from the French weekly, L'Obs

Holy vintage

https://o.nouvelobs.com/lifestyle/20181119.OBS5621/mode-deco-musique-le-nouvel-age-d-or-du-vintage.html?fbclid=IwAR1qb8dUjJ40J2Rdepqy3v3Xb0B1eUVT6ceh5M_qLZ0ikyGIIfUjGTJbFWw

Comfort clothing

Winter has come early to Northern New England. We never really had a fall, so basically, we went from summer heat to really really cold and...snow already already. Before Thanksgiving. My instinct is to cocoon myself in comfy loose warm clothes. Like this Eileen Fisher sweater I picked up at the Pink Alligator (I think) worn over a Cut Loose skirt from the aforementioned store named "Folk" that closed its doors recently. 

Eileen Fisher signifies old lady not wanting to show body, apparently, according to a character in Nicole Holofcener's recent "The Land of Steady Habits" (2018). What a downer of a film, and heck, if Eileen Fisher gets you out the door  and off to work, which she does judging by her successful clothing line, then all the power to her. Loose clothing has always been my style, ever since I can remember. It has nothing to do with age, it has everything to do with comfort. I like that fabric has lines, drapes, gathers, like the sweater that is longer in the back than in the front, and channels the flapper of the 1920s. Let us celebrate the centennial of the flapper!

Birkenstocks are everywhere, too, so it seems that I am not the only one craving comfort clothing.
Finally, as we enter multiple trips to the supermarket season so that we can feed our family and friends, this sign gave me a bit of solace...

...especially when people were actually taking bags out of their cars and heading into the supermarket. And, yes, that is snow, in mid-November, in West Lebanon, NH.

Halloween

This Halloween I finally found the courage to dress up, not once but twice. First there was the pantsuit that I had purchased on eBay before the 2016 election and that I had decided not to wear because I had some foreboding that the election would go the wrong way. Anyway. It did -- the election -- and the pantsuit hung in my closet until this year. I thought it could become a costume referencing someone else besides Hillary of whom I wasn't even a fan in the first place (Bernie, on the other hand...). So slowly I accumulated the accessories that would make a good David Bowie costume: patent leather boots from "The Second Time Around" on Houston Street in NYC, and a patterned silk blouse from J.Crew via the Pink Alligator in Hanover NH. Meanwhile, another garment was hanging in my closet unworn, a long Girbaud dress hand me down from my mother. The Colette (author) biopic came out in the fall of 2018. So, the weekend before Halloween, I wore the suit (more Warhol than Bowie once the wig was on), and Halloween evening I channeled Colette, more Claudine than the author, but oh well. 

This moment is fraught with disgusting prejudice, language, actions, behaviors modeled by our evil politicians (Hell has come to the surface of the earth), so I decided to change my FB profile pic to :

With my daughter, who ended up wearing the patent leather booties; I'm channeling Bowie/Warhol, another era in an I.Magnin suit made in Italy. 

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This coming Tuesday, Americans will vote again. I can only hope that the elected assholes will be departing, and sane, civil people will replace them. Loads of women are running, minorities, even a Somalian refugee who has a beautiful voice. We must resist. We must vote. We must vote these awful people out of office. I am in disguise, I am hiding behind other personae in order to fantasize, briefly, another era where progress was considered a good thing. Colette, Bowie, Warhol and gender bending, fluidity of identity, freedom to be whom you want to be, except, perhaps, a horrible person who hurts or even kills other people and mother earth.