It's no secret that clothes are
social indicators. For a novelist, there is no better, more immediate, way to
create a fictional world than to tell your reader what people are wearing - and
more importantly, why. In the September 2013 issue of Bazaar, five times Booker-
shortlisted and one-time winner Margaret Atwood argues that fashion is at the
heart of every fantasy world she creates. Here's my edit of novels with fashion
in their DNA.
One of my favourite Atwood
novels, The Handmaid's Tale is also the best example of how fashion can set a
scene. Set in a fascistic future where women are segregated into Handmaids and
Wives, their social status is denoted by their robes - blue (wives) or red
(Handmaids) - and nun-like wimples. In an instant we know who is virtuous and
who, by definition, is not.
The Clothes On Their Back, Linda Grant
What we wear and how that
defines us is woven into the very heart of Grant's novel. Roving from the fifties
to the end of the twentieth century, it is the story of Vivien, the daughter of
Jewish refugees, and her glamorous, leopard-skin hat-wearing uncle Sandor who
teaches her how clothes shape our identity.
Anything by Jane Austen
Of course, Austen wasn't
creating a world when she put pen to paper to write her first published work,
Sense & Sensibility in 1811, but set in the 1790s, she was merely reporting
it as she saw it, with a liberal coating of mordant wit. But now, thanks to the
continuing relevance of the world she immortalised, it is impossible to say the
words "Jane Austen" without thinking of an empire line dress.
What better way to denote a
mouse, a wallflower unsure of her place in the world, than to give her no name
and dress her so dowdily ('in ill-fitting coat and skirt and jumper of my own
creation') it's almost unworthy of mention. Rebecca, on the other hand, the
first wife now written into literary legend is everything 'I' is not, from her
handwriting to her effortless mastery of fashion. "You are so very
different from Rebecca" is a constant refrain and fashion is central to
showing that.
Buy Rebecca
Buy Rebecca
Zero History, William Gibson
If you've never read Gibson this
may not be the best place to start, but it is certainly the best example of how
sf writers can use fashion to startling effect. Gibson has often addressed the
way fashion and marketing shapes us, in Zero History his hero Hollis Henry is
employed to track down a mysterious anti-fashion secret brand, in so doing he
raises interesting questions about trends, brand and why we care so much about
what we wear.
Buy Zero History
Buy Zero History
This is a bit of a cheat because much as I adored this 70s-set novel about the five suicidal Lisbon sisters when I read it many moons ago, I'm conscious that the strong visual impression that lingered long after I turned the last page could belong as much to Sofia Coppola's strong visual interpretation as to Eugenides beautifully descriptive writing.
Buy The Virgin Suicides
Buy The Virgin Suicides
Anything by F Scott Fitzgerald
Like Austen, Fitzgerald was more
a chronicler of an age than a creator of a world, but you only have to say the
words Bernice Bobs Her Hair or Benjamin Button to hurtle headlong into a world
of flappers, glamorous parties and a 1920s society hell-bent on destruction.
Elegance, Kathleen Tessaro
Not so much a novel about
fashion, Tessaro's bestseller is a homage to innate personal style and, more,
the inner confidence that goes hand in hand with it. Louise Canova has neither,
but the real-life character Madame Antoine Dariaux does, in spades. (Naturally,
she's French...) When Louise discovers a secondhand copy of Mme Dariaux's A-Z
of style and tries to follow her advice, her life is transformed...
Buy Elegance
Buy Elegance
Breakfast At Tiffany's, Truman Capote
Another novel that may owe its
fashion credentials as much to the movie as the slim-but- perfectly-formed
novella (which is frankly way grittier than the movie). I can't think about
this book without thinking of a Givenchy clad Hepburn, any more than I can
think about mid-town post-war Manhattan without thinking about the ultimate
"American geisha" Holly Golightly.
And finally...
Some self-publicity. My last novel, originally titled What To Wear To Your Best Friends Funeral - and ultimately retitled To My Best Friends - has, at its heart, our relationship with clothes and what they say about us. (And please don't be put off by the cover!)Find out more about To My Best Friends
(A version of this blog first appeared on Bazaar on Books, www.harpersbazaar.co.uk, 1 August 2013)
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