self-care

Lately I find myself looking for clothes that will envelop me, not just to keep me warm, but also to make me feel cared for. I realize that it comes from the need for “self-care,” a buzz word that is going around the media a lot lately, and scholarship as well, to mean a lot of things. Self-care means what it says, quite literally, to take care of oneself first and foremost, before you can take care of others. But it also means that if you don’t take of yourself, no one else will. And that is probably why it has become such a “thing” lately. Many of us can’t afford medical care, let alone therapy, many of us are in abusive relationships, or, at the very least, relationships that do not satisfy our emotional needs, needs which are greater than ever before given the general state of anxiety we live in.

I bought a silk bomber jacket for summer train and bus rides, and I went for a larger size so that it could envelop me.

I bought a boiled wool coat, size medium, for the same reason, so that it could envelop me in a cocoon of security, warmth and comfort. I now rely on clothes to do the work of people.

I came down with a bad case of the stomach flu followed by a strange rash on my arms and legs. I read about mosquito born illnesses and wondered if that was what I had. My last check up lasted fifteen minutes, most of which were spent catching up since I’ve been seeing the same doctor for years. That left very little time for ailments, of which I have quite a few. I might be a hypochondriac, but it IS my annual check up, and it would be nice if there were some concerns about some of them. The only recommendation from my PCP was that I get a massage.

I lay in bed thinking about that diagnosis during this stomach flu/virus thing (self-diagnosis is another trend, worrisome given that we lay people don’t know medicine), and I was angry.

Clothes are not going to help me with my stomach ailments, unless, perhaps, I pile them on top of me and lay still. Then another part of my body starts to get sore. Sigh.

Meanwhile, more alarming statistics about the waste produced by discarded clothing. The New York Times writes that we discard half our body weight in discarded clothing each year. I can well imagine that given the number of bags of clothes I bring to the local charity shop each year. I am not an environmental saint when it comes to clothes acquisitions. My only rule is to keep the purchases to one per week, new clothing that is. Old clothing doesn't count in my mind because I am keeping it from the waste bin by taking it home. But even one piece of new clothing per week adds up to fifty-two per year, which I realize is a lot. 

My excuse is the same: self-care. I tend to (we tend to) buy clothes when we are feeling blue. That's why it's called retail therapy. It's a quick fix. 

I did learn this week from three different people that there is a tailor in my town who does great alterations. It's time to redirect my thoughts and needs, and see if a little time at the tailor will soothe the mind and the body. 

the outer boroughs of New York City

As summer nears its end, I look out the office window at the rain falling on the metal roof on the building across the way. My friend Kate has been documenting buildings of New York's outer boroughs for years on her blog. I highly recommend it if you like looking at wet metal roofs of all kinds, not to mention brick walls, murals, sidewalks, and elegant, wistful writing.

Associative clothing 3: my 80s (90s?) dress

  I'm back in New York City for the usual reasons: check in on the family, go to a museum or two, go to a movie or two, see friends, and, oh yes, attend a baby shower, and of course go ... shopping.  Yesterday, at Beacon's closet on 13th Street,  near the Quad Cinema, in the chaos and pile up of way too many dresses, I found this piece. I had to either leave or buy it, because the line for the changing room was slow, and I had a movie to catch. At $21, it was a take it situation. I did a quick check for stains and rips, it looked good, and so I took it home.

It seems like it might be from the 80s or 90s because it has shoulder pads and a weird dropped waist. I will have to take it in. But otherwise, the pockets are a blessing (all clothes should have pockets, really), and I love the pattern and the fabric (cotton, yeah, all clothes should be machine washable and made of comfortable fabric).  

As I was playing with the poses (what am I doing? who do I think I am? I do have a copy of "The Gentlewoman" magazine in the apartment and I did just see a documentary about the photographer Jay Maisel, but I am getting ahead of myself), I thought about Marlene Dietrich and her upturned head.

 I thought about Joan Crawford in a 1950s midcalf dress.

I have been thinking about way too much lately. Maybe that's normal, given what's going on in the world. New York is not a pleasant place for overthinkers. The amount of noise, smell, and visual stimulation is overwhelming. I can't help but think about the amount of waste as well, as I see so many people walking around with drinks in plastic containers and food in take-out containers. I see trash left on the sidewalk, and way too many stores selling way too many clothes. 

***

I thought I was going to do my mother a favor by helping her get rid of books, but that didn't quite work out as planned. She was disappointed that books were not exchanged for cash, and that you had to give them away. I talked to my friend Kate about this. She just moved and had to get rid of a ton of stuff, and she pointed out that in New York, it's hard to find a bookstore that will actually even take your books. 

So I point this out to my mother: how many new bookstores have popped up in Soho? (ZERO). Meanwhile, Soho is filled with clothing stores, cafes, bars, restaurants, fragrance (?) shops and other kinds of nonsense. 

I am sounding very negative, I know. It might be because there is a lot to be negative about. Thinking about clothes, trying them on and playing with poses are mainly therapy for me. I do other things too, like exercise and work in my garden. I write articles, and do research, so I read a lot. I teach and make students laugh. I watch movies and tv shows. I look at art and sometimes I very amateurishly make art. 

Clothes are both a curse and a blessing. They are part of that overconsumption compulsion of humanity. They also provide comfort in obvious but also less obvious ways. Clothes are where my mother and I meet halfway, because it's difficult to meet halfway in other places. She bought me an overpriced hat at agnes.b after disapproving of the one I was wearing. We will go there together to return it. I could say, "no way am I going there," but, on the other hand, the walk might be pleasant. And I will give her the gaze she needs to perhaps pick something out for herself. 

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

I had forgotten about this photo. Stanley the cat inserted himself in the shot, and that is fine. I am wearing all used clothing, from the blouse to the sweater to the jean culottes (ebay) to the pearl (Brussels flea market). The quilt on the wall dates back to thirty years ago when I first moved to rural New England from NYC where I had bought fabric at one of the few wholesale fabric shops on Broadway that let me buy retail. Now all these shops are gone. I learned to quilt by taking a class in Windsor, Vermont, and used the New York purchased fabric. I will quilt again, it's on the list of all the post-retirement projects.