Women in Clothes: Why We Wear What We Wear

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, and 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.

Sheila Heti is the author of five books, including the critically acclaimed How Should a Person Be? . She writes regularly for the London Review of Books and is an editor and interviewer at The Believer .

Heidi Julavits is the author of four novels, most recently The Vanishers , winner of the PEN/New England Fiction Award. She is a founding editor of The Believer magazine and an associate professor at Columbia University.

Leanne Shapton is an illustrator, author and publisher based in New York City. She is the author of Important Artifacts and Swimming Studies , and winner of the 2012 National Book Critic's Circle Award for autobiography.