In the May 5th issue of The New Yorker, Judith Thurman writes about the late designer Charles James, whose work is the subject of a new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute. On this week’s Out Loud podcast, Thurman speaks with Sasha Weiss, the literary editor of the New Yorker’s Web site, about her years of fashion writing for the magazine, her personal and professional interest in what people wear, and the “insatiable appetite for fashion” in today’s culture. Fashion, she says, has a “long history of being marginalized” as a frivolous topic, but it is, in fact, central to a person’s social identity: “You have to stand out and you have to fit in. And how you negotiate that tension really defines how fashionable you are.” Thurman also discusses her childhood memories of clothing, and gives Weiss a tour of her own closet, on the Upper East Side.
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