Best of Racked Longform

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

Racked’s longform program was rooted in the belief that clothes, beauty, and other traditionally female topics are worthy of narrative journalism. Our reporters traveled around the world for these deeply reported pieces — from the Carolinas to Cuba, Denmark to Disney, Silicon Valley to Shengzhou. If the list below leaves you hungry for more, you can check out our yearly best of lists (2015, 2016, 2017), as well as the full archive.

• Style Is an Algorithm
• American Manufacturing Doesn’t Have to Die
• The Things That Come to Those Who Wait
• Would You Take Out a Loan for a Pair of Jeans?
• Nobody Thinks About eBay
• Naked Truths
• How to Sell a Billion-Dollar Myth Like a French Girl
• Weddings of the 0.01 Percent
• Cuba, in Clothes
• Trump, China, and the Ties That Bind
• The Case for the American Mall
• Reign, Supreme
• Angola’s Greatest Escape
• Princess for a Day, Disney Bride for Life
• All Ears: A Cultural History of Piercing
• Teatox Party
• War, All Dressed Up
• The Last Lifestyle Magazine
• Why Are Sports Bras So Terrible?
• This Is a Story About Loss
• Everything Is for Sale
• Infiltrating Makeup Alley
• All Dolled Up: The Enduring Triumph of American Girl
• The Great Weed Rebrand
• Forty Years Young: Hello Kitty and the Power of Cute