Clara and her friend Jasmine visit WRJ

Clara is home from NYC for a couple of days. "Home" is not really accurate anymore since she prefers to call NYC home. But oh well. Her sister's graduation was enough of a reason to leave the city for a couple of days. She is here with her artist friend Jasmine, and both prefer to wear vintage clothes, so naturally, I drove them to the vintage capital for the world, White River Junction, Vermont.

After lunch at the Tucker Box Café, 

we headed to the newly opened Schultz Library, associated with the Center for Cartoon Studies. 

                                                                                                                  

Then a little visit to Revolution where Clara found this Issey Miyake knock off...

Her friend Jasmine also picked up a couple of dresses. I found a pair of linen shorts, oversized and super comfy. What a great way to spend the day!

Musings on negative consumption during a weekend in Portland Oregon

I was in Portland Oregon for a conference on comics. Took an afternoon off to explore the city. The sunny weather was too inviting. Walked around the food and “craft” stalls at the Saturday market by the river. The merchandise looked all too familiar. We have the same crap on the East Coast and on the banks of the Saone in Lyon, and every other city that opens its sidewalks to merchandise on the weekends.

Wandered into a vintage store on Stark Street,  Decades Vintage. The two guys running it explained that their clothes spanned a couple of centuries, including a dress from the 1850s, which was hanging along with some other clothes, high up away from the destructive grasps of the “mall girls.” Mall girls. They walk in, look at all the merchandise, try on a couple of outfits, have their picture taken so they can put it on Facebook, and they’re gone.

I picked out a pair of clip on earrings for my mother. I find that vintage shops are a great source for those. But I had no interest in acquiring a new garment, so I looked with disinterest.

I am now going through a phase that I will call “wearing down my clothes.” I just want to get rid of stuff. I want to deplete my inventory. 

I bought a few tee-shirts to give as gifts, and tried on shoes, knowing that, again, I really could get rid of some at this point. Not another pair of comfortable but funky walking shoes! The one good thing that came out of the indifferent quest for shoes was that a saleswoman in a downtown store pointed me to a more residential neighborhood on the other side of the interstate that was within walking distance. It’s called the Alphabet district, because the streets are ordered alphabetically (the sister shoe store was located between Hoyt and Irving). It was a beautiful neighborhood, with Queen Anne houses painted in all kinds of colors, and rhododendra bushes that were just done blooming. The only thing missing was the garden cat lying on a walkway or sitting on a wall.

After trying on many pairs of Danskos, Naturalistas and all their comfy cohorts, I walked out with nothing, except the satisfaction that I didn’t feel the need to buy another pair of shoes.

On the walk back to my hotel, however, I passed the Doc Martens store, and thought, why not? I tried on a pair of patent leather black sandals, and for some reason, they were satisfying an inner urge to own a bad assed pair of shoes for a change. The sales staff, young, coiffed with the locks of hair brushed over his eyes or, as in the case of a woman originally from Nova Scotia, bright pink dyed hair, tattooed, bejeweled with piercings, ogled me as I walked around the shop with those sandals. I asked them whether they were going to have a good hard laugh once I had left the store. The man with the hair over his eyes replied, “why would we do that?” And I explained about the age difference, and how perhaps a woman my age looked ridiculous in Doc Martens. They reassured me that I looked great in them, which of course, they have to say to all their customers.

I recall that Doc Martens came of age in the 1980s, when I was their age. I wanted to tell them about laughter and hegemony, that he who laughs at another person is exercising power over that person. But I’m not sure who has the power in a Doc Martens store. The young set the style, but the old have the money.

The next morning, while waiting for the light rail to the airport that never showed up, it finally occurred to me that one of the passenger categories when selecting your fare at the ticket machine is “honored citizens.”

Hum. I wonder how they came up with that? Instead of seniors of course. But that right there encapsulates Portland utopian mentality. A Youtube clip of the tv show “Portlandia ” has the male protagonist sing that Portland is stuck in the ‘90s. Walking around you really get a sense that people here are living in a time warp. I’m thinking any decade that you’re nostalgic for. It’s all good. You can even choose to live in the 1850s, and wear that dress from the vintage store on Alder, Washington or Stark, I can’t remember which.

A young couple waiting for the light rail to the airport that never showed informed me that it was running really late. The young woman was rotund, he smallish with the ubiquitous baseball cap. As I walked away, back to the hotel where I was going to hop into a taxi, because time was pressing even in this timeless place, it occurred to me that rotund women were plentiful out here, along with the super fit on their bikes. Your body type doesn’t matter. So, pick your decade, pick your body type, and live slowly. That’s how it goes out here in the Pacific Northwest.

Vintage color palette for spring

The fits and starts of spring here in Northern New England necessitate a search for it elsewhere in space and time. I found it in a photo from last year, when Clara and I were together in Paris for a couple of days. Needless to say, I LOVE that jacket! Vintage store was on or near the rue de Turenne.

ode to old cashmere

Source: retrovintagemodstyle

A few weeks ago, a British friend invited me to dinner. She is really truly English, as in calm yet assertive, absolutely not fussy yet classy. She always wears an old wool scarf around her neck, which for some reason makes her look really put together and ready to face anything.

   
I feel as though I can only mimic other people's styles in order to present myself to the world. So, during these unusually cold early spring weeks, I've been throwing my old cashmere scarf around my neck before leaving the house so that maybe I too can face anything.

This is not an original thought. Here is a quote from another blogger: "Scarves are a must-wear in my opinion during Fall/Winter, not only because they are ideal for the cool temperatures, but also because they can 'spice up' any outfit. Available in different colors, patterns, and materials, scarves are an item that never goes out of style within the passing of time." 

I can only add that cashmere scarves can be worn in any season. They protect your neck from the cold and the wind, and they protect your mind from everything else.

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!