The piece started with Reese. I follow a handful of — but certainly not all — celebrities on Instagram, largely based on their ability to poke fun at themselves. (Which is part of the reason my two favorites are January Jones and Taylor Kitsch). Reese periodically makes fun of herself, plus she loves to post and, well, I find Draper James, her clothing brand, fascinating. As Witherspoon herself has become more and more socially engaged — as a part of TimesUp, through her book club — Draper James has quietly honed in on this idea of traditional, conservative, Southern femininity. It's very difficult to reconcile! Especially given my abiding affection for Reese Witherspoon! Hence, at least in part, my fascination.
Draper James isn't just a smattering of clothes: it's four different stores, a massive online operation, and a phalanx of "lifestyle" merchandise (pencils, tea towels, phone covers, etc). (Draper James also recently announced that they were lowering the price points on their dresses in particularly — to somewhere just above Ann Taylor and just below Anthropologie — which will only increase sales).
Witherspoon calls Draper James a "tribute to her Southern heritage and gracious Southern living"; appropriately, the brick-and-mortar stores are in Nashville (the flagship), Lexington, Dallas, and Atlanta, and, at least in 2016, 40% of Draper James items are produced in the South. Witherspoon isn't a design figurehead: she's (at least supposedly) deeply involved in the design, Skypes in all the time to meetings, and wears tons of Draper James dresses on her Instagram.
In press for the brand, Witherspoon plays up how Draper James is more of a "lifestyle than a dress code," designed for today's "time-starved woman." "So if you have zero time, you've got three kids to drop off at school, or need to go to lunch, or gotta go to the office, you can know that you feel comfortable and you look pulled together " she told WWD, "My grandmother was unapologetically matchy. Matchy-matchy is a good thing in my life. I like the shoes, the matchy purse, the matchy clothes."
In theory, this is a great solution for women who don't actually want to spend time on conforming to the ideas society has about the way they should appear in public: find a uniform and stop thinking about it. But that's not what Witherspoon is actually talking about. Her vision is much more "here's a bunch of separates, buy a ton, they will all go together" and make you look "pulled together."
That phrase exasperates me. Same with how Witherspoon describes her grandmother, who, again, is the inspiration from James: "My grandmother was just an incredible hostess. She was cooking a million things and setting a beautiful table and putting herself together. She went and got her hair done once a week at the same hair salon — she just really believed in presenting your best self to the world, creating this feeling that when you look good, you feel good."
My grandmothers likely believed something similar. I'm not against Grandmothers who felt this way, or, I dunno, Witherspoon loving her grandmother. What again exasperates me are the unquestioned ideals presented within: what an "incredible hostess" means (and what sort of gendered labor it requires), what "putting herself together" and "best self" and "look good" all imply. Being "put together" is not some natural constant. It's been naturalized — that is, we've come to agree, as a society, what it looks like — but that does not mean it's "natural." To be "put together" — to wear clothes that are "becoming" (because you have enough money to buy ones that are tailored well, or you have enough time to sew them yourself; because you have enough time to iron, or enough money to pay someone to iron them for you); to have a hairstyle that's fashionable and flattering; to have hands that are manicured so as to erase signs of labor — is to communicate a very specific idea of what a woman should spend (a large part) of her day doing and thinking about.
At the same time, this ideal ensures that a woman won't make herself remarkable (quite literally, worthy of remark) in any negative way: her clothes and hair and body won't be "out of order," she won't wear anything that's too small, or too fashion forward, or too weird; she won't break any fashion "rules" (there's a whole section of Draper James about said rules). She will play by the rules. Fashion itself isn't unfeminist; there's so much about fashion, and the idea of clothes as art, that's provocative and cunning. But dressing yourself in Draper James, like so many other brands and modes of dressing, isn't making a statement. It's the lack of one. It's disappearing while wearing a ponte baby blue dress.
That's a lot of parentheses and semi-colons, but you see where I'm going — and why I started stalking the Draper James Instagram, and looking to see who tagged themselves there. Because the new "put together" isn't getting your hair set once-a-week and wearing white gloves like our grandmothers. It's getting a blow out and having the right summer sandals and sheath dresses and designer bag (maybe one of those wicker ones, but only for that week at the beach in summer). It's knowing the appropriate times and places to wear Lululemon yoga pants. It's a fashionable SUV and pilates arms. It varies region by region, but for a certain class and race of Southern women, it is very much Draper James. (It is also very white — Draper James is very keen to feature women of color as "brand ambassadors" on its blog, but I've seen very, very few people who are not white tagging themselves in the clothes or in the stores).
What I did notice, however, were a lot of women squatting next to the Draper James mural outside the store. The more pictures I looked at, the more pictures I saw of women in matching t-shirts: bachelorette parties. I started googling "Nashville bachelorette," and a whole world opened to me — dozens of personal blogs (which usually follow the "Noun" + "Noun" format, like "Sips and Sequins" or "Camels and Chocolate" (who knows)). I asked my always helpful Facebook group if anyone either lived in or had recently been to Nashville for more context on the industry, and they guided me to an excellent article, recently published in the local alt-weekly, about the phenomenon locals "love to hate." I found the companies that put together pre-packaged bachelorette trips. I found the companies that catered to them. I pitched the article — as part of BuzzFeed Reader's "Travel" series — as a bachelorette, Southern femininity, gentrification, who knows what else hybrid. I booked a trip for five days during what, according to Bach Weekend, was the first real weekend of the season — and found an Airbnb a block from Draper James, which made the eight visits I eventually made possible.
The end article ended up being far less about Draper James, specifically, than what happens when thousands of people come to try on Southern femininity for a weekend. Like every feature, I arrive at the idea with a framework, but I'm eager to allow other ideas — in this case, the murals, the gentrification of the 12 South neighborhood in particular, the cost of "experience" tourism — inflect and shape it. I always talk with my Uber/Lyft drivers when I'm reporting, and all but one of 12 rides I took over five days were black women who had moved out of Nashville proper when rents became too high, and now commuted in, 40-50 minutes, to drive in the urban core. That's something: a string to pull, a lead to follow.
There were more leads. After two nights, I tweeted that I was already deeply fascinated with Nashville's gentrification history (that, for example, the interstate had not only displaced a massive section of the black community, but eliminated the sight lines and walking paths between the local HBCU and the capitol — a metaphor if I ever heard of one) and several people DM'ed me further reading suggestions, including an incredible piece that tells the story of Nashville gentrification through the very recent white people affection for "hot chicken." I emailed the author, who agreed to meet with me. I asked the author of the Nashville Scene piece if he'd meet with me, too — it's good journalistic practice for a non-native reporter to say hi, but I also wanted to hear about the reaction to the piece.
I met with a dozen different operators of bachelorette-oriented services. I ran (like actually ran) through various neighborhoods, and walked whenever possible (one day, a total of 10 miles) because few things give you a better sense of gentrification and how neighborhoods transition than actually looking closely at them on foot. I read dozens of articles in the local paper — on the influx of tourism, on the problems and suits and counter-suits around the various transpor-tainment operators. I went to Draper James again, and again, and again, and refused the sweet tea again, and again, and again. I went to suburbs to go to a movie just to see what they were like. I looked at local real estate. I took a lot of pictures to remind myself of particular aesthetics. As I always do on longer reporting trips, I went to church.
And, of course, I talked to bachelorette parties. I could see groups of women gathering on Friday afternoon, but they don't declare themselves as bachelorette parties, at least in force, until Saturday — that's when the matching shirts came out. By then, I had been joined by my photographer, Stacy Kranitz, whose work usually focuses on documenting the everyday lives of the working poor. She was an untraditional pick for a story about bachelorettes and Nashville, but an inspired one. We spent the next two days finding and following groups, talking to them and taking pictures of them taking pictures of themselves.
Five days of on-the-ground reporting is the least amount of time necessary, I think, to write a story like this — one that attempts to combine so many strands about a place, its history, its present, and its future. In some ways, not being from Nashville was necessary: I wasn't nostalgic about a Nashville that used to be. But I did live through what happened to Austin in the late 2000s, which is to say, I'm deeply familiar with the subtle but significant changes that happen to a city as it gentrifies and becomes a center for "experience" tourism. Crucially, I've also attended destination bachelorettes — which is what helped me to think think of these women as gross, or a social problem, but a symptom of larger shifts, and an opportunity for introspection.
Which is why I understand the criticism that I'm just making fun of "basic bitches," but ultimately reject it. One of my bosses tweeted the story with the line "Always read @annehelen on what white women are up to," and that's how I view this story: an exploration and interrogation of what white women do with their leisure time, and how they do or do not consider its effects. (I also reject the criticism that it's misogynistic — I mention several times that there are just as many bachelor parties, but they're invisible and not considered a social problem, which is worth thinking about in and of itself).
In the end, I arrived at a story that considers that idea of what it means to be "put together" in public — while interweaving the costs of performing that put together-ness, mixed with the liberating anonymity of being in a city where no one knows you, yet documenting it, and the performance of leisure, for others to see. Draper James isn't the explicit center of the piece — but if you look closely, you can see how the questions it posed expanded to become the ones that guided the piece.
This is very detailed and dorky, but many of you have emailed to tell me you like that sort of thing. If you have additional questions about the reporting process, I'm here for them. And here, again, is your chance to read the actual piece.
Some Things I Read and Loved This Week:
- No one tells a story quite like Rachel Aviv
- A truly beautiful essay on living in Korea as a Korean-American, and so much more
- I have discovered that I will read any writing on Britney
- Get on the Bill Hader train
- I've found Cynthia Nixon endlessly impressive
- One of the best things I've read all year. It's long. You'll probably have to save it. It's worth it.
- A wonderful profile of Naomi Wadler & what it's like for an 11-year-old to become a face of a movement
As always, if you know someone who'd like this sort of thing in their inbox, forward it their way. You can subscribe here. And please excuse typos and bad sentences — not obsessing over them is what allows me to actually make the time to do this every week; ultimately, it's a small price to pay.