I Don't Want A Biography Of My Clothes

In conversation with Anne Serre’s story “Une petite erreur”

Not long ago, I spent a series of mornings with Anne Serre's "Au coeur d'un été tout en or," a collection of short stories published in 2020. The book has also been described as an autoportrait in thirty-three facets. One of those facets, a story called "Une petite erreur," gave me a lot to think about. 

In the story, the protagonist sits with her best friend, Henry. She describes his hat, shirt, pants, shoes. She highlights the nuances and idiosyncrasies of his style, how it reminds her of Bloomsbury Group. At the same time, she recognizes that his style can assume other forms and goes on to describe Henry wearing jeans. And then, she says two things I can't stop mulling over: that the story of a person's clothes is an exciting affair and that no writer, to her knowledge, has ventured into this territory successfully.

When I read this for the first time, I slightly misunderstood the idea. I thought she meant: “What if we wrote a person’s biography based on their clothes?” As someone who discovered writing precisely through the prism of fashion, I was instantly compelled: in a biography devoid of major life events, relationships, jobs, and other usual markers, how much could we glean purely from the sartorial matters? Should such a biography be limited to a faithful description of the wardrobe, or could the author venture into making any interpretations about the person’s character, living conditions, and experiences? My mind listed one question after another as if I were preparing to take on such a project myself.

But then, like a film reel, I saw the moments of my past unspool before me. I saw snapshots of all those outfits that I was indifferent to (but still chose to wear), outfits that I felt told nothing substantial about me, outfits that lacked some important ingredient, or outfits that were simply oddballs. I saw myself negotiating with the imaginary author of this biography of my clothes, asking to cut this and this and that, hoping they would eventually give me the pen and allow me to edit the story myself. It is strange to realize how seldom I wore something I truly liked, given my interest in fashion and the number of articles I have written about it.

The story of my clothes could start in the winter when I was fifteen. I was looking for a way to abandon the puffy jackets I often wore as a kid. I wanted a new chapter in my life—and that chapter included a black coat. I knew it would be hardly weather-appropriate given the cold Lithuanian winters we used to have, but that was unimportant. A coat, that's what my mind was fixated on. Coat. Coat! The protagonist of Serre's story says that the words we use for clothes are closely tied to our childhood impressions. When someone says "coat," one sees, for example, a coat worn by one's mother. I can't agree with this theory, not really; I don't remember much of my parents' wardrobe. When someone says "coat," I see a space of possibility, sort of a blank space, where any kind of coat could be projected or written into. But I'm curious where that image of the black coat came from. That coat I wanted at the age of fifteen, did I want it because I saw someone wearing it on the street, was it a model in a magazine, or was it something else?

Collages of adolescence; this one was a folder cover for my French lessons

I did get the coat. I don't remember what I wore it with; in my mind, it floats like an isolated object, a symbol. I do remember how, after that, the elements of my style slowly came together. Cardigans in muted shades, breezy dresses, A-line skirts, and ballerina flats were my staples. My combinations were planned the evening before, pieces of clothing ironed out and laid out neatly on the table. My mom often helped me shape those outfits. She has a much better sense of textures, fits, and combinations. Several times in shopping malls, she has pointed out clothes I wouldn't have considered trying on, but once I put them on, they somehow became an entirely different thing than before.

I look back to the sartorial discoveries of that time with fondness, even if I have outgrown them all. A mustard-colored dress with a bizarre neckline made of folds of fabric I remember fixing and rearranging each time I passed a mirror. A sleeveless white blouse with lace details matched with a bright blue mini skirt. A red coat which, worn in Paris a few years later, betrayed that I wasn't a local. "Parisians don't wear red," a passerby said. He desperately wanted to know my nationality, while all I wanted was to look at the Notre-Dame de Paris, which I was seeing for the second time in my life.

It's obvious how my reading of "Une petite erreur" triggered an avalanche of memories, and I inspected them with curiosity. I even looked at old photos from those years up until my twenties. But my memory also drifted to other realms. It brought up the bohemian mini dresses Daria wore in Greetingsburgh (she was my mysterious protagonist living in a fictional town in a story I was writing as a kid). It brought up the dreamy confections of Ellie Saab (I must have written about them numerous times for magazines). It brought up all the magazines I had collected in those years. I was continually assembling the ideal components of my style by writing stories or creating collages. By doing so, I was pushing my ideal, my true style, out to the future when I was mature enough to bring that vision to life. All the outfits leading up to that perfect moment were just placeholders.

The box containing looks from the runway shows in 2009

My style placeholders saw their worst iterations during studies in Paris. Those years had an undeniably glitchy quality to them. I had access to the majority of fashion magazines. I read a lot of fashion books. I often went to fashion exhibitions. Despite all that, I sank into a swamp, sartorially and mentally. I wore chunky sneakers, misshapen coats, and dresses with a sporty bent. I recycled old outfits only to get mediocre results. I read my blog posts from that time, and in them, I found a genuine wish to verbalize my style choices, perhaps even justify my position as a fashion writer. I could see a bit of forcing, too—forcing myself to make something work and figure out a new style because I couldn't replicate the old one. I flinch looking at the photos from those years, not because there's something wrong with all these pieces of clothing I have just listed but because I don't want them in my story. Yes, they are a direct reflection of my confusion back then, but I feel there was such a giant chasm between my inner world—and by "inner world," I mean my genuine inclinations, qualities, sensibility—and the things I wore. For a couple of years, I had lost touch with all that.

One could argue, of course, whether there must be a link between one's inner world and one's wardrobe. I don't think it's necessary for everyone, but I would like that link. Lately, I've been overthinking my self-expression through the prism of what is "me" and what is "not me." Working with these two labels isn't as easy as it seems. However, I've discerned this: most of the clothes I consider to be "me" reside in imaginary realms, in the stories I create rather than in real life. This is not to say that I come up with such fantastic concoctions that I can't find them in shops; it's just that I find it hard to put in the effort needed to assemble them all in real life. All that searching, comparing, looking for a sale, waiting for shipments. In a fictional story, it's much easier—one can afford anything. There are no constraints, no physical inconvenience.

Let's come back to real-life clothes. In her latest interview with American Vogue, Miuccia Prada said that she wants people wearing her clothes to feel 'confident—that they can perform in life.' She picked the verb perform. Must there be an element of theatrics in styling an outfit? I'm inclined to say no, but then I recall those instances where carefully assembling an outfit—an outfit that delighted me aesthetically—helped me show up somewhere I didn't want to be. For example, those interviews where I was painfully uninterested in the person I had to interview. Or situations where I was wary about the people I would be surrounded with, cautious of how they would react to me. I was indeed picking out clothes to perform.

Still, I would assign performing to a secondary role. I don't need armor every day. In the same interview, Miuccia Prada also said: "Fashion is a representation of one's vision of the world." Have I moved out of the placeholder-style territory? Can I create combinations that represent my vision of the world? My style has matured and contains a lot of what I consider to be reflections of true "me," but I'm still not entirely happy with it. I may never find my style as if it were a lost object. And maybe it's not the goal to display the said style every day—when I have a lot going on in my mind and life, I don't need intricacy in my clothing. But it feels lovely to achieve that perfection in certain moments. It feels lovely to wear a dress I truly like and feel in harmony with the day I am in. To come up with a combination that is not meant to impress or perform but rather to let me blend seamlessly with my mood, senses, and environment—that is my ideal expression of style. 

Interview with Miuccia Prada in American Vogue, March 2024

Why does the protagonist of "Une petite erreur" suggest no writer has been successful in writing the story of a person's clothes? She argues that it's impossible to describe the clothes as vividly as landscapes or interiors: even in Proust's descriptions, we can't really see them! I don't know if I agree. On the one hand, I have had trouble visualizing clothes described in books, Proust's included; on the other, I'm still hopelessly ambitious about describing these marvelous design objects, and I do want to believe it’s possible. In these past few months, I've been writing about clothes for another project. I've had lots of practice with magazines, but now I am doing this in fictional spaces, trying to bring clothes to the front and see how that differs. I want to persist until the colors and cuts and textures emerge just as well as landscapes or interiors.

Favorite shoes, independent objects

Favorite shoes worn on a June afternoon

I wonder what Serre's protagonist would say about clothes in other mediums—visual art, for example. Walking through a Sargent and Fashion exhibition at Tate Britain about the American painter John Singer Sargent, I was utterly tantalized by his depiction of clothes, their sheer sensuality. Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, painted in 1892, for example. I stood before the portrait and looked at the pendant hanging on the woman's neck, a subtle rectangle framed in gold, with purple, blue, and white strokes, merging delicately with her white gown and a light purple sash tied around her waist. After looking at the painting, I looked at its reproduction in the exhibition's book and found the experience almost just as pleasing.

Perhaps the great difficulty in writing is that all these elements I describe fall into one line; it is difficult to organize them, spread them around, and move the reader's eye across the outfit as a painter or photographer can. When I write the words, I want you to imagine the pendant while seeing the gown and the harmony and softness of the color palette simultaneously. I am learning how to do this. 

Fragments from Sargent and Fashion exhibition in Tate Britain

In the same exhibition's book, I found a curious little fact: "The painter confessed that he 'immensely' admired [Thomas] Carlyle's novel [Sartor Resartus], in which a fictional philosopher proposes that it was through clothing that an entire person was built." The novel might have spoken to Sargent because fashion was an integral part of his art and an aesthetic tool to convey the character sitting in front of him. His portraits were often performances. Even if I disagree that clothing builds "an entire person," the story of a person's clothing is indeed an exciting affair.

Now, if someone told me there must be a biography of my clothes, that it was being written right now, and I needed to do something about it, I would want it to be cut, condensed, and edited, much like any other story. No continuous narrative, only different facets. On the table, I would arrange the most prominent moments, chief exhibits of my story so far: my black coat, a black dress with a sporty bent from the Paris years (no matter how I look at it, that glitchy period is still important to my story), a green sweater, the armor that helped me get through dreaded work tasks, a green dress I usually wear when going to read or write in coffee shops in summer, the beloved heeled sandals that somehow feel one of the most "me" type of objects (I just like them so much). I will gather more exhibits as time goes on, I promise. And I would ask you to please, please include a dress from my fantasies, either from my first fashion articles, or from a story I am writing on the outskirts of this essay, the dress I will give to my protagonist. All these fictional dresses are part of my personal story, too.