Worn Stories - Women in Clothes

"Women in Clothes" is one of several recent attempts to limn the magical properties of clothing and unpack those loaded words, "style" and "fashion." This 500-page anthology of essays, interviews, poems, drawings and photographs claims more than 639 contributors, including three named on the cover: Sheila Heti, author of the novel "How Should a Person Be?"; Heidi Julavits, novelist and editor of The Believer magazine; and Leanne Shapton, an illustrator and graphic novelist who seems to have designed the book's cover to resemble the sort of hand-painted scarf that is out of my price range.

By contrast, "Worn Stories," a slim book project by blogger Emily Spivack of the Smithsonian blog Threaded, maintains an almost sacred respect for the stories of individuals about their beloved garments. Spivack has been archiving particularly touching eBay auctions on her own blog, Sentimental Value, for the last seven years, and she has a sensitivity for the dreamy tales people weave around their clothes. Ultimately, "Worn Stories" reveals less about how people dress on a day-to-day basis than it does about their habits of self-mythologizing. In the case of a Holocaust survivor who escaped with just enough fabric from her parents' store to make one totemic skirt suit, it's a habit born of ironclad strength. When the stories are about youthful indiscretions or flea-market victories, the stakes may be harder to locate. Nevertheless, "Worn Stories" stays true to its theme of personal narrative, and it has the added benefit of working like a summoning spell for one's own closet ghosts.