You’re 16 and it’s 9pm on a school night. You want to go out but you don’t know if you’ll make it out the door in fishnets and a nose ring. You go to your computer, open Google and, there, your night is saved! Someone has written step-by-step instructions for How to Dress Like Ke$ha Without Your Parents Flipping Out.
For her latest project, artist and author Emily Spivack went deep into the goldmine/cesspool of information that is WikiHow – the internet’s hub of step-by-step instructions written for unknown readers by unknown and often equally clueless authors. Some of it is useful (if you’re looking to nail something into drywall, you’re in luck!). Some of it is not. But, taken together, WikiHow is a perfect microcosm of the internet, with all its tendencies towards hyperspecificity, immediacy, redundancy and strange word use. And, Spivack argues, it tells us something about how we interact with each other and the world.
To examine the phenomenon, she decided to home in on one particular part of WikiHow: instructions for getting dressed. The result, howtodresslike.com, is an alphabetized collection of all of the WikiHow entries on the web that relate to clothing.
The project started, like most adventures on the internet, by accident. “I was looking for something online and I stumbled upon these WikiHow instructions for ‘How to Dress Like a Goth’ and ‘How to Dress Like a Hippie.’ I was like, ‘What is this?'” says Spivack. “Someone had devoted their time to writing these step-by-step directions for taking on an identity.” What fascinated her was the idea that you could fast-track your way into a subculture by following a list of universally accessible instructions. Want to become a steampunk? “Take a leather-working class! This way you’ll be able to make a lot of cool accessories.” Feel like being a gothic fairy? A tip! “A simple vest in black or tawny can be embroidered with feathers {black} or black roses.”
“They all just feel off-kilter,” says Spivack of the entries. The tone is weird but also totally earnest. “I get the sense, from the pop culture references, that they’re written by tweens,” she speculates, pointing out one in particular: “How to Dress Goth When You’re Going to Catholic Middle School.” But there are also entries for “How to Dress Up for a One Direction Concert” and “How To Dress Like One of the Cullens” that provide helpful clues about WikiHow’s demographic, at least when it comes to fashion.
Spivack’s work, as a writer and artist, focuses on the intersection of dress, identity, and the internet. Her other projects have included collecting stories about clothes from eBay listings (“Sentimental Value“), writing a book of people’s memories of particular items (Worn Stories) and, most recently, hosting a workshop at MoMA titled “How to Dress Like the Sound of Björk,” in which participants drafted WikiHow-style instructions for channeling the musical experience of Debut, Volta or Vulnicura with the cut of a pair of pants or the knit of a sweater.
Spivack’s projects are all, in some form, archives. “It’s this idea that there’s ephemera on the web that’s going to disappear,” she says. “But that ephemera is a reflection of who we are and how we communicate with the world. I have a desire to preserve that.” And looking at Spivack’s own list of personal favorite entries from “How To Dress Like,” it’s hard to argue that WikiHow is not in some way representative of our culture:
How to Dress Like an Aesthete
How to Dress Like Drake
How to Dress Like a Light Goth
How to Dress Like Your Personality
How to Dress Like an Undercover Celeb
Credits
Text Alice Newell-Hanson
Photography Ally Lindsay