Shop My Closet: Virginia Woolf, Marianne Moore, and Fashion Contemporaries

Abstract

Woolf’s well-documented fashion angst is read through the lens of fashion contemporaries like Marianne Moore, whose fashion (and literary) identity was supported by family and friends in a kind of female patronage, resulting in her development as a fashion icon celebrated in magazines like Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, which printed interviews, spreads, and poetry. Keying on the ideas of individuality and identity and working with the extensive Moore collection at the Rosenbach Museum and Library (Philadelphia), this essay examines how the support of Moore’s circle enabled her to navigate and rise above the doubts that beset Woolf ‘s relationship with fashion.