Women in Clothes

Front Cover
Blue Rider Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA), 2014 - Biography & Autobiography - 515 pages
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Women in Clothes
is a book unlike any other. It is essentially a conversation among hundreds of women of all nationalities--famous, anonymous, religious, secular, married, single, young, old--on the subject of clothing, and how the garments we put on every day define and shape our lives.

It began with a survey. The editors composed a list of more than fifty questions designed to prompt women to think more deeply about their personal style. Writers, activists, and artists including Cindy Sherman, Kim Gordon, Kalpona Akter, Sarah Nicole Prickett, Tavi Gevinson, Miranda July, Roxane Gay, Lena Dunham, and Molly Ringwald answered these questions with photographs, interviews, personal testimonies, and illustrations.

Even our most basic clothing choices can give us confidence, show the connection between our appearance and our habits of mind, express our values and our politics, bond us with our friends, or function as armor or disguise. They are the tools we use to reinvent ourselves and to transform how others see us. Women in Clothes embraces the complexity of women's style decisions, revealing the sometimes funny, sometimes strange, always thoughtful impulses that influence our daily ritual of getting dressed.

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About the author (2014)

Sheila Heti was born in Toronto, Canada in 1976. She studied playwriting at the National Theatre School and philosophy at the University of Toronto. Heti runs Trampoline Hall, a monthly lecture series, and writes regularly about the visual arts. Her title The Middle Stories was Shortlisted for the 2001 Upper Canada Writer's Craft Award. Heti was voted Best Emerging Writer in NOW magazine's Reader's Poll in 2001. In September 2010, Heti's book How Should a Person Be?, was published by Henry Holt in the United States in July 2012. It was chosen by The New York Times as one of the 100 Best Books of 2012 and by The New Yorker as one of the best books of the year. Heidi Julavits is a founding editor of The Believer magazine. Her books include The Uses of Enchantment, The Effect of Living Backwards, The Mineral Palace, and The Folded Clock: A Diary. She received the PEN New England Award for Literary Excellence in Fiction. LEANNE SHAPTON is a Canadian illustrator, author, and publisher based in New York City. She is the author of Important Artifacts and Swimming Studies, winner of the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography.

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