Editor Michelle Tea, co-founder of feminist collective Sister Spit, presents It's So You: 35 Women Write About Personal Expression Through Fashion and Style, an anthology of stories that bend and blur the idea of fashion into a wonderfully messy conduit connecting female individuality to feminism.

Through wearable designs and makeup, It's So You shows how women constantly reinvent and regenerate their own individuality. From dressing like David Bowie in Cleveland to changing outfits, gender preferences, and sexual partners in downtown NYC circa 1977, contributor Adele Bertei empowers herself by seeing fluidity in sex and fashion. Likewise, Jill Soloway's essay addresses a more subtle flexibility in everyday identities — the simple act of chopping off her hair is a reflection of how she wants to be treated as a woman. In this sense, fashion and feminism constantly refract in a proverbial mirror of looks and signifiers.

Thematically, It's So You also centers on how women relate to their bodies. Cookie Woolner embraces the statements bigger women make in fashion, and Kim Gordon questions the idea of exposed female body parts among celebrities as "the ultimate expression and delusion of free will." Body politics is a crucial conflict between fashion and feminism, and It's So You does its best to investigate it on a personal level, while eschewing any one overriding first-, second-, or third-wave feminist agenda.

Instead, this anthology explores clothing as a genuine transference of ideas — traded among strangers in thrift stores or between friends and lovers, solidifying the bond of expression. Contributor Debbie Rasmussen remembers trying on her grandmother's zany marshmallow-covered dress as a child, Rhiannon Argo contemplates wearing a wig found next to an abandoned bicycle, and Diane di Prima compares communal clothes of the '60s to a poetic experience of living someone else's dream. In this sense, the most spectacular fashion statements in our own personal histories come from other people.

Laura Fraser explains that "the great thing about fashion, if you don't follow it but use it, is that you can express whatever you want." Just like feminism, fashion is a distinct language, articulating how each woman feels about her own identity, body, and history.

-Stacy Elaine Dacheux