Clothes may make the man, but for lots of women, the relationship with what we wear is more complex than a visual hint at economic status or a statement about style.

Remember shopping for that first bra, whether you needed one or not? Ever stand in front of a jam-packed closet, feeling fat and moaning that you have nothing to wear? Have you rolled your eyes at your husband when he wonders, for the millionth time, why someone with only two feet needs all those shoes?

If you can relate — and ’fess up, most of us can — then consider slipping into Love, Loss and What I Wore.

Based on the best-selling book by Ilene Beckerman, with a script by director-screenwriter Nora Ephron and her writer sister Delia Ephron, the Off-Broadway hit pays a visit to Fort Lauderdale’s Parker Playhouse this week. Structured much like Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, the play features five actresses who sit at music stands, reading from the script as they play multiple characters and muse about such subjects as dressing rooms, boots, bras, the color black and the clothes-devouring capabilities of a closet.

Running in New York since 2009, Love, Loss has been performed by hundreds of actresses. It has been performed on six continents, in such cities as Paris, Sydney and Cape Town, and in cities throughout the United States. The national touring cast at the Parker features Emmy-winning M*A*S*H star Loretta Swit, Sesame Street regular Sonia Manzano, Broadway actress Myra Lucretia Taylor, Tony Award winner Daisy Eagan and television-stage actress Emily Dorsch.

Clearly, Beckerman and the Ephron sisters are onto something universal with Love, Loss and What I Wore. The play is not, however, just a stage version of the book.

“Ilene’s book is the spine of it,” says Nora Ephron, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally… and Sleepless in Seattle. “We read it and thought it was a great way to link a group of stories about Delia and me, and some of our friends and their friends. We sent out a mass emailing to get stories. The book was such a brilliant way for women to talk about themselves. It’s so resonant for everyone.”

“It was very interesting how powerful boots were in womens’ lives. Everyone had a story to tell,” says Delia Ephron. “And they all had a story about something their mom bought for them to wear to school and how everyone laughed.”

One story in the play, about how the memory of a died-too-young mother is linked to a robe worn by a girl’s new stepmom, came from Rosie O’Donnell, who has performed in Love, Loss.

“Rosie told me she has no interest in clothes. But then she told me this completely heartbreaking story about her mother’s chenille bathrobe,” Nora Ephron says.

Manzano, who has played Maria on Sesame Street for four decades, calls the Ephron sisters “the Marx brothers of the literary world.” And she, of course, has her own clothing-related memories.

“My mom was a supreme seamstress. After I saw Ava Gardner in One Touch of Venus, I kept nagging my mother to make me a dress with a draping neckline, with my back exposed. She kept trying to get me to understand that it wouldn’t stay on that way,” Manzano says, laughing. “My family came from Puerto Rico to New York, and I remember seeing individual photos of my mother and her cousins on rooftops on the Lower East Side, all wearing the same halter-top dress with roses on the bodice.”

Though Sesame Street keeps Manzano busy as a performer and a writer, she has appeared onstage in Godspell, The Vagina Monologues, The Exonerated and now Love, Loss. She loves the immediacy of the experience, the chance to find new things in a script and most of the interaction with audiences. But there are those unscripted moments that just make her laugh.

“The other night, someone’s phone went off — and the ringtone was Celine Dion singing at the top of her lungs,” she says.

Delia Ephron calls Love, Loss and What I Wore “such a girlfriend show.” Her sister acknowledges the inspiration the two got from The Vagina Monologues and adds, “Our original hope was that some day, sooner rather than later, the show would be this thing that women’s groups and amateur actors could do as a fundraiser.”

You might guess that creating the play would help the sisters cope with personal wardrobe issues. Not so much.

“I don’t cry much, but I can cry when I’m standing in front of my closet,” says Nora Ephron, in humorist mode. “I have 700 to 800 black sweaters. And the one I am looking for is always somewhere else.”