Emily Spivack

Emily Spivack is an artist, writer, and editor whose work draws from contemporary culture, fashion, archives, and history. Emily launched Worn Stories, a collection of stories she edits from cultural figures and talented storytellers about clothing and memory, in 2010. A New York Times best selling book, Worn Stories was published by Princeton Architectural Press in Fall 2014. Emily has spent six years culling stories about clothing from eBay posts for a website she curates, Sentimental Value, and she has exhibited the Internet found-art project in Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and Portland. Emily is the creator and writer of the Smithsonian’s only blog about the history of clothing, drawing from the institution’s vast collection and beyond, called Threaded. She recently launched howtodresslike.com, an online archive of nearly 1,000 step-by-step instructions culled from wikiHow, the latest iteration of her work around generating archives and constructing identity with how-to-dress-like instructions. Currently, Emily consults for SustainAbility, a think tank focused on the future of sustainable development. She has lectured and presented at museums and universities including the Museum of Modern Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, the Peabody Essex Museum, New York University, Brown University, and Bard College. Emily and her work have been featured in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and The Washington Post among other publications.

archives, art, clothing, collecting, internet, writing