Brilliant Fashion Essay Defends Anachronism (and Long Sleeves)
Modest Madonna. Image by Getty Images
I would not have thought of myself as the target audience for an essay about prairie dresses. Having spent elementary and middle school in pleated-skirt uniforms, I switched to jeans with a sense of tremendous relief the moment those were a possibility. Despite periodically vowing to Dress Better, I inevitably wind up in dark or light jeans with black, gray, or white shirts or sweaters. If I’m feeling bold, black leggings. Formal? Black skinny jeans, or navy slacks.
And yet Isabel B. Slone’s Racked piece about the life-changing potential of the prairie dress spoke to me. After offering a spot-on description of the aesthetic of our moment (with a couple stores my own clothing happens to come from name-checked), she writes, “None of the clothes seemed made to fit a person who is both small and short and shaped like a bottle of Coca-Cola; they always made me look like an escapee from a very chic prison.” Reading this, I immediately thought of my last failed attempted at shopping at Cos. It all made sense. I could also deeply relate to taking style cues from TV reruns.
But “Prairie Dresses Help Me Feel Like Myself” isn’t just a shopping essay with relevance to those with a particular build or particular style rut. Slone goes into the complicated politics of anachronistic attire, and the subversive appeal of “dressing the sartorial equivalent of sex-negative.” If you’re at all interested in questions of modest dress, Jewish or otherwise, and, as you may have gathered, even if that’s not your scene, I suggest reading the whole thing.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy edits the Sisterhood, and can be reached at [email protected]. Her book, The Perils of “Privilege”, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news. All donations are still being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000 until April 24.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
