Smarty Pants From The American Scholar

The COVID-19 pandemic exposes just how connected the world is, while, at the same time, circumscribing our individual worlds much more. How do we dress for these new circumstances, where our trips outside the house are limited to neighborhood walks and forays into the yard? Our guest today, Shahidha Bari, has been thinking deeply about how we interact with our clothes since long before the current pandemic. She’s a professor of Fashion Cultures and Histories at the London College of Fashion and a fellow of the Forum for European Philosophy at the London School of Economics. Her new book, Dressed, is what you get when you cross a philosopher with a fashion critic. She writes about the feeling you experience when your feet are mercifully dry in a pair of yellow rain boots, or what the subtle pull of a tie can do to your spine and your personality.Go beyond the episode: Read an excerpt for Shahidha Bari’s new book, Dressed: A Philoso