Women in Clothes

by Sheila Heti

RENATE STAUSS as told to Heidi Julavits

  From the moment we’re born, the world is mediated through textiles. We have bed linen, we’re being swaddled. The act of getting dressed involves feeling your body boundaries through dress. Thérapie vitale in France uses dress as a weekly form of therapy for young patients with eating disorders. They enter a room where they find wardrobes filled with garments. There’s a therapist and a big mirror. It’s like a dress library. The patients can check out clothing, try it on, talk to the therapist. The emphasis is on bringing culture into the hospital, rather than removing the kids from their lives and exiling them to a place where they’re out of school, out of touch with their friends, and don’t go shopping. One therapist took the stylist approach, saying things like, “That looks lovely on you, maybe you should try that.” She hired a professional stylist to come to the sessions, one who normally styles editorials for fashion magazines. In another clinic I visited, the wardrobes had signs “S” and “M” and “L” on them. For an anorexic, being forced to wear a size M or L. . . .

  At the same time, clothing doesn’t give a clear message. I wear all-black clothing, but that can mean different things. Clothing is context-dependent, it’s culture-dependent, it’s class-dependent. Dress is not a language you learn to speak and then everybody understands you. Because of this, clothing is more of a code—like music—that alludes to things; again, it is context-dependent, it has underscoring. If therapists are taking cues from the dress of the patients, they’re probably going to get the meaning wrong a lot of the time. There are certain elements in dress that we can read, but strictly speaking, we shouldn’t dare. A German sociologist, Niklas Luhmann, said that ninety percent of human communication goes wrong. I’d say that ninety percent of human communication based on clothing goes wrong.

  In the 1960s, the San Francisco Mental Health Association sponsored a fashion group to go into a mental hospital and do a series of classes with the patients—makeup classes, comportment classes, dressing classes. The program was called “The Therapy of Fashion.” Every woman had to design and sew her own dress. At the end, there was a fashion show. The doctors who supervised the project wanted to create “healthy feminine characteristics” in the women. Women were taught that they have to make an effort. They have to beautify themselves, dress well, do chores, fulfill a role for the husband, the household, the family. It was very much of its time. The goal was to use dress and fashion to move these women toward the role they were expected to fill in society. Still today, fashion magazines are implicated in this sort of “help” culture. You can’t help wondering, How far have we come? In a PC world, we don’t want to say that we’re trying to create “healthy feminine characteristics” in women, but in many ways that’s what we’re doing.

  I’ve been looking at something called sensory stimulation therapy. Haptology is the science of touch. A haptology professor in Leipzig did tests where you feel an object without looking at it, then draw what you feel. The drawings done by anorectics were really off. In the same way they had an inaccurate perception of, say, the size of their own thighs, they could not accurately feel or draw the shape of an object. His thesis: In anorectics, body perception is disturbed in such a way that they can’t feel what they look like. He wondered whether you could remap their body image to make it more realistic.

  He came up with a neoprene wetsuit. His patient would wear this for one hour a day, then three hours a day—so there’s the constant stimulating touch of the wetsuit. The results were incredible in terms of weight gain. This method, which is now being used in other hospitals, simulates one’s body boundaries.

  Of course, the wetsuit is not fashion. In a way, it’s dress at its purest. And it really highlights the sensory function of dress. We get dressed with this sensory function in mind. Do we want to feel our body boundaries or not? To me, this is the therapeutic approach that holds the greatest potential, because it moves away from fashion, and it’s not about size or knowing what’s trendy. The wetsuits are made-to-measure for the patients. They don’t come with the value baggage that other forms of dress come with.

  If you look at the past hundred years, fashion has become increasingly accessible. It’s twenty percent cheaper than it was even eight years ago. In combination with a society that’s very focused on appearance, where media often replaces language with images, fashion becomes ever more important in our social interactions. Even nuns’ uniforms have changed to be more relevant to society. Police uniforms, post office uniforms—they’re being revised by fashion designers to be more relevant to the societies in which they’re worn. It seems that nobody’s outside fashion nowadays. If you can’t rely on nuns being outside fashion, I don’t know who you can rely on.

  CONVERSATION

  THE DRESS GOES OVER YOUR HEAD

  SCULPTOR MICHELE OKA DONER SPEAKS TO WRITER FRANCESCA MARCIANO

  FRANCESCA: First of all, how did the idea of having only one type of dress come to you, and when?

  MICHELE: The idea of having one didn’t arrive. It evolved. I had many beautiful dresses, I’ve always loved dresses, and I found a dress in a shop in Rome in 1987, and this dress looked so Roman, yet it was embellished. I bought it, and when I returned to the city, I called the store and they put me in touch with the designer, I called him and said: “I love the design. How does the fabric arrive?” He said: “All white, and then I modify it.” I said: “Can you just make me an all-white?” So then I had this dress the way I liked it, and when I would go to get dressed, over and over again it was what I wanted to wear. And over the next five, six, ten years, this was the go-to dress that made me feel so comfortable I never had to think about how I was going to look or what to wear with it.

  FRANCESCA: Can you quickly describe what the dress looks like?

  MICHELE: I would say it’s a cross between a caftan and the Renaissance robe you see on Cosimo de’ Medici in the Uffizi. As it turns out, the person who designed it began to think about it in Tunisia in the sixties, and ended up in the Uffizi looking at the portrait of Cosimo de’ Medici.

  FRANCESCA: Let’s go back a minute. I think you told me you wear this dress almost every day, right?

  MICHELE: Yes.

  FRANCESCA: So to me you’re the woman with one dress, because since I’ve known you, I’ve seen you in that dress. I think you said that whoever makes the dress for you sends it in a box that arrives to your house in New York. Am I right?

  MICHELE: Yes.

  FRANCESCA: So what makes this dress so perfect? I think you also said something about the dress not having any buttons or hooks or anything.

  MICHELE: Yes, the dress goes over your head, and what’s so wonderful about it—besides the one size fits all—is that it cloaks me from the outer world. That’s the advantage when I’m out, and when I’m home it allows me to move freely without being bound by the feeling of elastic. It keeps me warm or it keeps me cool, depending on what I put under it. So it allows me such great freedom.

  FRANCESCA: How many of the dresses do you have in your closet?

  MICHELE: I have about forty of them.

  FRANCESCA: For both seasons, right? And different fabrics—is that how it works?

  MICHELE: Yes, for Miami I have lots of white ones, and then in New York I have black ones. I have one or two grays because I realize it’s sometimes nice to have a transitional piece, and then I have silk, velvet, and he tried cashmere.

  FRANCESCA: I remember once you said he sent . . . Actually I even remember the cashmere. It was years ago in New York, it was a dark brown, and you thought it was quite daring. You weren’t sure about it, but it was actually fabulous.

  MICHELE: Yes. Yes. Yes. He was a remarkable and interesting designer, and the dress has served me so beautifully. I’ve gone to several photo shoots where they’ve asked me to bring clothes, and I show up with that dress and they say, “Stop right there.”

  FRANCESCA: Do you ever get bored with wearing the same thing over and over?

  MICHEL
E: Not at all. No. No. No. It’s just the opposite. It becomes a blank canvas, and I can change earrings, or if I put on nail polish, it has a connection. It looks more vibrant. It shows off any little whim or thought I have.

  FRANCESCA: So you carefully choose what is around the dress, from nail polish to shoes to one piece of jewelry?

  MICHELE: Yes. Because I want an accessory if I’m going someplace that requires an accessory, and it allows me—how do I say it?—to showcase something very, very wonderful. Even kelp! I once did kelp, a necklace pulled right out of a lake in Maine, and I put it on.

  FRANCESCA: Yes! (laughs)

  MICHELE: Then I went out to dinner. The dress doesn’t fight anything. It’s soft, and the neckline is soft, there’s no sharp V, there’s no tailoring, no hard angles. This is the key point, I feel: There’s a softness. Not only has the shape of it allowed me the freedom to move around, but the softness has allowed me to age gracefully. Because I’m getting softer.

  FRANCESCA: (laughs) Of course. But also it is genius because it’s a dress that can be worn in the morning, in the daytime, and it’s perfect for the evening. Did you ever think of changing any tiny detail of it, with time?

  MICHELE: Designers I know are always trying to update it. So I give them one to copy, and they design it with pockets—which then accentuates the hips, which I don’t love. One designer shortened the dress, which wasn’t bad but made it something that I wouldn’t wear every day. People have tried to do different things. Many designers. Everyone asks. It’s a challenge for them, because they see I’m very content, and they feel they can do better.

  FRANCESCA: Did anyone ever try to copy it?

  MICHELE: People have asked me to have it so they could copy it, yes. And they’ve tried to—they’ve aggressively followed me down the street, actually, to have it. I don’t understand it, quite frankly.

  FRANCESCA: And how do you fend them off when they ask?

  MICHELE: I laugh and say it’s really nothing special, or the person has the copyright and I can’t . . . Even though he’s living in a trailer in upstate New York and not doing very well.

  FRANCESCA: Is it true that he lives in a trailer, or you’re saying that to scare them off?

  MICHELE: No, he does, he lives in a trailer, and he’s had a lawsuit with his neighbor over a cat. He sends me letters on occasion.

  FRANCESCA: Amazing, so you’re like his number-one client.

  MICHELE: I’m his number-one client. When I wore it in The New York Times in a feature on beautiful faces, I got a call from a woman who said she made the pattern, and she won the Golden Thimble Award at Parsons. I said, “What? What about Tunisia and Cosimo de’ Medici?” She said, “Oh, he was my partner and he was seductive, and it was terrible, he stole it from me.” So I don’t really know who made it. I have two who claim it. I’d have two problems if I ever gave it away.

  FRANCESCA: Right. So do you break the rule of wearing that dress, every now and then?

  MICHELE: Sure. I had a black-tie gala opening at a museum in Miami, and I wore a Morgane Le Fay dress, low-cut, with a wide skirt. It looked like a Goya painting. I’ve had that dress for fifteen years.

  FRANCESCA: You must be very picky. Every time you step out of the dress, you must want to step into something that doesn’t make you feel too different.

  MICHELE: Correct. What I’ve bought recently are some summer color things that break it up a little.

  FRANCESCA: Right. Maybe more than different shapes, maybe you miss wearing colors sometimes?

  MICHELE: I don’t miss it, but I see that it’s beneficial to break things up. Being monolithic about everything forever—it’s good to let other things flow through. It’s like diet. You can eat mostly one kind of thing, but it’s nice to vary it.

  FRANCESCA: One word that you use a lot, which has been my mantra, stolen from you, is: edit.

  MICHELE: Edit, yes. That’s a wonderful thing. We’re all drowning in our own excess. I say we. Our culture. And consumerism turns out not to be a worthy altar. The most interesting thing I read—I can’t place where I read it, but I haven’t forgotten it—is that there are five stages of luxury: aspirational; acquisitive; curatorial; experiential, meaning: my walls are filled with paintings, my closets are stuffed, I’m gonna be dropped off on the Great Wall of China by a guy and there’ll be somebody waiting for me every two miles with a water bottle; and then, finally, where you find me, transcendent. The dress is transcendent. It’s the real luxury.

  Michele Oka Doner’s dress.

  PROJECT

  FIXES | RACHEL PERRY WELTY

  Grooming in public without the help of mirrors or cell phones.

  BRUSHING TEETH WITH FINGER WHILE DRIVING

  CHECKING TEETH IN KNIFE REFLECTION

  COMBING HAIR WITH FINGERS

  PINCHING CHEEKS FOR COLOR

  FEELING LASHES FOR MASCARA CLOTS

  ADJUSTING PONYTAIL FOR VOLUME

  FLOSSING TEETH WITH BITTEN FINGERNAIL

  BLOTTING OILY FACE WITH TOILET SEAT COVER

  STAINING LIPS WITH RED WINE

  BREATHING INTO HAND TO CHECK FOR BAD BREATH

  BRUSHING SHOULDERS AFTER SCRATCHING HEAD

  TAMING EYEBROWS WITH LICKED FINGER

  SURVEY

  DAUGHTERS AND SONS

  “I have a very fashionable daughter. From the time she was five she was full of advice, ‘You should wear more red. You need more high heels.’ She’s right.” —ELISSA SCHAPPELL

  TRISH KALICIAK Shopping for my kids has become a fun part of my life. Oddly, I find a lot of enjoyment in stocking their closets with cool items and then seeing how they put them together.

  SASHA ARCHIBALD I sometimes feel pressure to dress more like the other mothers at my daughter’s school. They wear expensive casual clothes, like expensive T-shirts and expensive flip-flops, and really expensive jeans. Understated luxury. I prefer the opposite: cheap, not-casual clothes. Sometimes I feel gaudy around them, and immature.

  MARILYN BOOTH My daughter and I bond over buying clothes, maybe more than we should. Maybe it substitutes for other things, but it’s fun, and in some ways replicates my relationship with my mother. She and I still get along best when we are either shopping or knitting together. It’s not as if I would or could ever tell my daughter what to buy or wear, but there is nice bonding in “You look good” and “I’ll buy that for you, it’s great on you!” I always remember, with fondness, taking her out to buy a dress for a wedding when she was three, and she said, “No, Mom, I won’t wear that.” You learn a lot about style from three-year-olds, I think. But I would also say that it’s tough in our Western consumer culture to convey to children, “No you don’t have to have a seventy-quid pair of jeans. Go to the charity shop and you’ll find the same.” So for me “style” is also about thinking carefully about consumerism and trying to pass that on.

  SHALINI ROY I talk about clothes most often with my seven-year-old son. He won’t wear the rainbow trousers I bought him. My husband says he is not part of Wham! so this makes sense.

  KARIMA CAMMELL I overheard one of my daughter’s preteen friends bemoan how she didn’t feel beautiful. I told her that beauty is not innate but is actually a magic charm, something that’s passed along to young girls from grown women. So I took her shopping for a magic spell that could help her feel beautiful.

  AURELIA BELFIELD A few years back, my mother and I got into it over this tentlike swing dress I had bought to wear to a party. I thought it was great, my mother thought it was matronly, and I was not having it. After a while, it finally came out that she thought I was hiding my body, and it was true. So we cried and we hugged and she helped me get past whatever quasi-dysmorphic fit I was in the middle of, and convinced me to wear this great black dress and lime-green paisley tights. I convinced her to wear this bandage dress she’d been avoiding, and we both looked great and had a great time.

  PEGGY BURNS My Librairie D&Q tote bag enrages my six-year-old son, who wants me to have “a pr
etty purse, not a sack for food.”

  LORI HANDELMAN I was belittling my body, and my second daughter, Marnie, called me out on it, saying our bodies are similar so putting mine down put hers down, too, and how did I think it made her feel to hear that? It struck me like a bolt of lightning, and ever since, not only have I quit talking smack about my body, I’ve started caring about how I dress. After the conversation with Marnie (when I was fifty-one) I started buying outfits, “pieces,” combinations. I started thinking about how I wanted to look, how I wanted to present myself. Clothing became something entirely different from what it had ever been before, just something to cover my body.

  RAINBOW MOOON My mother saw her daughters as extensions of herself and how she was perceived, not just by the neighbors, but especially by church folks. It was her reigning concern. We were never allowed to get dirty or mussed in any way at any time for any reason. My mother was a beautician and believed that if we didn’t have a certain image, it would affect her business. She was also divorced and seriously concerned that people would see her as less than capable if we didn’t look well kept. Monday, her day off, she’d religiously take us shopping to buy new clothes so she could appear to be sufficiently well-off. Our hair also had to be immaculate. My memory of being overconcerned about my appearance includes being traumatized when, in third grade, I tripped and fell and tore my dress on the way home from school. I knew there was no way to hide the tear and rushed home to attempt to mend it. Though adequately repaired, it was only a matter of time—when she washed the clothes—before she found the mend and punished me for damaging something she had spent good money on. Her regularly announced effort to work hard to make us look good was an overriding concern for her and the source of much of the abuse I incurred.