News & Press
“Pushing against the prevailing rules that have governed women’s self-presentation for thousands of years, they say: Be voluble, grandiose, experimental, wild. Be imperfect.”
— The New York Times, September 28, 2014
“Long before feminism made fashion a guilty pleasure, my first experience of the sisterhood among strangers took place in a communal dressing room. I had a version of that experience reading “Women in Clothes,” a communal dressing room in book form.”
— The New Yorker, September 25, 2014
“It is a riot of opinions from women of all backgrounds; women born as women and those not, women of different religions and none at all…It is about commonality without being common, authentic experience without touching on cliche…As a snapshot of a moment and a portrait of women today, Women in Clothes is a significant sign of the times.”
— The Irish Times, September 24, 2014
“A collaged, zine-like anthology…Women In Clothes is a welcome life raft in a sea of what can be, for many women, confusion and mixed messages about why to wear what, when and how to wear it—and more importantly, how to intuit and shape your own style.”
— The Rumpus, September 23, 2014
“The result is a tome – full of voices that describe the mess of influences that confront us as we stand in front of our wardrobes, deciding what to wear.”
— i-D, September 23, 2014
“Exactly 639 surveys later, the result is part smart woman’s fashion philosophy, part idiosyncratic field study, and part artwork.”
— Harper’s Bazaar, September 22, 2014
“A gloriously eclectic account of fashion choices.”
— Sunday Telegraph, September 21, 2014
Excerpted in Sunday Times Style Issue (second round)
— The Sunday Times, September 21, 2014
“The range of testimonies in Women in Clothes is impressive…And clothes maketh the woman, every bit as they do the man.”
— The Observer, September 20, 2014
“Women and clothes are literally and conceptually together everywhere—in the streets, in magazines, on bus shelters and billboards. But what do ordinary women think about when they get dressed?”
— Harpers, September 17, 2014
“The scope of Women in Clothes is huge; the variety of voices represented is enormous. No one book can be everything, but Women in Clothesmakes ticking a lot of boxes seem effortless and emotionally/narratively necessary…The connection between you, the reader, and every other women does not feel like something new that has been created, but instead like something ancient that you have been reminded to look at once in a while…Reading Women in Clothes, I felt calmed.”
— Full-Stop, September 16, 2014
“Clothes, as the adage goes, make the man. But what do women make of their clothes?…The book makes for a good jumping off point for anyone interested in what it means to get dressed…It’s a highly conversational book that will undoubtedly breed yet more conversation.”
— National Post, September 15, 2014
One of People Magazine’s Best New Books.
— People, September 15, 2014
“The exquisitely designed, brainy, dip-into-able result—the format was inspired in part by Jean Stein and George Plimpton’s Edie: An American Girl—is a kind of high-art zine, one that’s startlingly intimate and wide-ranging.”
— Vogue, September 15, 2014
“To read Women in Clothes is to dive deep into hundreds of wardrobes, pushing the clothing aside to explore the worlds within, under, and beyond.”
— LA Review of Books, September 15, 2014
“Bodies, clothes, wild emotions.”
— Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagzeitung, September 14, 2014
Excerpted in Sunday Times Style Issue.
— The Sunday Times, September 14, 2014
The Globe and Mail excerpts essay by Women in Clothes editor Leanne Shapton.
— The Globe and Mail, September 13, 2014
“Women in Clothes is a luxurious, intimate book spilling over with photographs, interviews, conversations, poems, maps and memories.”
— St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 13, 2014
“It is a conversation about style that kicks the ostensible rule box in the pants, using history, memoir, art, design, philosophy, psychology, and sociology as tools for discussion…Viewing clothes as a uniting force rather than a dividing force is rare and necessary.”
— National Post, September 12, 2014
“Women in Clothes provides a window into the endless factors that go into women’s decision making when it comes to dressing. An everyday struggle may be the choice of what to wear to the office, but also how to accessorize your uniform at an Israeli military checkpoint.”
— New York Times, September 12, 2014
Vice interviews Women in Clothes Editor Sheila Heti.
— Vice, September 12, 2014
“This Greek chorus of a tome is actually probably most of all conceived and edited for all of us who don’t mind at all when art&life catch on fire and bend the joys of femaleness through the Worldmind warp…this book fulfills its promise to satisfy a part of the feminine experience that rarely gets spoken to intelligently.”
— Entropy Mag, September 11, 2014
“The overall message ofWomen in Clothes is that everyone’s system is equally quixotic. There is no right way to choose a dress or a pair of shoes, no more than there is a right way to live or sleep or see things.”
— Brooklyn Magazine, September 11, 2014
“It’s a refreshingly honest and often complex look at how we present ourselves visually to the outside world. And at a time when fashion and feminism frequently appear in the same sentence, it’s an important book for women.”
— Style.com, September 10, 2014
“Women in Clothes looks like a novel, reads like a passed note from your best friend…Seeing the breadth of answers in the aggregate is fascinating, and comforting…It’s nice to know how many people live as I do: with piles of clothes on the floor but nothing, ever, to wear.”
— Grantland, September 9, 2014
“The book feels like a community — a support group, even — for women who want to talk about family, and gender politics, and art — anything really — through the lens of fashion.”
— Bustle, September 8, 2014
“The best thing about Women in Clothes is its generosity to all women, the gift that younger feminists have bestowed on the clan…It is a funny eccentric textbook of women’s stories, and not a moment too soon.”
— The Toronto Star, September 5, 2014
“These women share their clothes in order to model the stitches that hold their lives together. As New York Fashion Week commences in full force, the richness and accessibility of this collaborative collection is refreshing and exciting.”
— The Riveter, September 5, 2014
“Women in Clothes features…an incredible array of participants, from celebrities to stay-at-home moms to sweatshop workers to soldiers, all of whom were eager to talk about how and why they dress.”
— Racked, September 5, 2014
“The encyclopedic Women in Clothes treads on what we try but then abandon…Each item possess a narrative, a memory, a moment cued up to play every time it adorns your body.”
— Yahoo Fashion, September 5, 2014
“In Women in Clothes, the artful, often elitist language of fashion is stripped away, leaving behind a conversation that is funny, painful, certainly vulnerable and ultimately empowering.”
— NPR, September 4, 2014
“Our digital age makes artistic collaboration easier than ever-and Women in Clothes is one of the great outcomes. Women in Clothes is your new style encyclopedia.”
— Time Out New York, September 4, 2014
“Unlike many books about style and fashion, Women in Clothes doesn’t cast judgement and it isn’t prescriptive…Across its diverse set of contributors, the book maintains a refreshingly confessional, vulnerable, intimate, and compassionate tone.”
— Quartz, September 4, 2014
W Magazine interviews Women in Clothes editor Heidi Julavits.
— W, September 4, 2014
“The results [of Women in Clothes] are at turns equalizing and personal. Sometimes they’re powerful.”
— Fashionista, September 4, 2014
New York Magazine’s The Cut interviews editors Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits and Leanne Shapton.
— New York Magazine, September 4, 2014
One of Vogue’s 10 Literary Things We’re Looking Forward To.
— Vogue, September 2, 2014
“This charming patchwork expands the scope of fashion writing by looking not at forerunners of style but at how those outside the industry think about what they wear…The range of women involved — 642 according to the editors — is dazzling.”
— The Boston Globe, September 2, 2014
“A beautiful visual tome of interviews, conversations, illustrations, photographs, diagrams, and essays all bound by the language of fashion. The text intelligently addresses topics like race, love, bodies, and politics, and as you hold it, its physical weight at 515 pages speaks to the enormity of its range and the scope of its discussions.”
— Bustle, September 2, 2014
One of Wall Street Cheat Sheet’s 11 Must-Read Books Hitting Shelves This Month.
— Wall Street Cheat Sheet, September 2, 2014
“I am jealous of the editors of Women in Clothes not because they have cool clothes or great hair, or perfect bodies. I am jealous, and admire, that they found a way to work together to create something a little bit revolutionary.”
— The Millions, September 2, 2014
“Women in Clothes [offers] a new, daring, playful space for critical dialogue about the things we wear on our bodies. … what The Elements of Style is to style, Women in Clothes is to writing about clothes.”
— The Town Crier, September 1, 2014
“Women in Clothes…is at once an anti-fashion book and a style bible.”
— Nylon, September issue, 2014
One of Vanity Fair’s Hot Type: The Best New Books of September.
— Vanity Fair, September issue, 2014
“When all the facts are laid out, as they are so extensively in Women in Clothes, there is no denying the fashion playing field does level off, and the judgement that can divide so many women is stripped from view.”
— Fashion, September issue, 2014
“Rich with detail, the must-read anthology shows how daily sartorial decisions speak volumes.”
— Lucky, September issue, 2014
“If you buy one book about personal style, make it this one. Women in Clothes… is an admirable and earnest attempt to unravel the snarled thread that runs between the way women look and how they feel about it…. The cathartic urgency with which the book’s contributors write suggests they themselves didn’t realize they had so much to say about clothes. Maybe it was just that nobody ever asked.”
— Elle, September issue, 2014
“Perhaps the wittiest and most culturally wide-netted tome on women’s relationship with their clothing… [a] stylish Rashomon.”
— Interview, September issue 2014
“What rules do you follow? Which do you break? And how do you know when you’ve nailed it? Three writers asked 600 women (and themselves) these questions for the buzzy new book Women in Clothes.”
— Glamour, September issue 2014
“Women in Clothes features numerous contributors who happen not to be young, conventionally attractive white women—a demographic overrepresented in mainstream
fashion media to the exclusion of almost everyone else. No other book on this
topic would include an interview with an animal-control officer about her tactical uniform pants; a resident of the Yukon, in northern Canada, explaining what she looks
for in a fleece; and a fashion-magazine editor talking in a no-bullshit way about the fashion establishment and the “delirium of desire” it exists to stoke.“
— Bookforum, September 2014
“This big, busy book feels like a thrift store brimming with jumbles of clothes and accessories and alive with women’s voices…. A uniquely kaleidoscopic and spirited approach to an irresistible subject of universal resonance.”
— Booklist, September 2014
“”There is a surprising lack of a sense of physical inadequacy on the pages: drilled as we are as a society to assume women are riven with self-doubt and anxiety about the way they look, I was expecting the dialogue to be full of self-hate. In fact, the respondents seem to be pretty positive about the way they look.”
— Financial Times (UK), August 29, 2014
One of Flavorwire’s Must Read Books For the Fall: “From an initial conversation between three girl crush-worthy authors, a book appeared: Women in Clothes is a look at why and how we wear what we wear, in 600+ meticulously and beautifully designed pages of essays and conversation, with every possible permutation of women exploring their personal history through their clothing choices.”
— Flavorwire, August 26, 2014
One of Huffington Post’s Best Books for the Fall: “Sheila Heti, author of the groundbreaking “novel from life,” How Should a Person Be, has teamed up with The Believer magazine co-editor Heidi Julavits and Leanne Shapton, whose ultra-twee titles include Swimming Studies and Was She Pretty? to anthologize a slew of writers’ relationships with clothing. Molly Ringwald, Emily Gould and various other notable women have penned poems and interviews surrounding why they wear what they wear.”
— Huffington Post, August 25, 2014
One of Vulture’s Books to Read This Fall.
— Vulture, August 27, 2014
“Poems, interviews, pieces that read like diary or journal entries—all these responses help the editors fulfill their aims: to liberate readers from the idea that women have to fit a certain image or ideal, to show the connection between dress and “habits of mind,” and to offer readers “a new way of interpreting their outsides.”
— Kirkus Review, July 1, 2014
“While women’s appearances are perpetually obsessed-over, dissected and enhanced in the mainstream media, a book called Women in Clothes first appears brave, and then wise.”
— Melville House, August 2, 2013
“The book gave us an excuse to start talking about this stuff in depth, and once we realized how differently we approached what seemed to be a commonly shared act—getting dressed—we wanted to reach out to other women, and learn from them, too.”
— W Magazine, June 19, 2013