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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. For some people who've been working from home the past year, style may have taken a bit of a back seat in favor of comfort. Now, as more and more people are getting vaccinated, some are eager to get back into dressing up a little bit again. The Washington Post recently reported that online clothing retailers are seeing a resurgence in general, with a growing interest in resort wear. Also selling: dresses and tuxedos and going out clothes in bold bright colors.

What about those special pieces of clothing already in your closet that haven't seen the light of day in a year? The ones that recall a special memory or signify an important change in your life? Well, it might be a few more weeks, maybe even longer, until you can bust those items out again, depending on your situation. In the meantime, a new show on Netflix explores the special meaning that people give to certain clothes they wear. Joining me now to talk about her series is Emily Spivack, artist, author of the book Worn in New York: 68 Sartorial Memoirs of the City, and now, creator of the Netflix docu-series Worn Stories which is out now. Hi Emily, welcome back to WNYC.

Emily Spivack: Hi, Brian. Thank you so much for having me back.

Brian: Just as a segue from our last segment, I'm going to play a clip from your next Netflix series which features Antwan, who was incarcerated in California, and after being really dissatisfied with how baggy prison clothes were, he started altering them to make them more fitted. Here's 38 seconds of Antwan talking about what that first moment of doing that felt like.

Antwan: When I first put on my altered pants, I felt like I was in the GQ magazine. Couldn't nobody tell me nothing. Couldn't nobody tell me nothing. It took me mentally and emotionally to other places outside of prison. It took me to date nights. It took me to family functions. It took me any and every place outside of prison. In essence, I'm rehabilitating myself. I'm preparing myself to walk amongst productive people in society. It gave me my identity back. I became more human.

Brian: The unfortunate ending to this story, if I've got it correctly, Emily, is that he got sent to solitary confinement for altering his pants?

Emily: He did. He went to solitary for I think 20 days or 28 days, because he was not allowed to alter his clothing. Then he got out of solitary and he kept altering his clothes a little bit, but he says he was altering them far less than he had been.

Brian: Take us back one step and remind people of the whole Worn Stories project, that was the title of your first book. Then you did Worn in New York. Now, you've got a Worn Stories Netflix series. Wow. What's the larger idea?

Emily: The idea is that when we look into our closets, we have these clothes hanging in our closets, but we also have an archive of memories and experiences. When I would look in my own closet, I would see a shirt that my grandmother gave me, or something that I got on a trip, or something that was passed down to me from  

my mom. Our closets are full of memories and experiences.

I started writing some of my own, but I was far more interested in other people's stories. I was using clothing and I use clothing in a lot of my work, because it's something that's so democratic. It's so accessible. We all put on clothing every day, and we experience the world through the lens of clothing. The only thing that's really separating us from getting splashed by a bus or AC dripping on our head or someone stepping on our shoe on the subway, is our clothing.

Brian: Listeners, we're going to take a few phone calls with Emily as we continue to talk about, and listen to clips from, her new Netflix series Worn Stories. Maybe you know her previous work. This is for you folks. As the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel seems to be in sight, what is one item of clothing that you can't wait to get back into? 646-435-7280. What's one item of clothing that you can't wait to back get back into because it'll be appropriate for going out again in a context that you haven't in a while?

On the other side of that, is there a piece of clothing, and yes it can be your sweatpants, that you've come to love during the pandemic and you'll always have a fondness for because of you wearing it during this period? 646-435-7280. A piece of clothing you can't wait to get into post-pandemic, back to wearing it, or one that you've become particularly fond of during the pandemic. 646-435-7280. Who's got one?

Meanwhile, here's another clip from the series. It's about clothes, obviously, but the first episode follows a few members of a nudist community. Emily speaks to a woman named Niecy, who's a young black woman at a nudist resort in Florida. Let's take a listen.

Niecy: I have a lot of younger black friends who are open to nudity so whenever I bring up going to a place like Cypress Cove to them, I feel like one of the initial reactions is like, "Is there going to be a lot of old white people?" I'm like, in my head, "Why does that matter?" In a sense, nudism is obviously releasing yourself of clothes, but also of expectation and of restriction.

Brian: Okay. Emily, why did you open your series about clothes with a bunch of people not wearing any?

Emily: Yes. [chuckles] It's a bit of surprise, isn't it? What I love about it is that it sets the stage to start thinking about what we're saying through the clothing we wear, and through the clothing that we deliberately decide not to wear. It was very deliberate. What we put on, we can hide behind what we wear, but we can also showcase who we are through the clothes that we wear.

Brian: I'm going to go back to the topic of people who are incarcerated, because in addition to the story that we played the clip of before, you also have a story of a man released from prison after being there for more than 40 years, and because he has no family or friends, a volunteer picks him up from prison and takes him clothes shopping. Why'd you feature that story, and what did somebody buy after being

incarcerated for 40 years to wear?

Emily: That's an incredible story. Rudy was incarcerated for about 40 years. Carlos, volunteer, takes him to a thrift store. He gets a pair of dickies and a pair of button-down shirt, a brown pair of shoes. He says he feels transformed and he feels like he can move on with the rest of his life and put those 40 years of incarceration behind him. I think we wanted to show that clothing is democratic. There's an equalizing nature to it, and there's so much more than what we cover ourselves with. The stories that are taken together in Worn Stories show our collective human experience. We felt it was really important to share his story.

Brian: Olivia in Long Beach has a piece of clothing she can't wait to get back into. Hi, Olivia. You're on WNYC.

Olivia: Hello, Brian. I'm a massage therapy student. I'm actually really looking forward to being able to put on a uniform once I'm a licensed therapist, but also, a lot of licensed therapists currently because of the pandemic have been losing a certain amount of business because they have to put on scrubs and then a surgical apron over the scrubs, and then throw away that surgical apron after every single client they see and then sanitize the entire room, so it's a larger gap between patients. I'm sure that I'm looking forward to when the pandemic is over, also not having to follow those regulations that were put in place for the pandemic, that we're still in right now.

I'm really looking forward to that. Then a piece of clothing that I fell in love with amidst the pandemic was this hand-me-down skirt that a good friend of mine gave to me. She got it in Africa. It has this beautiful red and blue print on it. It's just a wrap skirt. I had never really gotten into wrap skirts, but because of being around the house and being in online classes, I just throw on the wrap skirt, and I'm in love with it and I'm never going to get rid of it.

Brian: Nice, Olivia, on both counts, and how about that simple pleasure of anticipating being able to put on your work uniform again because you'll be able to act normally at work again. I think we have sort of the opposite story from Lillian in the Bronx. Lillian, you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling in.

Lillian: Sure. Hi. I'm an attorney and I have to wear a suit to go to court and I've always hated it because it's always been super uncomfortable, so when the pandemic hit, I was like, yes, now I can wear my sweatpants and just be really comfortable. I feel really confident and I actually feel like my sweatsuit is super fashionable and it makes me a more effective worker actually, because I'm not constrained in pants and a suit. I'm going to continue to wear it and I hope that maybe this starts a new trend like comfortable clothing, I think, just makes people more effective and in my opinion, a little happier. I love my sweatpants and I'm going to continue wearing it.

Brian: That's a great story. Is there a way you can thread the needle when you actually go back to court in a way that won't get you thrown out or hurt your case?

Lillian: I don't know. I've been thinking about how I can like maybe buy pants that

are like the elastic waist maybe more, and then maybe wear-- I actually was wearing my boots, my hiking boots to court, instead of high heels, and nobody ever said anything to me about that and they were super comfortable. I don't know. I'm going to try to somehow make it so that the lawyers can be more comfortable and hence more effective workers.

Brian: Lillian, thank you so much. Hey, Emily, you hearing a lot of stories like this?

Emily: I am. I think that this is a great moment to-- I'm thinking about her story as it relates to, there's an episode called uniform in Worn Stories. What she's talking about is redefining her uniform, which I love that idea. Maybe there's a standard assumption about what one's uniform is going to be, but after we get through this, do we redefine what our uniforms are? What we want to wear? I'm hearing about so many people who are either going to, like you were saying at the beginning of the segment, when they can come back out into the world wearing bright vibrant colors, and other people who were like, I'm sticking with the comfort.

My hope is that people will start looking in their closets in a little bit of a different way and start wearing things that really do have meaning to them or that they're drawn to pulling something out of their closet because it has a story or because of who gave it to them. Not necessarily because of what season it is, or even the designer.

Brian: Molly in Manhattan might have a related fashion tip for a Lillian in the Bronx. Let's see. Molly, you're on WNYC. Hi there.

Molly: Hi, there. I'm a long time listener. First time on the show. Thanks so much for having me.

Brian: Glad you're on.

Molly: I was thinking, I loved during the pandemic being able to wear matching sweatsuits. I have all different colors, different sets, different fits, and I just love wearing them. It's so easy. I wake up and I get to wear my matching sweatsuits. So I went online and I found matching silk kind of chic pajama set, is like a new style I've seen. I invested in a bunch of them and I'm so excited to get to work, get out to parties and be able to kind of translate that easiness and efficiency of the matching set in terms of the sweatsuit into this silk more elegant chic set.

Brian: This is high fashion, wear them for dress up out of the house pajamas?

Molly: Yes, they're literally called pajama sets and I have a bunch of pairs. I had an engagement party this weekend and I got to wear one and it was so exciting. I'm excited to wear this chic version of a sweatsuit.

Brian: Hilarious. Molly, thank you. After the engagement party might come Debbie in Branchville, who's looking forward to wearing something post pandemic. Hi, Debbie.

Debbie: Yes. Hi. I told your screener that I was looking forward to wearing formal attire for a wedding, safely, social distance wedding coming up in June, but then I realized what I'm really looking forward to. I'm a children's author but I also do face

painting at the New York Renaissance fair for the last five years, except for 2020. We dress in corsets and all kinds of lovely Renaissance garb and show a lot of cleavage and it's a lot of fun. Unfortunately, they closed us last year and they tried to comfort us by saying, "Remember that after the plague comes the Renaissance." I'm really hoping that by August of this year, maybe we can participate in that again.

Brian: History will repeat. That's a great story. I'm going to leave it there because I want to get one more on before we run out of time, and it's really two more because it looks like Annabel and Hannah in Bed-Stuy, two friends, are calling in together. Is that right, Annabel and Hannah? We have 30 seconds for the two of you. I'm sorry to say.

Speaker 1: Hi.

Speaker 2: Hi, Brian.

Speaker 1: Hi, we're so excited for the roaring '20s of style.

Speaker 2: I guess instead of the Renaissance, we're hoping that the roaring '20s are a lot more free and we're thinking like extravagant garbage style, Speaker 1: Like anything goes. You just put anything on from the deepest darkest corners of your closet.

Brian: I love it. Annabel and Hannah. Emily Spivak, I'll give you the last word in our last 30 seconds. We'll give a nice shout-out to your Worn Stories Netflix series as we go. Isn't it interesting, the two pieces of historical reference we heard there from a caller ago? After the plague, the actual plague in the middle ages, came the Renaissance, and after the Spanish flu pandemic came the roaring '20s with a lot of really forward fashion.

Emily: Absolutely. I think that those are observations that I have also been just considering and references. We're coming out of this very, very dark time, and I think people are ready to be joyous and be around each other and do that with colors and fabrics. I know that my vision is some incredible tuxedo. I just want to get a tuxedo made and wear it everywhere and [unintelligible 00:16:31].

Brian: That has to be the last word with Emily Spivak whose new Netflix docu-series, like her book, is called Worn Stories. Thanks a lot, Emily.

Emily: Thanks, Brian.

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