In 2007, James
Billington, the long-serving
Librarian of Congress and renowned American tastemaker, added director Jim Dassin’s 1948 film noir, “The Naked City,” to the National Film
Registry.
The honor, bestowed on
just 25 films each year deemed worthy of federal preservation, confirmed that Dassin,
the Harlem-raised son of Russian Jews and one-time Communist, was an artist
responsible for an indelible portrait of American life. But Dassin’s “Naked
City,” closes with a single line -- a metaphor that so ably captures the
experiences of love, avarice, fear and lechery often concentrated and only temporarily
disguised in any metropolis -- that has remained more famous than the film. “There are eight million stories
in the naked city; this has been one of them.”
Still, for all but a
few New Yorkers most of the experiences that define their lives happen while at
least partially clothed. It’s the ubiquity of clothing -- our pants and skirts,
shoes and shorts, our stilettos and boots, our hats, our coats, our gloves – when
stuff happens that, to Emily Spivack makes it an important element of
our personal archives.
In early February, Spivack,
36, brought the concept of clothing as access point to memory, to Harlem. Spivack, author of the New York Times Best Seller, “Worn Stories”
(published by Princeton
Architectural Press
in 2014), believes
that clothing carries experiences. It makes us recall specific moments. And
sometimes, we hang on to it well past its fashionable wear-by date, modify it
or even give it away, specifically because of the stories our clothing
contains. So, while much of the city shuffled through small mountains of snow
or burrowed in at home, Spivack and three cultural luminaires with personal
tales included in “Worn Stories,” shared their own clothing-centered narratives
at Ginny’s Supper Club.
Red Rooster chef and
owner Marcus
Samuelsson read a story about
his kitchen-work worn, “slightly feminine, turquoise Chuck Taylors.” They are an
artifact of his time at a Swiss culinary school. For Piper Kerman a vintage,
bone-colored skirt suit gave
way to a story about what she wore the day she
took a plea deal in
exchange for a shorter prison sentence for drug trafficking. The outfit and the
story Kerman read highlighted the vast class differences between Kerman, a
well-educated and affluent white woman, and most of the human
beings ensnared in the drug war. And Daniel Day, the Harlem designer and blogger known as Dapper Dan, read the
story of a 40- year-old coat and its connection to the sweeping adventures fashion
brought into his life. Day dressed early Hip Hop and New Jack
Swing musicians
such as Run DMC, LL Cool J, Salt n Pepa and Bobby Brown and, in that sense,
influenced the sartorial choices of generations to come.
“In my closet, really in everyone’s closet are effectively
documents, these items that catalogue our memories and experiences,” Spivack
said in an interview with Harlem One Stop this week. “I would look into my own
closet and see trips that I had taken and important conversations I’ve had. So
I started writing some of my own stories down.”
When Spivack was growing up in Delaware, she nursed the kind of interest
in fashion that always ran deeper, or at least distant from the rows of dresses
and jeans sold at the mall. Spivack shopped at thrift stores, wore Doc Martins
and went to Brown where she studied art semiotics. After college, Spivack
founded a nonprofit that helped women with cancer develop a healthy body image.
Clothing, can be therapeutic, “a wellness tool,” Spivack said.
In her personal life, at home with family and friends, Spivack
started asking about their clothing. A simple question about the origins of a
scarf or the age of a sweater often gave way to revealing stories Spivack had
never heard before. Instead of the usual blanket statements about who they are
or were and where they have been, Spivack’s family and friends talked about
very specific moments – a battle, a birth or the second day of their honeymoon,
Spivack said.
“That’s when it
occurred to me that clothing, precisely because it is universal, could be an
overlooked story-telling tool,” Spivack said.
In 2007, Spivack began
collecting stories about the items of clothing posted for sale on eBay, on the Sentimental
Value web site. Eventually,
Spivack began writing The Smithsonian’s first ever fashion history blog, Threaded.
And in 2010, Spivack began collecting the clothing-centered stories of strangers
on her own blog, Worn Stories. What people shared gave way to a book filled with the full
range of human emotion and experience that might pour out if, as National
Public Radio put it, all of our “shorts could talk.”
The book includes a
stabbing-victim’s story, inspired by the one-inch gash in a polo shirt that he
refuses to throw away. It features a story about glorious moments with one
writer’s baby and low moments in the same woman’s marriage all brought to mind
by a tattered sweater. Then, there is the story of an ill-fitting and scarcely-worn
suit made of wool one Polish-born Jewish woman salvaged from her parent’s store
before it was destroyed. The woman and the wool survived the Holocaust, a
gunshot wound, typhus and a near capsizing at sea. Her parents did not.
Even, Spivack wears a
ring that her grandmother used to slip off her own finger whenever the two
baked. And when Spivack gives workshops or speaks at public events like the
Ginny’s Supper Club event in Harlem, the most amazing stories often pour out,
from the audience.
“That’s
the thing about clothes. People tend to get it right away,” she said. “Everyone
can think of something in their closet that is of some significance to them,
something that they just can't get rid of.”
Photo credits:
·
"Chuck
Taylors" worn by chef and restauranteur Marcus Samuelsson while
a student at a Swiss culinary school. Photo by Ally Lindsay.
·
The
vintage suit worn by Piper Kerman the day she took a plea deal to
reduce the prison time she was ordered to serve in connection with a drug
conviction. Photo by Ally Lindsay.
·
A 40-year-old coat
owned by Daniel "Dapper Dan" Day,
which reminds the Harlem designer of the adventures and opportunities he
experienced outfitting early Hip-Hop and New Jack Swing musicians. Photo
by Ally Lindsay.
·
Seated
(L-R) Marcus Samuelsson, Emily Spivack, Piper Kerman
and Daniel "Dapper Dan" Day at a Feb.2, 2015
