Women in Clothes

by Sheila Heti

  Clothes as control, as correct order. Ardor. Asserted and undone. What I wore was everything to her.

  But if I said that she wanted me to wear this, and I wanted to wear that, what would it prove?

  Clothes also as pure description. Her marriage was over. I found the yellowed newspaper announcement of her wedding: The bride wore a short gown of Chantilly lace over blush peau de soie in bell silhouette.

  My first word, I was told repeatedly, was “shoe.”

  Captain, I have to go back inside my mother’s mind. It’s the only way we’re ever going to get any answers. —Counselor Troi to Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation

  Her mind and mine, so intertwined. “My mother,” or: “My mother’s.” “My mother ______,” and “My mother’s ______.”

  I went back inside her purse. I came alive rifling through that bag, feeling for the charged surfaces of paper money, for tissue scented with perfume, for the box of gum with a hard candy coating. I listened in on phone calls, probed the bedside tables, read the appointment book, eavesdropped from the second floor to a room below. I watched the rain scar the windows, rain darken the brick, rain sound like relief and then regret. The pitch of traffic rises in the rain. Look: A child composed of fear, of reverence, and disdain.

  I love the lie and lie the love, A-hangin’ on, with push and shove. Over and over lifting the needle and dropping it—to get caught again in the pulsing momentum of the piano, the tough voice of the sax, the long traveling cry of Les McCann and Eddie Harris’s “Compared to What.” (They were Live in Switzerland; I was live in the living room, crouched next to the turntable.) I love so much I cannot breathe. I love her white wool sweater from Greece. I love her short-sleeved dark paisley shirt, the pattern’s hidden meaning. I venerate the rare perfume from Paris. I believe in her belted white trench coat, large dark tortoiseshell sunglasses. I understand brown suede two-strap sandals with a heel just right; elegant arch of the instep, poise of the feet.

  The composition is always complete. It explains itself. It is a view of the whole world. And when it slips I know that something bad is going on.

  Standing at the door to the bedroom I could see into her closet, the closet, her closet: eternally inadequate, neither deep nor wide enough.

  She had been a fashion journalist.

  I learn: Seams, hems, pleats, darts, and bias tape.

  In the beginning (was I four years old?) red stretch stirrup pants, a red-and-white-striped jersey, red leather oxford shoes. I admire the outfit and would almost dress this way now.

  Age ten or eleven, Watergate era, before breasts: A blue-and-white wide-striped T-shirt with a torn pocket, very tight. A pumpkin-colored T-shirt so loose and long it came to my mid-thigh.

  The struggle: To wear that, to look like what, like me, or you, like her, like everyone, like no one else.

  Tryin’ to make it real—compared to what?

  Unharnessed torment in a thing I’d begged her not to buy. Synthetic velour, green that offended me, a plaid component. A maxi-skirt or dress; my meticulous and wild distress. The push and shove. I caused a scene? I refused. She caused a scene. We caused a scene. It made us late—to a wedding.

  Such bitter conflicts over my clothes, cited years later (by my father) as evidence of trouble between us—her and me—of long duration. I had forgotten it all. I remember only some of it now.

  I wore it, in the end.

  For I did love a pair of maroon corduroy tapered Levi’s, worn low on the hips, when I had no hips, with cheap gray fake-suede sneakers. (This at the dawn of fancy running shoes.)

  I did adore my short- and long-sleeved striped Marimekko T-shirts, and one in thick plackets of color that I later swiped from her. I indeed participated in the interesting “Norwegian workshirt,” the blue-and-white vertically striped Greek blouse (or smock, or something worn on top). Clothes from elsewhere, from the world.

  For I am referring to white jeans, slightly belled, with matching white jean jacket: the only mother-daughter outfit I recall. Confused dismay, minor pleasure. Cease-fires in this tiny war at home. Or we just wore each other down. Or: rhythms of aggression and capitulation. Note subsequent high-waisted wide bell-bottoms, two tiny welt pockets in front; in back the smooth expanse of navy blue or dark brown corduroy round ass. Brown leather clogs that hurt, even when I didn’t run in them. Polyester patterned shirts in which I sweated. And other awkward, sleek expressions of the age.

  There is no explanation.

  The clothes weighed so much, wet wool trousers in the snow, heavy with clogged and clotted feeling, with all of the not-feeling I was busy feeling. The lie, the love: perfect submission, mastery; trying to see; a being seen that was, also, striving for invisibility.

  Something someone covering me.

  Do clothes make the woman. Clothes made my forgetting, a deep and wide vacancy. The asthma of memory, the burlap curtains of memory, the rasp of breath, the scratch of textiles.

  Clothes were signs so clear I could not read them. As in: The things she left hanging for years in what had been my father’s closet: his white wool turtleneck, seersucker jacket, olive-drab wide-wale corduroys. Later I wore the sweater, almost a dress on me (irony I did not see).

  She said: Now you’ll divorce me too.

  To wear that, to look like that, like me, or you, like her, like us, like everyone, like no one else, like what and whom you love.

  Grammar deals with rules for word order, verb forms, plural and singular nouns, and parts of her shoulder-length veil. A basic rule of English grammar is: A cascade of white sweetheart roses and ivy.

  I did not ever say the following: I leave you your house and several things I loved or understand. I steal myself. I steal away. I steel myself. I keep the things I keep.

  Was there a set of rules that governed her veil, which was caught to a nonbinding contract and to a crown of seed pearls, or that regulated her bouquet?

  Clothes, the source of it all, don’t matter at all.

  Compared, compared, compared to what?

  Nonstandard usage: I done it. I seen it. I worn it. And finally.

  PROJECT

  A MAP OF MY FLOOR | SHEILA HETI

  OCCASION Onstage book reading at a literary festival in Cologne, Germany. The final performance of a three-week tour in Europe. Flying home in the morning. The hotel room floor displays the following tried and discarded items:

  1 Silvery shirt with three-quarter-length sleeves. Bought secondhand in Berlin on this trip. A possibility. 2 Blue-and-yellow-patterned silk Rachel Comey top, no sleeves. Would be great in the middle of summer, but it’s March and cool. 3 Light pink bra. Can’t remember where this came from, but when I bought it I was skeptical. Now it’s my favorite bra. 4 Gray Topshop sweatshirt. Too informal and it stinks. Needs a wash. 5 Black leather shirt with three-quarter-length sleeves. Bought secondhand in Paris. I really shopped a lot on this trip. Wore it for an interview the other day, and those people will be there tonight. Need something different. 6 Red cashmere sweater. After three weeks in a suitcase, it’s lost its shape. 7 Deep purple silk Chanel top, from my boyfriend. Wore this onstage in London, but it’s too dressy for my current mood. 8 Thick gray wool skirt, long and close to the body. I was going to wear this with the silvery shirt until the last second, when a small voice in my head said, “Don’t wear this outfit.” I think that it felt too conservative. 9 Pale blue silk blouse. I packed it to wear for just such an occasion, but when I took it out of the suitcase, I noticed a stain on the front, from the last time I tried to iron it and it got wet. 10 J.Crew cords. I like them but suspect they would look sloppy onstage. 11 Also from Berlin, a black semi-sheer shirt from COS. As yet unworn. I didn’t notice it in the also-black suitcase. Wish I had. It would have been just right.

  WORN Black leather oxfords with a slight heel, no socks. Tight black jeans. The pink bra. A snug long-sleeved cream-colored Isabel Marant shirt, with red and blue stripes. Suspect I wear this outfit too often. I wish that w
as more acceptable.

  COLLECTION

  SENAMI d’ALMEIDA’s digital wristwatches

  SURVEY

  FATHERS

  “My dad came back from a trip to America and said to me, ‘I saw this big, marvelous magazine, so I thought I’d get you a subscription for it.’ I was ten and it was W magazine.” — BAY GARNETT

  IVY KNIGHT When I was ten, my dad (my real dad who lived in Ontario, not the dad who raised me) gave me a gold ring with a little heart and my initial inscribed in it. When I saw the little gold sticker that said “18 karat gold” I figured it was a really expensive piece of jewelry. I had heard about karats in the People’s Diamond commercials on TV. I now know that the ring was probably worth about twenty bucks, but it made me feel like a little millionaire.

  BIANCA HALL I keep all of my jewelry in a big tool box that has eight drawers. My father was a contractor and he bought it for me when he saw how vast my accessory collection had grown. He painted it and lined all of the drawers with felt. He generally rolls his eye at feminine opulence, so it was sweet and funny of him to make it for me.

  EUFEMIA FANTETTI I spent a year in track pants as a depressed student, failing university, which forced my father to ask me politely, “Can I ask you something? Don’t you want to look nice?” I yelled, “Who am I supposed to look nice for? Every man on the street?” “Why not?” My dad shrugged. “What’s wrong with that?”

  ALICIA BERNLOHR In 1981, my parents had just started dating, and my dad was the proud wearer of bright green corduroy bell-bottoms with a matching jacket. He’d just gotten back from three years with the Peace Corps on a tiny island in Southeast Asia. He had missed out on much fashion news. Power dressing was in, and hippie and disco styles were out. “Tomorrow,” my mom said to him, “I want you put on your green bell-bottoms and catch the tram. Ride it all around San Francisco. Look at the people inside the tram, and then look out the window. See if you see anyone still wearing an outfit like that.” He stopped wearing the green bell-bottoms in public, but did not give them away. I think he would be wearing those green bell-bottoms today if he had been allowed to do so.

  ELEANOR JOHNSTON For years I wore a white lightweight Egyptian-cotton bomber jacket that had belonged to my father. He’d been in North Africa in World War II, but probably bought it in London afterward. It had secret pockets, buttoned and zipped a dozen different ways, an articulated side latch, a shoulder flap. Best article of clothing ever.

  STEPHANIE WHITEHOUSE When my dad was dying, I dressed up like I was going to work every time I visited him. Somehow being presentable in that situation gave me a sense of dignity and respect for him that made me feel strangely like things were a little under control.

  CLAIRE O. I imitated my dad’s walk when I was six. I remember copying him when we went fishing and he was loping along in his gumboots. Nowadays when I dress like a boy, I lower my center of gravity a lot and walk from my hips, with an upper-back slouch to hide my breasts.

  RAINBOW MOOON I was in my twenties and trying to reconnect with my father. He wanted me to go out on a date with his boss, the captain of a police division in Chicago. I put on one of my favorite pantsuits for the occasion, and both my dad and his boss insisted I go change into a miniskirt. I was uncomfortable the entire evening and furious with my father.

  JUSTIN VIVIAN BOND When I was old enough to walk, I was at the grocery store with my father and he looked down and couldn’t find me. He rushed around the corner, and there I was in the next aisle, trying on a lady’s high heels! Seeing my father’s confusion, she said, “He was so adorable and he asked so sweetly, I just had to say yes!” I don’t use the pronoun “he” anymore, but I still like the story.

  MEGAN HUSTAD My father said nothing regarding clothes. His proud announcements that he left all wardrobe decisions “up to Karen,” my mother, gave me the idea that there was something masculine, i.e., powerful, in not caring about clothing, or at least in making as few decisions about clothing as possible.

  RUTKA ABRAM My dad was an accountant at a big fashion house in the New York City garment district. In high school, during the summers, I worked in his office, on Broadway and 36th Street. At lunch he would say, “Let’s go window-shopping to see what the windows look like. Let’s wander through to look at the new styles.”

  CLODAGH DEEGAN My father was a pattern cutter and my mother made a lot of our clothes. We never had any money, so caring for our clothes was very important. At the same time, I have a simultaneous, contradictory attitude of “Easy come, easy go” because Dad would sometimes bring home samples. My sisters and I were often the most fashionable girls in the neighborhood, but we’d have had our electricity cut off for not paying the bill.

  ARIEL GARFINKEL Once my dad gave me this very furry Elmo-ish red chenille sweater. It was hideous, but I knew he had tried, and when I opened the box, I just cried because it was so ugly and I felt so bad for hating it.

  ALICIA ELLIOTT When I was a teenager, my father once told me I should dress more feminine. This stuck with me. If my own father, a man of limited and dubious taste, thought I dressed terribly, what must everyone else think?

  CARISSA HALSTON My father spent an exorbitant amount of money on clothes for me, clothes that girls my age didn’t wear: pantsuits in pre-adolescence, power suits in my middle teens. He was buying my way into womanhood. When I was fifteen, my father suggested my nose be “fixed.” Twice! Years later, my nose is still asymmetrical. I’m almost certain my father was disappointed with the result. Before he was married, my father was a fashion model. It was implied that this was de facto proof that he knew what beauty was.

  EMILY HEMSON One year for Christmas, my mom told my dad to go out and buy something else for me. So my dad went out and bought a silver necklace with a butterfly and small diamonds in it. It’s my favorite necklace, though it’s not really my style. But I’d always thought it was so sweet that my dad tried to find something nice for me. At some point I started imposing things onto the necklace. I’m terrified of flying, so when I do fly, I wear this necklace. I even started wearing it when people I cared about travel.

  CONVERSATION

  THE EIGHT-YEAR DRESS

  I met the painter Kate Shepherd at a wedding in the summer of 2013. I noticed her from across a wide lawn. I said to my husband, “Don’t we know her?” And he said, “Yes, I mean no, she’s a famous actress, isn’t she?” She isn’t; but something about the dress she was wearing—it was flat, gunmetal gray, and looked to be either vintage or a party dress a ladylike robot from the future might wear—made her seem both familiar and untouchable. She told me that the dress was the result of an ongoing eight-year collaboration with her good friend Nellie Davis, a master printer. Many months later—it was deep winter by then—we all got together and talked about the dress. —HEIDI JULAVITS

  NELLIE: I was a Russian major in college. I was also interested in puppetry, so I went to Moscow for a few years. I always made clothing for myself.

  KATE: Miles’s sister was getting married, and I thought, I don’t want to go buy a dress, so I said to Nellie, Let’s just whip one up together.

  NELLIE: My wedding dress was the first thing that I spent a lot of time doing finishing work on. After that I started doing a wedding dress every year for a friend, or for a person I wanted to be my friend.

  KATE: I gave her a Butterick pattern from the ’60s, just as an idea. It was meant to be a thirty-hour project.

  NELLIE: Wedding dresses start with what each woman thinks looks good on her, which I’m not sure is a good place to begin. People don’t necessarily have the best judgment about what their body looks good in.

  KATE: We both think sculpturally about clothing. And we both have unusual noses. When you have an unusual nose, you have to accentuate.

  NELLIE: When I first met Kate, I was wearing really insanely bright colors like chartreuse and poison red. Then I moved to a bad neighborhood and had children.

  KATE: It’s a very intense, scrutinizing mome
nt to try to design the ultimate dress for yourself.

  NELLIE: My intuition is to add pleats, add smocking, add embellishment. Kate’s aesthetic drive is minimalist, toward clean lines. Her influence was constantly paring down my impulses. Distilling, I would say.

  KATE: With Nellie and me there’s an enormous amount of intimacy. I can pretty much go into her bedroom and get naked and we start picking away at something.

  NELLIE: Kate puts on all my dresses backward.

  KATE: She made a muslin version of the dress first, before even touching the fabric.

  NELLIE: Women’s bodies are incredibly different. I’ve never made a dress for anyone based on measurements that fit her in any way that was flattering when I put it on her the first time.

  KATE: Nellie tailors everything. She’s tailored my bras.

  NELLIE: I think we flipped the dress around as we were trying it on. Suddenly everything changed.

  KATE: I really like it when clothing looks like it’s drawn as in a coloring book. I like for the silhouette to always be one of the most present things you see.

  NELLIE: In my ideal world I would be covered head to toe in a headscarf. That’s just what I’m driven to wear.

  KATE: And then I said, Let’s turn it inside out. I thought, that’s the decoration of the dress—the making of the dress—as opposed to the decorating of the dress.

  NELLIE: Particular things about the garment bothered her that I never would think of with other people. So some of the details, like the cap sleeve, weren’t purely aesthetic. They were also driven by how the dress felt, how she felt in it.