A few months ago, I called the Style Sisters to a family council. Depending on everyone’s mood, these meetings can be smooth sailing, with everyone doing their best to understand the others, or fractious affairs with some crying, some pinching, some yelling, and others sulking. But something had to be done, and so I drew a deep breath and took my chances. “Listen,” I told them. “Push has come finally […]
We’d had an annoying morning, the Style Sisters and I, initiated by the headache already roaring along before we even opened our eyes. Then we looked outside and discovered that the beautiful spring-like circumstances of the previous few days—blue, blue skies; temperatures in the 60s; a landscape flooded with yellow-white light; tiny, jewel-like crocuses poking up through the tatty brown leftovers of last seasons leaves and grasses—all those refreshing signs […]
This past week, I, along with the Style Sisters (my rag-tag collection of fashion subpersonalities), topped off a lovely morning away from work with a cruise through a large Salvation Army that we had to go right by . . . well, no, we didn’t; we could’ve gone at least three other ways. But we were so close! And it was half-price Wednesday! And we’ve been so very restrained in […]
Dear Ralph: How in the world did you know that I’d just started looking for a parka like this one? Something classy enough to wear to the city, long enough to keep my (excuse my non-French) bum warm, light enough to carry easily if I have to take it off inside a museum or in the hot lower levels of the subway, and warm enough so that I don’t have […]
I wish I could say that I have never looked at another woman and thought “Hah, I look better than she does,” but that would not be true. I’m not proud of the baseness that leads me to enhance my opinion of myself at someone else’s expense, especially concerning an attribute such as appearance, which both morals and manners teach us should be insignificant. But there it is. At least […]
The Heart of the Matter Our first thrifting trip to Brooklyn turned out to be a rather madcap, or perhaps we should say slapstick, affair, full of amusements, delights, near misses, frustrations, and lots of time getting lost and found and lost and found again—exactly what we might have expected, given that against our better judgment, we left Francine, one of the least practical of The Style Sisters, in charge […]
This is our kind of suit alright: trim but relaxed, lively with pleats and little pen-and-ink scribbles. Here’s how we found it: On the way to the grocery to pick up a couple of things after work yesterday, we stopped into Salvation A for a quick whip-through in honor of “Everything-But-One-Color-Is-Half-Price” day (Wednesday in our part of the world). We zipped up, down, and around, nabbed the skirt (7.99 with […]
In full view, but just not where they belonged is the answer for two of these treasures. During a recent tour through the Salvation Army in our town, we spied this gray cotton J. Jill skirt with a light fleecy lining guess where? Sitting in a forlorn little heap on a wire end-cap full of flotsam, at the end of the t-shirt rack and way across the floor from the […]
Early fall here in the northern-ish part of the Left Coast is sort of like late spring: erratic, unsettled, often with chilly mornings and evenings and quite warm temps sandwiched in between. What to wear in such transitional times? Layers, of course. And silk. Because silk breathes, long sleeves protect you from the chill and feel just fine when temperatures climb, too. And although there’s silk and there’s silk, just […]
Look At Those Clothes! 