The blues wears a dress

Good riddance to April!

Only 200+ days left until end of hiatus! Time enough for a little spring, summer and fall cleaning. And time to look at what's in my closet from long ago and question why it hasn't been worn.

Hence the wearing of the blue dress. A beautiful vintage knit that can only be worn with a slip, I found the dress in my favorite shop in Paris that I'd discovered years ago. The shop that has everything in my size and in my style. The shop that carries vintage classic clothes. The shop that is outrageously expensive even before the Euro clobbered the US Dollar.

The first time I was in the shop, a friend who lives there loaned me the money for a coutre silk coat (vintage of course) in browns. Made by Jaques Heim in Paris, it is a splendid polka dotted spring thing. I always receive compliments on it.

I bought the blue dress at the same shop a few years later and never wore it. At first, I chalked it up to my nervousness over it fitting too well (as opposed to not fitting). Rather than delve into that, I rationalized not wearing it by "saving" it to wear it on my first date with Derek Jeter. (Who doesn't like Yankee blue for a first date?) When that wasn't happening any time soon, I decided that I would first wear it when I met Derek Jeter after selling my quirky yet funny comedy script, "My Life With Derek Jeter" (still up for sale or option!). And so on. It has been unworn all these years.

Today, I wore the blue dress to work. Nothing happened. No unwanted stares or raised eyebrows. No wolf whistles or cat calls as I walked to work. Nothing. At the office, one co-worker made sure that I was wearing something underneath it and another said it was something that only I could wear. When pressed, they both said it looked great. The great thing is that I also thought it looked great. (Maybe all that therapy IS working a bit.) Regardless of any of this - it's time to stop saving clothes for an occasion or a person and time to start wearing them for the here and now.

Welcome to May!

Brand new

A friend recently commented that my blog entries didn’t seem to be “me” because in real life I am not as brand conscious as my entries make me out to be.

To be fair, this observation was alluded to in an earlier comment on this blog by an old friend and roommate who remembered that I had my own style back in school while we all made do on very little. So when did the obsession with brands – even if only my blog - happen? I mean I’m not getting paid to drop names like Chanel and Prada and Bottega Veneta (each of which I actually do own and treasure). And try as I might I unfortunately haven’t figured out a way to get more interest in my blog by dropping these names. So what gives?

I think my friend answered her own question as we discussed brands. She mentioned that she recently bought a fantastic pair of jeans at a new Brazilian shop in a trendy part of town. After buying the jeans, however, she wondered whether she had discovered an up-and-coming brand or whether she had just dropped $75 on crap. She realized then that she too was affected by branding.

We all succumb to the lure of branding. Magazines somehow imply that jeans must be Lucky Brand or Number 7 or Baby Phat for us to look good or be in style. Over time and with others wearing those brands, we fall in line and acquire what’s in fashion. (Even I own a pair of Lucky Brand jeans, and I’ve worn Levi’s all my life!) And while my friend bought, wore and loves her new and as yet unknown name brand jeans, she has told several other friends about them and they have purchased a pair themselves. And so starts the trend, and a brand is born.

No matter how we slice it, we all get tied up and branded in some way.

Depression and deprivation

Well April is living up to its promise. After a full week of the stuff, and a rough week it was, I think I've had enough. This would be the time to shop for that bright outfit in an attempt to cheer myself up a bit, but with the hiatus on, I began to wallow more in my depression. Since the week started with my braces getting a new wire (sending me back to the painful place where I can only have liquids), my depression wallowing took on the theme of deprivation.

What to do? Well my therapy session didn't help, since it seemed to focus on others rather than on me. (And I pay for this type of deprivation!) So I thought I'd head over to a Frette sale and get new sheets. Ever since I slept in a boutique hotel in Brighton and ripped apart the bed to find out the name of the sheets, I have pined for Frette sheets. I priced them in San Francisco when I happened upon a store and I couldn't justify the price once asked whether I could launder these in a laundromat. Hard to launder US$800 sheets in a public washing machine, never mind leaving them unattended while running errands.

I thought about this as I headed over to the sale. Buying a washer/dryer was out of the question at the moment due to other things that brought on the depression (such as having to move out of my apartment). I thought I would figure something out, especially since I had to move and perhaps could find a place with a washer/dryer at least in the building. But then I thought of my cat, who is dying (another reason for the depression) and getting sick all over the apartment. Could I trust that the Frette sheets would be out of the firing line of the projectile?

By the time I got to the store, I didn't think about the reasons why I shouldn't buy the sheets. I was ready to buy and be cheered up. Substitute shopping was in full gear and I didn't care. And then the store was closed!

I didn't even bother to find out whether it was my error or a change of venue or what - my week had been that bad. I chalked it up to more of the same. Even my sister's kind email forwarding me the Frette.com details of its sale didn't get me online and ordering. I went home waving my white non-Frette flag in surrender and promptly got highlights in my hair.

Cruel April

Of course we want to shop in the spring! Everything springs anew in the spring so why not our clothes? And the colors - from flowers to easter eggs, the range and diversity rock our world.

For me (and TS Eliot), April represents the cruelest time. It deceives us into thinking that the pastel shades of spring look good on everyone who survived the winter. I'm especially gullible each year since I think I suffer from that deprivation of light depression in the winter, but does this excuse the purchase of way too many soft robin egg blue blouses and light green dresses in spring shopping ventures? Or the bright yellow GAP rain hat? The lilac Banana Republic cardigan?

Thankfully, because of my hiatus, this year I will enjoy my pastels and bright colors only on the flowers.