSTLEY • My back has scars. When I see other women’s backs with such beautiful smooth skin, I feel like an alien. —ALISSA NUTTING • Five-eight. Medium build. At its best—lean, fit, and muscular. —METIS RYER • I’m seventy-five percent legs. My butt likes to take up some space and my waist is narrow. I have spiderlike arms, which I’ve always liked, and breasts that are larger than a pair you can cup. —SZILVIA MOLNAR • I have a protruding stomach. I do not exercise intentionally. My body is nice, my skin is smooth. I have an autoimmune illness of the eyes called uveitis and it requires the use of steroids pills and immunosuppressants. These have physical ramifications such as weight gain, glassy-looking eyes, hair loss on the head, and hair growth on the face. Perfection. —SHALINI ROY • I have one bunion, the other one was removed in January. My fingers are very long and crooked. —KRISTINA ANNE GYLLING • Underweight. Short-torsoed. Long-limbed. I slouch, and apparently when I walk, I bob like a cobra snake. —NATASHA HUNT • My husband sees his body as himself, and as a tool to do what he wants to do. I see my body as a case for my self, which lives inside my body. I think of my body as my adversary, something that often keeps me from doing what I want to do. —REBECCA SCHERM • Not bad for an old broad. —LAUREN REITER