New York in March

I went to New York City for a few days in March to visit my family and have a bit of a break before teaching again. I found people so dressed to be looked at, to the point where I became tired of looking. 

Men and women were wearing long woollen hats with an empty air cavity above their heads, that seemed to be all the fashion this winter. It reminded me of the high wigs women wore just before the revolution in France. 

A sign of decadence before the deluge, all that vertical space filled with nothing. 

Daughter Clara took me to see "Sleep No More" which is basically a haunted house for New Yorkers, with expensive drinks at the bar. At least she bought new (used) shoes. 

I was tired of shopping too. Which makes perfect sense given that I had stuffed myself full with consignments shops in France all last year. One dress at Housing Works and that was IT!

80s nostalgia

                                                          Marie Claire  France 1988

Last week, I went to Revolution in White River Junction to clear my brain. It was pouring rain outside, I was done with classes and exams, and I needed to be in an artsy bohemian environment that could make me forget about work for a brief moment.  

The owner and I ended up remembering the 80s, her through images and me through memories. I was in my twenties in the 1980s, Nancy was barely born.

I told her that the 1980s style could not be reduced to one dominant look. Looking at movies from that decade, for example, fashion was all over the place. It depended on which social class you came from, on where you lived, and what you were doing for work.

So for instance, in Desperately Seeking Susan, middle class propriety, as played by Rosanna Arquette meets edgier punk as played by Madonna.

In Tootsie and 9 to 5, it’s the synthetic, big shoulder padded work place.

In Diva, it’s European sleek, short skirts, short hair, very stylized.

The 80s was also the Aids decade. Emaciated faces, anorexic bodies. Not exactly a style per se. But influential in how the body damaged by disease became visually familiar and perhaps even seductive for those who latch on to fashion statements that involve inflicting pain upon oneself.      

The 80s was a lot of things. Jean-Paul Goude aestheticising (merchandizing) athletic women. It’s also soft and floral Laura Ashley, and Diana before the wedding.

It was loose, comfortable clothes for me and a short sculpted hair cut.

With so many different styles speaking simultaneously, it’s no wonder that, henceforward, fashion became a free for all.

       It was also the decade of the woman in the "power suit" as more and more of us entered the workplace. The recently deceased former Prime Minister of the UK Margaret Thatcher wore suits and dresses with ribbon ties that remind me of another style that dominated that decade, a conservative, no nonsense, no frills look that  many women wore to work in order to blend in, from the executive board room to the Houses of Parliament.
      As Suzy Menkes wrote in a recent NYT article, "Mrs. Thatcher expressed in her persona exactly where working women stood in the 1980s: on low-heeled court shoes and in tailored suits that were a carapace of protection in what was still essentially a man’s world." What that suit did to feminism? It might have propelled it forward and pulled it backward at the same time. Women conformed to a male ethos, but women also earned their own income. Women attained power through their profession, and some were able to use that power to benefit other women.

The 1980s were a watershed moment for all women. We entered the public realm and we have since remained there, not necessarily agreeing with each other politically or aesthetically for that matter. 

How I got through winter

Well, it's March, and outside it's snowing.
Better than raining...
I feel a transition coming.
The days are longer, and here in Northern New England, we look for signs of spring in odd places. More animal footprints in the snow means more animal activity.
I just washed my warmest winter hat, and am looking forward to bringing winter scarves to the dry cleaners because I feel done wearing those.
I am wearing thinner sweaters and silk or cotton rather than wool scarves around my neck.
I've changed to a shorter pea coat...
There is mud at the bottom of the driveway.
Our oldest cat actually wants to go outside.



Meanwhile, I am grateful to two pieces of clothing I purchased at the beginning of winter to get me through the season.

The skirt is by a local designer and was purchased at Revolution.  I love the big deconstructed zipper and the little angled pocket, which came in handy to stuff a few tissues. It had just enough primary colors, thin yellow and red dotted lines to brighten up even the darkest coldest days.  The pants are from The Pink Alligator and correspond to the Katherine Hepburn look I was trying to achieve. I could never be this glamorous, but it doesn't hurt to try...

I stumbled across this funky person's blog while searching for these photos. That might also help me transition to spring!

women at work

Just a short post after seeing an exhibit on work at  AVA Gallery in Lebanon, NH. I came upon this photo from 1918, from the National Archives of two women carrying a block of ice.

I love their outfits of course, and yes, it's war time propaganda, a call to women to do "man's" work while the men are away in the front lines. I would love to post more photos from that era, not only to see what women were wearing, but to see how women did enter the workforce in droves, proving already a century ago, that women could succeed in any job. 

Back in the USA

I'm back in New Hampshire at last, after what seems like a long time abroad. My first clothes related feeling has been that, yes, I have a lot of clothes, now that I have my closets and dresser to dig into once again. My second clothes related feeling has been that I can live out of a suitcase, with the option to buy a few new much needed clothes, and all these accumulated garments seem so old and boring.

(Mirror made out of little discarded objects; a photo of my mother taken in Central Park around 1970)


Since it's winter,  sweaters are an obvious priority. Why are all my sweaters monochrome? Perhaps because, as I perused a couple of stores in Hanover today, American sweaters are monochrome (or quaintly folksy-Norwegian). Why do Americans dress so boring? (boringly...) What's happened? Why do I want to throw away all my clothes and start afresh? A little voice reminds me that I have been living out of a suitcase for nine months, and in France no less.

Fortunately, daughter Clara has been home from hip/cool/extremely sartorial/bohemian New York City, and is keeping the spirit of original but used alive and well. Today she came home from Revolution in White River Junction wearing this Anna Karenina inspired coat.

She calls the faux blue fur "aggressively artificial." I tell her she should write for a pastiche of a mail-order catalogue... Meanwhile interesting, colourful patterned vintage coats floating around cities everywhere (I see them in other people's blog posts) make winter exciting.

Au revoir Paris

It's the last day of November, and outside the apartment window, it says

                                             CHRISTMAS!

I am in a good bye state of mind. Paris, a city of many neighborhoods, each with its own flavour, its own feeling, its own vibe (or lack thereof). I realised rather quickly that the city has more of an east/west divide  than a north/south one (right bank/left bank), based on the way I dressed. If I stayed West, I dressed a little bourgeois plain. However, if I headed East, I went for a funkier look.

Photographing one last time, I looked for men, who are decidedly missing from this blog. However they too are quite present in vintage stores and consignment shops.

Men also like to shop for clothes, although not as much as women do. This trio walked by me in the Halles district, fresh from an expedition at a shop that had intriguing bags clearly. In the street, I searched for a Parisian male whose look seemed ubiquitous no matter the neighbourhood, and tapped into the vintage aesthetic. 

I loved this guy's jacket, man bag, and back pack.


The city has much to love but also much to get used to. The "manif" as they call them were more of a nuisance than anything. This one, protesting killing animals for fur,  went down below the apartment. One of the slogans they were shouting was "les animaux sont pas des manteaux!" (animals aren't coats).

I guess that means no suede coat like this one I coddled at Hippie Market in the Halles neighbourhood...

The other aspect of the city of Paris that requires getting used to is the sheer number of people living in the streets, or begging in the metro and on the sidewalks. Thinking about clothes when so many people are destitute is obviously problematic. But what I find even more difficult to reconcile is the simple act of shopping with the presence of so many people sitting outside the store entrances.

***

Color during these bleak months lifts my spirits. (Does this blog entry resemble "Elle" magazine pages where human interest stories are surrounded with ads for expensive jewelry and perfume?)

I snapped this woman as she walked by me. Her mustard jacket and purple scarf were lovely.

Crossing the Place at Edgar Quinet metro station, this woman's colorful coat and pastel bicycle felt so "urbanofeminine."

I became more discreet in my picture snapping after a guy tried to take my camera away up on the Canal Saint-Martin, which explains why all my subjects are so distant. Unless I know them and they have given me permission to take their picture and post it on the blog. 

So, this is farewell from Paris. I don't know when I'll be back. I hope that my senses have a memory, that will hold on to the distinct neighborhoods, faces, foods (no more dropping into a boulangerie on my many walks and picking up breakfast goodies), orderly exhibits and spontaneous art, shop windows, metro stops, unusual buildings and historic details, discreet alleys and hidden gardens, and many conversations with strangers, and old and new friends.  

"Souvenirs" I picked up along the way: one more Côtélac dress from "Des Habits et vous" in Lyon where I touched down quickly earlier this month, and one from "Le Grenier d'Anaïs" on rue de Fleurus here in Paris. 

 Côtélac dress from Des Habits et Vous, Lyon; belt from Beacon's Closet, Williamsburg, Brooklyn

I also discovered yet another vintage/consignment shop on the rue du Faubourg Montmartre in the 9th, where I picked up a little silk scarf for Clara...A la prochaine as they say...

"Dépot vente épouvante"

A few weeks ago, I headed to the alliterating rue Tiquetonne in the 2ème arrondissement for what turned out to be a duo of cavernous shops brimming with clothes organized by style, texture, and color. The downcycled silk shirts at Episode really tempted me: for 12 to 20 euros, one could acquire a longsleeved or sleeveless silk shirt in any color of the rainbow and its subtle variations. I may return there in search of the perfect one for Rosalie and Clara for next summer.

The mecca of vintage, Kiliwatch, was in fact disappointing because way overpriced. Once your sense of organization is in place, both Episode and Kiliwatch send one down a sensorial maze, in which one encounters rows of Austrian felted wool jackets (if I ever do get cold, these jackets at 40 euros a pop might be the solution), oversized Norwegian wool sweaters, leather boots, bags, coats and jackets (tried on yet another suede coat that made me feel very chic, but where besides Paris would I ever wear such a thing?), polyester print dresses that remind me of how horrible clothes really were in the 1980s. A tweed skirt with a Missoniesque wavelike weave made in London no less (back when labels were that precise) and a metal buckle in the middle of the waist was truly a classic – but not for me now.