The book received praise upon its release, with critics from such publications as The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly highlighting its focus on Sedaris's family as the heart of the entire collection.

[1][2] Reviews also noted an evolution in Sedaris's writing, finding Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim's essays to be more introspective, somber, adult, and emotionally resonant than the author's earlier, more hyperbolic material.

[8] Sedaris originally intended to name the book Repeat After Me, taken from his favorite story of the bunch, but he worried that it was too similar to the title of his then-most recent essay collection, Me Talk Pretty One Day.

During an interview with NPR's Fresh Air, he told host Terry Gross that whenever he received a themed writing assignment from The New Yorker, or from Ira Glass for a This American Life segment, he found his youth to be a deep well from which he could usually draw an appropriate story.

Augusten Burroughs of Entertainment Weekly called it the best book of Sedaris's career, deeming it a "brilliant comic performance" with "a deftly shaken cocktail of wit, weirdness, and melancholy," and prose that he found both elegant and skillful.

"[12] Burroughs's review also praised Sedaris's affectionate detailing of his family's eccentricities,[1] and Robinson felt that it was one of the collection's greatest strengths, helping showcase the author's "evolution toward plainer and sparer storytelling.

"[2] Kakutani also observed a strain of introspection that was new to Sedaris and thought that it differed from his earlier, self-deprecating stand-upesque material, coming off as a more Chekhovian brand of comedy.