Intimacy and Friendship Theme Analysis

Intimate Apparel follows Esther, a black seamstress who sews corsets, camisoles, and other intimate undergarments for ladies in 1905 New York. At 35, Esther believes that her time to marry is long past, and she spends her days visiting both her clients' homes and Mr. Marks's fabric shop. As the entirety of the play takes place in these domestic and personal spaces—Esther visits her clients in their boudoirs or bedrooms, and Mr. Marks's shop doubles as his living quarters—the play necessarily questions what it means to let someone into one's personal space, romantically or otherwise. By exploring the different kinds of intimacy discussed and displayed by the different characters, Intimate Apparel suggests that the deepest intimacy comes not from sexual or romantic relationships, but from one's friendships.

The way that the play's female characters talk about their sexual and marital relationships with men shows outright that physical intimacy is no guarantee of emotional intimacy. Both Mayme, a black sex worker, and Mrs. Van Buren, a wealthy white woman, are sexually engaged with men—Mayme with her clients and Mrs. Van Buren with her husband. But in both cases, the women are clearly detached from their relationships or even derisive of them. Mayme remarks to Esther about "all the pawing and pulling—for a dollar they think they own you," showing clearly that for her, physical encounters with men are by no means fulfilling or even especially intimate. Mrs. Van Buren echoes this sentiment and implies that in her marriage, sex is a means to end, and a futile one at that. She and her husband have been trying to have a baby for years, and she seems almost as disinterested in actually being intimate with her husband as she suggests that her husband is with her.

This state of affairs, however, doesn't mean that these women don't crave emotional intimacy. For the most part, they find it with Esther, one of the few women they have to let into their personal lives simply by virtue of hiring her to sew intimate apparel for them. Esther is paid as much for her discretion with their secrets as she is for her work, and especially with Mrs. Van Buren, the physical contact necessary to fit and adjust the finished garments leaves Mrs. Van Buren with the impression that their relationship is more than that of client and seamstress. Importantly, the relationship between Esther and Mrs. Van Buren isn't a real friendship because of the combination of their power imbalance and Mrs. Van Buren's desire to essentially use Esther to make up for what she's missing in her relationship with her husband. Esther ultimately recognizes this and asserts her desire for their relationship to not go deeper—as far as Esther is concerned, her job is to sew intimate apparel and keep her clients' secrets, not necessarily to be their lovers, friends, or stand-ins for their spouses. Mayme, on the other hand, is truly friends with Esther—as black women, the two are on more equal footing in society and though Esther disapproves of Mayme's line of work, she still respects Mayme and her autonomy, just as Mayme does for Esther.

Esther, like her clients, deeply desires emotional intimacy, but though she's extremely practical, she lacks the cynicism of both Mayme and Mrs. Van Buren. While she's initially skeptical when she receives a letter from George, a Barbadian man working on the Panama Canal who gets her address from a colleague and asks to begin a correspondence, she quickly falls in love with him. When he asks for her hand in marriage, she wastes no time in accepting. Her desire for intimacy and her fears that George is her only chance make her far more willing than she might otherwise be to trust a man she's never met. Importantly, the closeness that Esther feels with George, whether it's real or not, comes from the fact that their relationship is built on storytelling. This is, incidentally, the same thing that feeds the mutual attraction between Esther and Mr. Marks, her Jewish fabric seller. Esther and Mr. Marks share a love of textiles; Mr. Marks can often convince Esther to buy something if he has a compelling story about where the fabric came from and who designed it. Their delight in the fabric, the stories, and in each other is palpable and made all the more tragic because Mr. Marks has a fiancée at home in Romania and, because of his religious beliefs, cannot touch a woman who isn't his wife or a family member.

Ultimately, Esther is denied true intimacy with either man: George turns out to be as careless as the men that Mayme sees, cares little for stories or Esther's dreams, and in addition to not being interested in sex with her after their wedding night, spends Esther's hard-earned money to buy time with Mayme. He finally leaves with the entirety of her savings, showing her that trusting someone with her heart and her assets is dangerous and, given her experience and the experiences she hears about from her clients, is bound to end poorly.

The most tender and intimate event of the play, meanwhile, happens between Esther and Mr. Marks: when Esther gifts Mr. Marks the beautiful smoking jacket she initially made for George, he allows her to touch him and smooth the shoulders and lapels. While this does suggest that Esther may never experience true, positive sexual intimacy with a man, the moment is nevertheless extremely intimate. This suggests that intimacy doesn't have to be sexual in nature—it just needs to come from a place of genuine caring, positive regard, and a desire to share parts of one's life with another person.

Similarly, Esther's return to Mrs. Dickson's boardinghouse offers hope for Esther's friendship with the older woman. Mrs. Dickson agrees to not ask questions about Esther's return and accept her back into her home, something that gives Esther a great deal of comfort. While this is a return to an unhappy normal for Esther in terms of romance, it also suggests that Esther has learned the importance of relying on her trusting, trustworthy, and present friends for emotional intimacy rather than men who are, in her experience, disinterested, untrustworthy, and unavailable.