Associative clothing 2: My Milanese dress

On our last day in Milan, my partner and I walked a great deal in the heat and humidity, with lots of breaks to cool off that included gelato, beer and the beautiful collection at the Brera. There was no energy for clothes shopping, let alone window shopping, however. Whatever window shopping I was going to do would have to be on the streets, catching catchy outfits on the go.

I did take a quick snap of this woman standing on Corso Magenta and wearing a simple white dress and flat shoes that seemed both elegant and cool for this weather.

I almost became obsessed with that dress, its simplicity superimposed on a young, sophisticated, perhaps even hip (the tattoo) young woman, her long straight reddish hair softly draped over her left shoulder. 

I don't normally wear white. If I do, it's usually a blouse or a tee-shirt, but the thought of sitting down with white fabric coming into contact with a chair or grass or dirt makes me anxious. I am too messy a person to wear white. I will inevitably spill something and make a stain that won't wash out. But, just as I had acquired the Florentine colors of ochre and lime green, I had to acquire the long white cotton dress of Milan. Madewell had one that was very similar to the one I saw on Corso Magenta, on sale on their web site, and I ordered it in medium, hoping that it would fall loosely, away from the body, just like the original Italian one.

I don't know if I will ever wear it, unless I bring it with me on a future trip to Milan. Which leads me to the question of wearing clothes out of context. I believe that clothes still have a context despite globalisation (like, the Madewell dress purchased in the US but that evokes the dress I saw on the streets of Milan). 

Another dress, this one found at a vintage flea market in Seattle a few years back, made perfect sense when I wore it on the porch of our airbnb, in the middle of summer, surrounded by lush Northwestern vegetation. But, when I wear that same dress, presumably from Hawaii, hand made, in the 1960s or 70s (this vintage web site had a similar one) at home in New England, even on the hottest of the hottest days, it feels like a costume, it feels...kitsch. 

 In his fascinating, incredibly well researched book, Fashion and Orientalism, Adam Geczy argues that clothes, textiles, patterns,  accessories, from countries outside of Europe as worn by Europeans in Europe could evoke either a conservatism associated with colonial and imperial conquest or a rebellion against conventional bourgeois norms.

In which category do I fall? In this particular case, I am wearing clothes purchased in one part of the western world in another part of the western world, not exactly a big act of rebellion or conquest. But each city has a certain uniform, and rural New England is even more homogeneous. Wearing a dress as opposed to shorts and a tee-shirt can attract attention. I don't like being gazed at, which seems paradoxical given my love of clothes and assembling interesting outfits to reflect my mood and my memories of recent travels to elsewhere. I guess my decontextualization of dress makes a statement that I would rather still be there rather than here, or, wishing that "here" and "there" could co-exist. Clothes can achieve that. I just have to learn to handle the gaze. 

Associative clothing 1: my Florentine skirt

I am going to start a new series of posts in which a particular garment will have a specific association with a person, place or thing. Sometimes I see a piece of clothing and think immediately of somebody who might have worn it. I begin with the skirt I bought at a market on Piazza San Spirito in Florence Italy. I wasn't able to photograph a woman who had walked by that morning wearing more or less the same style skirt, a classic style that is tight at the waist and wide at the bottom, and my memory of the colors is probably distorted, but I seem to recall that she was wearing an ochre color skirt and a lime green top.

I wasn't able to photograph myself in the skirt when I was still in Italy, so I did a sort of reenactment.  I remembered a photograph taken in the 1950s of a woman wearing something of a similar length and simplicity. It was easy to find by Googling key words "1950s woman Florence photo." It turns out to be by Ruth Orkin from 1951. It is a wonderful photograph, and this blog by her daughter explains some of the context. I want to know more of course: was the photo staged (it seems to be)? How was it to be a woman walking the streets of Florence in 1951? Where exactly was the photo taken?

I find that each city in Italy has its preferred summer look: in Florence, it was the longish puffy skirts and short sleeve blouses, in Milan, long tent dresses seemed more popular. 

Meanwhile, my favorite fashion blog, the sartorialist, posted this image of Georgio Armani. I especially love what the model in the background is wearing... I realize that this is a non sequitur, but I wanted to post it anyway. 

Italian color pop and hot

I was in Italy for two weeks where it was hot hot hot, with temperatures always hovering in the 90s (with 100 F on some days). 

Italy from where I live in Northern New England always feels like you are exiting a black and white movie and entering technicolor, a bit like in "The Wizard of Oz." Colors pop in Italy, from the "spremute di arancia" (fresh squeezed orange juice), served on the Piazza San Spirito in Florence, to the paintings on the walls of the Brera Museum in Milan, to the yellow shirt of that woman quietly having her (very) early morning coffee at Malpensa Airport. 

My partner and I traveled to Florence, Milan and Bergamo, an hour east of Milan. In the middle of it all, we had a day with a rental car, with my daughter flying into Malpensa airport. We drove to Lake Iseo, with the idea that we would swim in the lake in order to cool off from the relentless heat. We discovered the town of Lovere (LOvere), forgotten almost, with those telephone signs still hanging on the outside of shops that must have, at one point in time, been the only places where one could send or receive a call. While the town offered its charms of narrow streets and medieval houses, the lake itself was conspicuously lacking a. beaches and b. swimmers. We did manage to pull over at a grassy area with beach accommodations (showers, toilets), but the water was dubiously clean. The drive to Sarnico was quite the surprise, I was behind the wheel, not expecting the curvy narrow road built into the rocks, that offered unearthly views across to the blue of the lake and the equally precipitous coast line across the way (here is a link to the Sarnico to Lovere annual footrace to get an idea of the beauty of that road). I concentrated on the road, doing my best to keep up with the local drivers and not run over cyclists or pedestrians. 

How do people stay cool when days remain very hot? The long dresses that bear the shoulders and skirt the ankles seemed a popular choice. 

One other strategy involved leaving very early in the morning on our cultural explorations. My partner and I would walk down to the city center of Florence from our little house in the olive groves.  One morning we arrived at Piazza San Spirito at a time when the tourists were still asleep, and the locals were enjoying their morning coffee (and newspaper, people still read newspapers in Italy), and walking their dogs. 

I don't know which city in Italy I love the most. They are all beautiful to the eye, sometimes overwhelming (Stendhal wrote about it in his travels, and it has become known as "Stendhal Syndrome), filled with little places to eat and drink reliably good pastry, panini and coffee, and the locals treat you with politeness and patience when you speak Italian to them (which I invariably do, thank you to all the Italians that I have treated as my language instructors on the go).

Milan might turn out to be my favorite city, however, because it simply amuses one with its easygoing mix of the very old and the very new/hip/trendy/too cool for school. In this photo, for instance, I am in a converted tie factory that now features contemporary furnishings by young designers.  In Milan, one can visit old churches, modern museums and eat extremely well. But hands down, what I enjoy the most is the endless street show, from old mustard yellow trams ringadinging to very stylishly dressed men and women casually standing around like this is their normal way of being. 

Bergamo is an old medieval hill town, with a lower town throwing its more modern girdle around it. We borrowed a friend's apartment in the upper town, where we got to know the unbelievably friendly baker down the stairs (but alas never learned his name) who tried helping us with a power outage (note to all: "salva vita," save life, is also the reset switch on the breaker box in case the circuits are blown).  A local pub served its own IPA, a bowl of chips and a small plate of dips and toast for the reasonable sum of 4 euros. 

Florence is dense with beauty and culture as well, surrounded by olive groves, cypress trees and villas perched on hillsides. Rome, Syracusa, Palermo, Venice, Verona... I haven't even unpacked my bags yet and I am already planning the next trip.

Italy, a country where time seems to have stood still, while trains do go fast, connecting the big cities (Milan to Florence under two hours) and beer is fast becoming ... yet another pleasant way to cool off on those hot summer days. 

Shop window, Milan

Milan, in the Roman walls

 In the olive groves above Florence