The book is an unusual point of view for a cultural history of sorts that is also a guilt-free piece of chick lit.

Elizabeth Kendall's clothes are bright, more articulate and informed than many memoirists of the human variety. The wardrobe ("Me") is Kendall's doppelganger; she is its amanuensis.

The human hanger, "B.," was born in the late 1940s. Her earliest sartorial memory is putting on a pair of small red corduroy overalls. "There was I, present in her deepest of memories. I am B.'s wardrobe, her ever-evolving second skin. She is My inhabitant, My partner, My Body-My B." Thus we are introduced to an unusual point of view for a cultural history of sorts that is also a guilt-free piece of chick lit. This is so because the novel imparts knowledge and insights about how we relate to our clothing. For women, I think, events are often recalled most vividly by what we were wearing at the time. What if, Kendall asks in this sprightly novel, what we were wearing remembers that way, too?

B. is a well-to-do child who goes through the various rites of passage of the early baby boomer, at least up to a point. While men are involved in her story, the search for the man is not the point here, and in fact, B. chooses the road less traveled by regarding a conventional life as women of this generation came to know it. However, B. was bred to be like her grandmother, her mother and all the mothers who preceded them: a respectable married woman with children and the proper clothing for the ages and stages of her life.

B. and her wardrobe go through the pleasurable (camp uniforms which freed the wearer from mirrors and peer pressure) and the painful (girdles under uncomfortable "frocks" for country club parties) experiences of childhood and adolescence. Both are seeking an identity. B. sees her mother become frumpy as she bears child after child, one mentally handicapped. B. doesn't fit in at prep school until she has a heather gray sweater and box pleated skirt with Abercrombie and Fitch oxfords. At college, the miniskirt is her lingua franca as she becomes aware of herself as a sexual being.

All the time, "Me" echoes B.'s insecurities. The wardrobe feels as lost as B. does, and it is trying to gain some control over B.'s life to help design and order the world of the body. B.'s unconventional career choices make these transitions difficult. Accidents happen. Parts of the self are lost or stolen or simply abandoned. What is a wardrobe to do? There comes a time when B. and "Me" learn to accommodate each other, but it's a tentative and fraught journey. It is also a trip I took with pleasure as I think you will, too, especially if you are interested in the history of clothing design in the latter half of the 20th century. Oh, and as long as you are able to suspend disbelief to accept clothing capable of engaging in metaphysical discussions, questions of identity and partial to quoting Emily Dickinson. This is, indeed, one "smart wardrobe." | Andrea Braun

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