The Standard

Leanne Shapton swimming. Photograph: Jason Fulford

The other day we had a book party at Le Bain for novelist, illustrator, New York Times art-director, New Yorker contributor and former competitive swimmer Leanne Shapton’s new book, Swimming Studies. Le Bain, French for “the bath”, was a fitting spot to fête this whimsical, introspective memoir about an adolescence spent submerged, both literally and figuratively, in the intense world of competitive swimming and how that shaped Shapton’s career as a writer and artist.

Of course, a life spent in water is a life spent in swimwear. Interspersed among her essays and watercolors she has included a photographic catalogue of her bathing suits, each with its own backstory. Of a Pucci-esque two-piece she notes, “Bottom left behind at the Bains du Marais, Paris, but later rescued from the pocket of a robe, fished out from the bottom of a laundry bag.” Another stripy number was “worn in the Aegean Sea and in the Chateau Marmont swimming pool.” This particular Standard Culture writer went swimming once in the Chateau pool with no bathing suit, but that’s another story. The rest of our favorites below …