FEAR AND CLOTHING

Another year almost gone - yesterday was Christmas, and it was a lovely one. The house all decorated albeit with stacks of stuff lining the walls like a neat almost hoarder. Most of it was covered with silver or red fabric, and the silver tree with my favorite decorations atop the one stack of plastic bins. If you kept your eyes to the east, north and west sides of the dining room as well as the table, you'd be OK. And by you I mean me. Steve made the dinner, while cookie exchange cookies from group were the dessert. Eleni contributed pastitsio and it was so delicious I think she outdid herself. Everyone looked festive and Maria came too which added great sparkle. Roger dropped by before dinner and Helmut after, for extra notes of festivity and fun. It was a sunny Christmas day, but today is gloomy and gray - the perfect day to stay in, write thank yous and keep after the constant mess and visual cacophony. My mom is somewhat stranded at LGA so I'll be a little nervous all day until I know that she's safely back to Naples. I somehow stayed up until 4 last night going from movie to movie. The best part of all is having my son under the roof.

Fear and Clothing Unbuckling American Style by Cintra Wilson - The cover got me, the title almost put me off, and I expected to be bored. But it didn't work out that way - Cintra writes about fashion for the New York Times, and she has that long article way of writing. However, when the long article is about fashion and style which are always pop cultural touchstones for me, it works. Especially when the writer is funny, smart and snarky in a mostly good way. She looked at fashion and style all over America, and with an open mind. She searches out people with unusual or detailed looks and she'll never put anyone down for how they dress. Her heart and mind are open to all the different ways that people cover and adorn their bodies, and toward the end of the book she almost started the discussion about anything goes. Which means that everything is in fashion always (if it's in the stores then it's fashionable?) Karlo Steel has an archive of curated fashion magazines in his walk-in closet, and she asked him what happened. "I think there's too many people invited to the party. Too many designers, Too much of everybody doing everything, bringing everything back, all the time."  

Which for me means that everything I'm saving and can't let go is all good. Half of it is in a pile for remakes - where I'd supposedly turn this into that and wear it or carry it. Because I like the fabric, like to sew, like to transform. Maybe next year?

THE GREEN ROAD * PRIMATES OF PARK AVENUE

I've just started to read a book about fashion, and it got me to thinking and pondering and wanting to blog about it and me and my fashion history which I am not calling "so-called" even though I could. It starts before you were born with the pictures of your grandmothers that look old fashioned before you realize that those one off photos taken at photography studios were all about fashion. Then you're born and it's about how your mom dresses you. Fashion continues through school years when either mom or you prevail in all matters of  your personal style. Mom and female relatives are older, but do they really have a personal style? Vogue magazine is always on the family room counter alongside Life, Time and Reader's Digest. Two newspapers fed into our house, and we only shopped at Saks, Bonwit's, Hudson's Downtown or Northland and Jacobsons. Looking back, it was always there, unspoken. I've already got the label, so I must have said something about it before this (I wonder if I applied the Fashion label to the flannel nightgown I so humbly and proudly displayed here some years ago.) I can never remember whether the period goes before or after the parenthesis. 

The Green Road by Anne Enright - Whoa - talk about your mother issues. Rosaleen is the matriarch of the Madigan family, whose individual stories make up the chapters in this readable novel. Make no mistake, though, this woman is all there all the time, pulling the strings whether she knows it or not. Yes, this is the cover, but the author's Booker Prize and the flyleaf offering up Ireland are what got me. Don't say I didn't tell you.
Primates of Park Avenue a memoir by Wednesday Martin - First of all, despite the cover, this is not chic-lit. It's too long, with long long descriptions of animals in the wild and how they behave. But the moms of the Upper East Side aren't animals in the wild - they are humans with a code. The author was determined to break into their ranks however conflicted she was about doing so. She found out what we already know - that people are people no matter where they are and how they look. What she didn't tell us about were the kind and nice moms who were in the shadows of the cool ones, and who would have been there for her if she'd only thought to seek them out. I know they were there.

THE STATE WE'RE IN

The State We're In Maine Stories by Ann Beattie - It's been awhile since I've read short stories, so although the secondary title was Maine Stories, and my last go round with Maine was Olive Kitteridge, I decided to give these a try. So happy I did, because these are modern stories, loosely connected if one is paying attention, and each one is nice to read. If I had time, it would almost be enjoyable to map out the characters to see who was related to who and how, and who knew who and how and when. It would be like putting together one of those logic brain teasers I used to love. But, I don't and I didn't, and I can't really, because as I write this blog in my favorite but most crowded room in the house, the new iron is sputtering because I forgot to unplug it yesterday, papers are unfiled on the desk, and sewing projects both wanted and possibly unwanted are piled up on the chairs and in the closet. Let alone the crochet hooks and yarn calling my name, let alone the beading downstairs that would love to have my attention and creativity, let alone the Christmas cards to be written, addressed, stamped and sent with or without a family photo that I would love to include but probably won't. And that's just the tip of the iceburg! (What does that even mean?) And I'm done here.But I'm not! I wanted to compliment the author on these great stories that start out a little rough because you don't know what's going on yet, but you want to, because you want to be in the book because in the book is where the most enjoyment is. At least for me. So thank you, Ann, I liked it. I'm still wondering if every single one of these 16 stories connect. I think they do, but for a few of them, you'd have to be super vigilant for the clues.