More than just what women wear and why

Women in Clothes

By Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, and Leanne Shapton

and 639 others.

Blue Rider Press.

515 pp. $30. Paperback.

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Reviewed by Katie Haegele

Women and their clothes: Such a simple idea, and yet there's so very much to say.

For this literary and artistic take on what is, for most of us, a pretty ordinary concern, editors Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, and Leanne Shapton - the first two accomplished fiction writers, the third a fine artist and memoirist - invited many dozens of contributors to discuss which colors they most like to wear and the methods they employ when shopping for something new. Talking about clothing provided a way for them to discuss much larger ideas, too, such as family and memory and history, and the ways in which the artifacts in our closets connect us to our mothers and grandmothers before us.

Unlike a more typical anthology of essays or stories, this one is absolutely packed with content - just over 500 pages' worth - and the pieces come in a huge range of categories. Also unusual is the extensive contributor list, which includes famous ladies and regular folks, the latter having participated in "surveys" that were styled like questions you'd ask a close friend. ("What's the situation with your hair?" is one of them.) The responses are so varied, humorous, and brief as to result in a kind of massive-scale kaffeeklatsch (or cocktail hour). And with the inclusion of women like Girls' Lena Dunham, teenage fashion editor Tavi Gevinson, and elder hipsters Kim Gordon and Cindy Sherman, the book's vibe is modern and cool.

If you've ever given a moment's thought to what you were wearing, there's something here for you. Maybe the section titled Conversations will appeal to you the most, since reading them feels so deliciously like eavesdropping. "Black Girls Talking" is a charming conversation about favorite fabrics and new hairstyles that takes place among a few young women - friends, from the sound of it - who produce a podcast by the same name.

You might like the Projects section, which contains artistic riffs on the themes of dressing up and being looked at. Miranda July's vaguely unsettling "Thirty Six Women" shows photographs of six people wearing each others' favorite outfits, and the result looks something like one of those "who wore it better" photo spreads, only for, say, the Paris Review instead of US Weekly.

"Ring Cycle" is a collection of brief but thoughtful interviews with women in a newspaper office about the rings they're wearing, accompanied by grainy-looking photocopies of their hands. This piece, like many others in the book, has a wonderful way of feeling carefully considered and off-the-cuff at the same time - like your favorite outfit, perhaps, which makes you look great, but also looks like you haven't tried too hard.

The book features some prose pieces, too, but even those have a sort of fleeting feeling, as though you just flipped past someone talking on TV and decided to leave the channel for a minute while she finishes speaking about which jeans she wears while she works on her father's horse ranch. Also, a young Vietnamese American woman recalls her experience doing sweatshop-style piecework in her family's apartment in Brooklyn, a 5-year-old is interviewed about her sartorial choices, and several women reveal that they feel most attractive after a glass of wine or two.

The only weak links in the book are the pieces contributed by the editors themselves (a common problem with anthologies). The conversation that takes place during their clothing swap, which is recorded verbatim, feels indulgent; I give you permission to skip that one, as well as the tedious e-mails the three women exchanged about the book as they were making it.

Despite those little missteps, this is a unique and exciting project, brimming with ideas. Guaranteed, somewhere in this book, someone has expressed an opinion you haven't considered before, and you'll be the better for having read it. The thing that editors Heti, Julavits, and Shapton know - the thing that makes this book such a delightful success - is that getting dressed is about so much more than what you're wearing.