RERUN: Zadie Smith

0:00Support for the show comes from Google Gemini. You know that moment when curiosity strikes? You're exploring a new city with a family and a sculpture catches your daughter's eye. What is that? Who made it? With Gemini, you can snap a picture and get a fully interactive breakdown of its history, architecture, and even hidden secrets. Gemini is built for moments like that. Whether you're learning something new, solving a problem, or looking for your next favorite thing, Google Gemini is here to help. Download Gemini, Google's AI app, or visit gemini.google.com to learn more.

0:39Excuses are easy. An epic movie night? We don't have enough snacks. Dinner party with the girls? We'd have to decorate. Surprise date night? Nothing to wear. But Amazon's Prime same-day delivery lets you say yes before the moment slips away. Try that new popcorn maker, order those cheeky drink glasses, get that new perfume, and turn that I wish we could into an I'm so glad we did. Visit Amazon.com slash Prime to find millions of items delivered fast. Same day delivery. It's on Prime. Available in select areas. Terms apply.

1:19Our earliest childhood memories can feel so visceral. I have this memory of my mother standing on the beach, you know, the wind whipping her hair and her jacket, calling into the wind with my siblings out in the lake and the dam, you know, looming in the distance. But none of these memories were true. This week on Explain It To Me from Vox, why can't I remember being a baby?

1:58Hi, come in.

2:05Welcome to Fashion Neurosis, Zadie Smith. Thank you for having me. I wanted to ask why you chose what you're wearing today. I think I was trying to will spring to arrive. So between November and late February, I would seem to wear black every day. And then when March comes, I try and add color. And pink is, for me, the beginning of spring. Well, it didn't work. It didn't work. It never works in this country. But in America, it always worked. They have that very banal expression, which is true. March comes in like a lamb and goes out like a lion. Yeah. It's been going like a lion since about January.

2:56Yeah, it's exhausting. It's really hard to get dressed for. But I'm just tired of wearing winter coats and I'm done. Do you have any obsessions at the moment? I maybe have an obsession about not looking ridiculous, which is maybe a preoccupation of women in their late 40s. So I have a little more anxiety getting dressed than I used to. You ask yourself a lot of questions like, are these jeans or does this skirt or will this coat, etc. I do that a lot these days. Does it relate back to anything? Like did anyone in your family dress in an embarrassing way? I mean, no, I have an amazing example. my mother.

3:44I mean, she dresses, I would say, she dresses to be the center of attention and she always did. But she was very good at it. And very chic, actually. She wears lots more color now, but when we were young, she was kind of a specialist in like, silky black separates, everything very clean lines and very elegant. I'm sure she's the only Jamaican woman wearing a beret around Wilson in the late 70s, early 80s. So she was very chic. And she absolutely has not gone quietly into that night. She dresses more and more outrageously as she gets older. Yeah, it's interesting the thing of your mother or one's mother dressing in a kind of beautiful way, but it happened to be embarrassing at the time or just distracting?

4:46I think, I mean, we're not very different in age. She's only 20 years older than me. So there's often been periods where we've looked more like sisters then mother and daughter. And that seems to be happening again, actually. But she definitely, you know, she really had great taste and no makeup. I mean, she didn't need any makeup. So that's also something that has kind of impressed on my brain. Like I wear a bit of lipstick, but I mainly just focus on clothes. Yeah, my mother, she, I mean, she dressed as a hippie and she had these like beautiful clothes and she was beautiful. But because we were very poor, it felt really awkward and it felt, it drew attention to us in a way that was hard to sort of, it was somehow invasive.

5:47People felt that they could comment on how we were because we were hitching or something. We didn't have protection. Right. And you want your mother to look like everybody else. Even today I went out, took my son to school in a T-shirt which said black nerd. And I was wearing a white Kangol cap and yellow library socks that look like they've been, I mean, they've got the kind of stamp of a library on them. I think I must have got them for the New York Public Library. and he was distraught, which was fair. But yeah, there's that tension between not embarrassing your children and wanting to dress as you please.

6:27I know, it's a very delicate tightrope. I remember my sister wanted my mother to wear a brown crimpling trouser suit and have black curly hair like the woman who lived up the road. They want you to look like a normal mum, but I think there is no such thing really. And I notice all kinds of little expressions of style in the women I live around, and particularly of your generation, right? Like, so you see all these mums and you can kind of detect which one was the raver, which one was the indie kid, which one was the sneakerhead. It's all like lost in the winds of time, but you can still see these little glimpses of the 90s or whatever.

7:13I think it was the same with my mum's generation. My dad wanted to be like a 50s beatnik and my mum wanted to be a hippie or some chic North African living in Paris. Yeah. Sounds really good. But of course, it always sounds good to everyone else. Do you have any fashion dreams ever?

7:39um I mean I quite often think dream about clothes not so much now but in my 30s when getting dressed was a big drama and I was I was really into it um I would often think about outfits or imagine I had things I didn't have and also because I when I was about 33 maybe a bit younger 31 or 32 I lost my entire wardrobe in a fire. So for ages after that, I'd be thinking that I had things that I no longer had, you know, dresses that I wanted or missed. So that used to turn up in dreams sometimes. God, that sounds so stressful. I mean, it wasn't great. Yeah, I lost everything and then I had to start again.

8:26I still sometimes think about individual items in that wardrobe that It was so lovely, but yeah, all gone. What did you start with when you started again?

8:41Trying to think. I mean, at that point, then I had some money. Like when I first started buying clothes, the first thing I actually bought for myself was when I went to college and I got a student loan. And instead of spending it on necessities, I immediately went and bought some red and white Nike Air Max and was so proud of myself. But after the fire, I think I was living in Italy and I probably would have bought something from the little boutique shops there. You know, so it's like Paris. You're always buying individual strange little things. I remember Nick's, for some reason, my husband bought a T-shirt which says, I have a cold robot heart.

9:24I remember that. That was sometime after the fire, but I don't remember what I bought. I think if you have the right outfit, you can think better. Um, I think when thinking and articulating is, is so important to you, which clearly is to you, part of my salute, you know, part of what makes my brain and my mind feel secure is my outfit. And I think that's why I became a fashion designer. I mean, it's, it's changed. I can remember when I first became a writer is such a different time in 1999. If I spoke anywhere, I, or if I, when I started teaching, I started teaching quite young, the emphasis was always on, you know, uh, the same with standup comedians at the same period.

10:11Like don't, uh, like don't let on you're a woman almost. You didn't want to, if you had to be taken seriously, so you couldn't wear anything to, uh, I don't know, feminine or I was always trying to walk that line to look like a serious person. It seems so funny to me now. Um, but I remember dressing like that. Like if I had to give a reading, I would be like all lady writers in the nineties in a black blazer and a black shirt and some black jeans, black boots. Like it's, it's kind of ridiculous. Um, but then that faded away. And I think particularly living in Italy and seeing women at all levels of society, even though it's such an unbelievably misogynist country.

10:54Sorry, Italy, but it is. The weird flip side of it is that it's, it doesn't make this puritanical thing about women and beauty. So powerful women can be very, very dressed and still considered powerful. It's like a weird flip side of patriarchy. So there's not a lot else in Italian life I would adopt, but that part I found quite interesting that there was no contempt for the idea of a woman dressing up. Yeah, I lived in Italy for a couple of years, and I agree that that aspect is really good. I mean, there's some sort of further misogyny that happens here about that when a woman does make an effort to look nice, it's so up for grabs, really.

11:47It's up for sort of being derided. Right. And it's very empowering because we're taught that, you know, you shouldn't care about your appearance, but it's a means to an end. So it's a strategy. Yeah. And actually it's very effective. Also, I think there's something a bit darker about it, which I only understood when I published because I'd never considered myself. I was kind of an awkward looking kid. I couldn't dress. I was very much in the shadow of my mother. so I never thought about anything apart from my work. And then when I published and learned to dress a bit, I've kept on reading these pieces about me saying, well, she can't be good because look at her.

12:27And then I thought about it and I thought, what does that actually mean? It must mean that in England, the idea of female beauty or attraction is antithetical to the idea of intellect. So the point is, why would you bother being smart if you can be pretty? That was the argument. Like she can't be smart because if you're pretty, then that's what you, you get what you need as a woman. Why would you bother doing anything else? And, and vice versa, if you're smart, you must have become smart because you couldn't get whatever England has to give you any other way. I mean, that is such an extraordinary set of ideas when you unpack them.

13:03It is. It's totally, I mean, they completely go against each other because the brilliant combination is to be both or it isn't, they're not mutually exclusive, like being intelligent or having intelligence that you know how to use partly in how you dress is so much fun. So intelligence doesn't only reside in intellect, does it? I just, I found it really interesting. I realized that that's what these men think. They think that beauty is a kind of tool used against them and a very effective one. They understand it's effective, but once a woman has it, why would she bother with any other tools of life?

13:47So that was kind of instructive. But yeah, I guess living in Italy, watching literary critics and mathematicians and physicists all on telly done up in these interesting ways, I found it kind of engaging, just surprising because I'd never seen anything like that in England. Yeah. My father used to start a painting at the point between the eyes, and I wondered where you start an outfit. I'm usually lying in bed and I think,

14:20I do think of lipstick and a colour, a kind of colour scheme to go with it. I feel like I almost never get it wrong. And then sometimes, very recently, I got it so tremendously wrong and I was really shocked. Part of it was the problem that the dress I was wearing, the zip split at the last minute, and then I had to go to this very fancy thing and the dress code was business attire, which I realized did my head in like no dress code has ever, because what is my business attire? Pajamas, usually, and a beanie every day for 25 years. So I literally went to this thing dressed as Stella McCartney was there and explained to me I looked like a secretary in NatWest in the 70s behind a bank till.

15:16And she was correct. I just lost the plot. So sometimes I put an outfit together in seconds, usually in my mind. And I always think that I go with my gut. And it's like playing a character. You play a role. and I really realized when I did this thing a few days ago that the role was so unfamiliar to me, business attire, that I just absolutely screwed the pooch. It was terrible and yeah, it was awful and just as you say, because I was so badly dressed and so wrong, I couldn't really think. I kept on talking nonsense. I sweated profusely. It was like a full disaster, yeah. but I'm interested do you think of lipstick at the same time as as your what it's the only yeah it's the only I can't I just don't I find makeup really really boring and I don't have any patience for it so lipstick is the one thing and uh I kind of know I guess I only have two modes which is bright red no three dark red or a light pink and that kind of sorts in my mind And then along various lines of how masculine do I want to be or how feminine?

16:25And that changes day by day. Like sometimes I really feel much more butch and want to be in a full suit. And much less common now is this kind of girlish dress thing. But sometimes I used to wear a lot of dresses, but less now. Do you remember the first time in your life you found a piece of clothing that made you feel different? Um, I mean, by different, I mean, it sort of gave you something. It acted for you. I think, um, gosh, yeah, there was a, a dress which went up in that fire. It was by, I think it was a French brand and I can't remember who it was exactly now, but it was a, I guess a tea dress, like a 1940s tea dress, but new and just fit perfectly.

17:22And when I was in it, I felt like Joan Crawford, who is one of my great fashion inspirations and just very happy. That kind of dress, Joan Crawford is such a good example. It is feminine, in, but it's also not. It's like, they're very bossy, those dresses. And I mean, the one style I cannot abide personally is that kind of boho, hippie skirt, peasant. I know ladies look lovely in it, but it's like antithetical to my entire existence. I could never wear anything like that. So large periods of the nineties were painful for me. It's that kind a Glastonbury look and I can't stand it. I kind of prefer like take inspiration from the kind of formal way you get in places like Ghana or Nigeria, like bright lines, powerful outfits, um, or those 1940s, uh, lady movie stars like Crawford.

18:29yeah I really agree about the boho I find that totally undermining yeah if I had to go out dressed like that I wouldn't know who I was at all I'd be so miserable and it's it's about a certain kind of prettiness like I don't know someone like Sienna Miller is pretty but I'm not pretty I have no I also have no aspirations I don't I'm not concerned with prettiness so for me It's just not a thing that I would ever be interested in wearing or being. Yeah, because the Ghana outfit that you described is, when you said that, I thought, that's my version, that my version of that is to wear a suit and a tie.

19:09And I feel much more feminine within a more formal dressing structure. Yeah, it has to be formal. Like I can't, I think my least favorite hymn in the world is that handkerchief hymn. Oh my God, that is an abomination. Or anything with fringes, tassels. I can't. Anything that's not distinct or isn't a clean line, I cannot. Anything silly, I just can't abide anything like that. I can't wear it. But I think it's so good to know what you can't wear. It just makes life much quicker. You go into a shop and 85 % of the clothes there just filed under, not for me. Yes, yeah. So it's a very quick process.

19:55No, it's very soothing, actually, because instead of there being, you know, an awful amount of choice that leaves you then completely confused, you see immediately what's there for you. Right. It's either for you or not, and then you're done and you're empowered. That's it. But that's also about not being a leaf in the wind of trend. I think that's a line of Martin Amis's. So you can't be opening magazines and thinking, oh, it's whatever it is, skinny jeans are in. That's just absurd. You have to think about what works with your body and with your sensibility even more importantly. But then weirdly within those trends, when they mostly don't suit you, you suddenly spy something.

20:41Yeah, sometimes it's a gift. It's like when the kids came up with, I don't know, something like the word they as a pronoun. Like, oh yeah, that's a fantastic idea. It's like something that comes to you as a gift from a younger generation. So that's certainly true of jeans. Like every now and then some kid invents a different way of wearing a jean. and you're like, oh yeah, that's much better. I hated. Like I wore a lot of boot cut jeans, but I was really grateful when that died. I never need to see another pair of those jeans again. My next question is very much on the subject of, if you fancy someone but don't like their clothes, does it kill your attraction to them?

21:27That's interesting. I'm thinking I'm trying to work out if I'm more judgmental about women or men's clothing in this department

21:38I think it might be a close run thing I once saw a very beautiful girl at a literary event in formal shorts and I just could not ever take that person seriously again in any form in literature or in person so some things like that I just cannot I can't if you turn up to an evening event in formal shorts, I can't, that's it. There can be no attraction, sexual or personal or anything. With men, I, yeah, I think that there can be that thing of men of my generation dressing in exactly the same cargo shorts and Adidas tops that they were wearing in 1996, I find pretty tough to take. But I don't know.

22:33I think maybe with men, clothes can really make a man, like really make him attractive when he might not otherwise be. Whereas, I don't know, women, I'm less sure about that. What kind of clothes for men? Because I mean, I find that lots of men famously have no idea really what they see something in a catalog and they buy those, that thing. And there's something very kind of endearing about a man just wearing some clothes. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I always think I would have been a good stylist. And when I think about my female friends, I'm always excited to, I'd love to go help them get dressed or point them towards things or send them links or, but if you ask me how to dress a man, I literally, if I walk into a men's clothes shop, I just don't even know what I'm looking at.

23:23It just seems to be, I have no opinion. I have no idea. I don't understand how men get dressed at all. And yet when you see a man is well-dressed, you're like, oh, you look great. But I don't know where he found those clothes. I wouldn't be able to find them. So to me, it's a complete area of mystery. I know that there are certain kinds of like really good Japanese jeans that sometimes men wear, they look amazing, but I don't know how you get those. I can't buy my husband anything at all because I don't understand men's shops. I don't know. On the hanger, you can't tell what you're looking at.

24:00Whereas with women's clothes, in a second, you can tell exactly what it is, what it would look like on, who it suits. So I'm in the dark a little bit there. Also, I find something about, I mean, I find it much more difficult when a man has tried to dress in a kind of groovy way or trendy or something. And then it's so painful. I mean, I remember one incident with this guy I was seeing and he came to see me dressed up and he looked like someone in the chorus of a pantomime. And it was so shocking. But my way of addressing it was to, you know, I knew it was a really bad sign and I knew that really I ought to run a mile, but because I wasn't really ready to run a mile, I overrode my feeling by falling more in love with him as to sort of overcome this terrible kind of...

24:59Oh God, and this terrible outfit. Yeah, the terrible outfit, but I mean, in the end, the outfit won out, but... I think you see it sometimes with young male actors who've been dressed by stylists. They look lost and like the clothes are wearing them, as they say, and just completely it hasn't worked in any way. So I always find that a little bit depressing. Particularly with young men, the style should come from you. and some of it is like enjoyable eccentric like I saw a picture of Paul Mezcal who had for some reason cut his own sweat top into a kind of belly top and his shorts I think he cut them with a pair of scissors and that was a good look like he'd made an effort I like that kind of ingenuity God really?

25:51Yeah it was quite a look I suppose if you can pull it off If you can pull it off But pulling it off sometimes just means doing it. And even though it's kind of horrifying, it's something. But I'm not sure how attractive. Well, I also think, you know, Black Streetwear, both in America and here, is pretty awesome. It's always attractive. It's simple. It's always, you know, the fresher it is, the fresher the sneakers, the fresher the sweats. I love all of that. It's like a tux or something. It's always well done.

26:57coach Cheryl Reeve in Chicago during All-Star Weekend. We get into her personal style of activism, how she supports her players as people, and why she proudly considers herself a dyke. Then we learn if she's more of a mommy, daddy, or baby. Check out the latest episode of Why Are You Like This wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube.

27:20People are big mad about data centers in the United States this summer, but don't sleep on how mad people are about flock.

27:30Flock cameras, if you haven't noticed them, don't worry, they've noticed you. You may have heard about them in your reels or on Flock Talk. I have never in my life been as pissed at the government as I am now that Flock cameras exist. Americans are going to war against Flock AI surveillance cameras and people are going around and literally sawing them down, absolutely destroying them. An AI surveillance apparatus goes against the very essence of freedom and the core values of our country. It's not right, it's not conservative, and it sure as hell ain't American. Flock surveillance cameras have popped up all over the nation, every state but Alaska.

28:08But this year, dozens of cities and counties across the country have cut ties with Flock. And on Today Explained from Vox, we're going to tell you why.