Memorable, often hilarious, and in all cases shrewd, she is a real thinker, which sounds condescending until you consider the way so much contemporary fiction and-I’m just going to say it-so many women writers refuse to enter arenas of debate or stir us to a sense of bigger things. Because what’s most winning about Heidi-in person and on the page-is the alacrity of her mind, the way it will scope the room for what’s of interest and make something memorable of it in about ten seconds. I don’t remember when we first met I do remember one of the last times we met, at the MacDowell Colony, where I spent our two-day overlap slavishly trying to keep up with her wit, and fledging my girl crush with evidence that I had not, and would not, succeed. “Why is she so smart and funny?” “How is she pulling off this career with two kids?” “How does anyone that intelligent also dress that well?” “What does she know that we don’t?” And so, Heidi, who tends to inspire this kind of awe among her readers and peers.

Other questions came in private and were rhetorical. “How does The Believer, the magazine she co-founded and edits, continue its reign of excellence?” I forgot to ask that, too. “Is she ever going to collect her short stories?” I forgot to ask. “How does she pronounce her last name?” Jewlavitz. Women in Clothes embraces the complexity of womenand#8217 s style decisions, revealing the sometimes funny, sometimes strange, always thoughtful impulses that influence our daily ritual of getting dressed.Call me populist, call me lazy, but to help prepare for this interview, I posted on Facebook that I was talking to Heidi Julavits for BOMB and asked if anyone had any questions for her. They are the tools we use to reinvent ourselves and to transform how others see us.

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.Įven 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. The editors composed a list of more than fifty questions designed to prompt women to think more deeply about their personal style. It is essentially a conversation among hundreds of women of all nationalitiesand#151 famous, anonymous, religious, secular, married, single, young, oldand#151 on the subject of clothing, and how the garments we put on every day define and shape our lives. Women in Clothes is a book unlike any other.

The Mineral Palace by Heidi Julavits