Event

Everyone has a memoir in miniature in at least one piece of clothing. In her New York Times best selling book, Worn Stories, Emily Spivack has collected over sixty of these clothing-inspired narratives from cultural figures and talented storytellers. First-person accounts range from the everyday to the extraordinary, such as artist Marina Abramovic on the boots she wore to walk the Great Wall of China; musician Rosanne Cash on the purple shirt that belonged to her father; and fashion designer Cynthia Rowley on the Girl Scout sash that informed her business acumen. By turns funny, tragic, poignant, and celebratory, Worn Stories offers a revealing look at the clothes that protect us, serve as a uniform, assert our identity, or bring back the past — clothes that are encoded with the stories of our lives. In her Writers House talk, Spivack will share experiences and anecdotes that led her to found the Worn Stories project and others connected to fashion, contemporary culture, and history.

EMILY SPIVACK is an artist, writer, and editor whose work draws from contemporary culture, fashion, and history. Emily launched Worn Stories(http://wornstories.com), a collection of stories she edits from cultural figures and talented storytellers about clothing and memory, in 2010. A New York Times best selling book, Worn Stories was published by Princeton Architectural Press in Fall 2014. Emily has spent six years culling stories about clothing from eBay posts for a website she curates, Sentimental Value (http://sentimental-value.com), and she has exhibited the Internet found-art project in Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and Portland. Emily is the creator and writer of the Smithsonian's only blog about the history of clothing, drawing from the institution's vast collection and beyond, called Threaded (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/category/threaded/). Emily and her work have been featured in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post among other publications.