It’s So You.

I can’t say enough great things about this book we just got in, It’s So You:35 Women Write About Personal Expression Through Fashion & Style. It was edited by the always-right -on Michelle Tea, and has essays by some famous people, like Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth, and lots of people who should be famous, like Portland’s own Nicole Georges. The cover of the book wouldn’t necessarily grab you, but once you get inside it, it’s impossible to put down. I feel like it’s the book about fashion & style I’ve been looking for-well, forever.  Tons of stories about what makes us dress the way we do, who influences us, what we’re trying to say about ourselves with our sartorial decisions, and our fashion misadventures along the way. Politics, philosophy, punk rock, sex, children’s books, body image, gender, our mothers-it’s all in there. Reading it is the equivalent of a gossipy evening trying on clothes with your girlfriends before a night out, shoving for mirror space, trying fourteen permutations of an outfit before you get it right, and laughing your ass off all the while.

Here’s a bit I love:

Clueless about where to find my true tribe in the industrial hellhole of Cleveland, I finally found inspiration in the form of an album called Horses. Patti Smith broke the whole shebang open for me when she appeared on her album cover with that “How cool am I, and fuck you” look dripping from her eyes, dressed in a men’s white shirt, a skinny black tie, and a suit jacket thrown casually over her shoulder.

And this too:

One day it occurred to me that I thought of the illustrations in Goodnight Moon as a kind of J. Crew catalog. The problem was, I’d never find these outfits in stores. Someone had drawn the perfect pair of pants for the bear in the book to wear, but they’d never gone and sewed them. I wanted to live in a world where my simple slippers with their simple curved toes waited for me at the end of a long day.

Don’t we all.