A Little Friday Night Music

It's been a busy week at work, and when I'm trying to focus and meet a deadline, I put in my plugs and enjoy some mood-setting music. Pink Martini makes me wish we could still get dressed up and go out to dinner clubs and dance halls. Perhaps they still have them in Naples? If you'd like to see what she's singing about, go here.

Yellow is the New Red

For my 200th blog post, I'd like to ask you, my dear reader, a Valentine's Day question. What is the most romantic thing you have ever done, or someone has done for you? The person with the best response will get a special gift from me. I can't tell you what it is because that would spoil the surprise, and who doesn't love surprises? So just leave me a comment at the bottom of this post. Go ahead, we'll wait right here.

Meanwhile, I'd like to send my friend Leann, who prefers yellow to red, a little Valentine's Day card. Look how the stars shine for you.

The Romance of Hats

“If we wore more hats, we would not have so much Prozac.” Milliner Blythe Savage once said. It’s a very superficial statement that oversimplifies a complex problem, but worth considering if you analyze the decline of hat wearing and behavior in America.

The film industry has known for years how to create drama through the use of wardrobe. Lena Olin in The Unbearable Lightness of Being put on (or took off) her hat to create sexual tension. In the opening scenes of Titanic, the camera fell in love with Kate Winslet when she tilted her hat-bearing head upward to survey the enormous ship. Most of us are familiar with the scene in Casablanca when Humphrey Bogart kisses Ingrid Bergman goodbye, both of them wearing hats.

We have all seen old photographs of our grandparents and great-grandparents. If the picture was taken outside, in a crowd, at a train station, or at a sporting event: the men are inevitably wearing hats, and they look tremendously handsome. In 1900, both men and women would change their hats according to the activity or occasion. Etiquette articles suggested that it was improper to leave your home without a hat and gloves.

At the turn of the last century, it was taken for granted that men, regardless of age, race, religion or ethnic heritage, wore hats in public. Industry groups such as the Hat Style Council determined how many hats a “well-dressed” man ought to own (16). While not every man who owned a hat was considered fashionable, the public penalties for not wearing one were enough to ensure that every man, rich or poor, owned at least one. Aside from being hissed at and insulted, strangers might think a hatless man crazy or drunk. Whether one wore a hat for protection from the elements, as a part of a uniform, for religious or social rituals, or to complete an ensemble: it is unquestionable that hats have played a major role in American History.

In his book Hatless Jack: the president, the fedora, and the history of American style, Neil Steinberg tries to pinpoint the exact time and place that hats became obsolete. Many people credit or blame President Kennedy for the hat’s demise because he went to his inauguration hatless. This is only partially true. He wore a black, silk top hat to the event, but took it off to deliver his inaugural address. The Hat Style Council was challenged with getting the president to wear hats, and getting Khrushchev to stop wearing hats. Positioning these two gentlemen against each other, even in the act of wearing or not wearing a hat, suggests that the wearing of a hat means something.

In his book Within The Context of No Context, George Trow discusses a scene from his childhood. As a young boy, he would wait and watch for his father walking home from the train station each night. As his father’s figure approached, young George would become more excited. His father would come into the house, take off his fedora and place it on George’s head. Mr. Trow told his son that it would someday be a necessity that he too own a fedora and have a job in the city. He describes it as a right of passage into adulthood, a passage that the now adult George Trow cannot access because men don’t wear fedoras anymore. He further laments that if he were to wear one, it would only be with irony.

Will we ever get the romance of hats back?

Seduction II, in Poetry

A fragment of T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Robert Herrick's Delight in Disorder might illustrate what, for some men, is seductive. Do they?

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .

Delight in Disorder

A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in cloathes a wantonnesse:
A Lawne about the shoulders thrown
Into fine distraction:
An erring Lace, which here and there
Entralls the Crimson Stomacher:
A Cuffe neglectfull, and thereby
Ribbands to flow confusedly:
A winning wave (deserving Note)
In the tempestuous petticote:
A careless shoe-string, in whose tye
A see a wilde civility:
Doe more bewitch me, then when Art
Is too precise in every part.

Seduction

“Women always get it wrong.” my husband informs me. And yet, miraculously, the human race has managed to survive and prosper. He assures me that seduction isn’t about fishnet stockings, high heels and face paint (I’ve never been overly fond of the Dynasty image of women, myself).

The Fashion Institute of Technology (or FIT) in New York currently has an exhibit called simply, Seduction. While every era seems to have its own ideas about clothing and physical attraction, are there any prevailing themes that we can discover? Is seduction strictly subjective to each individual? Is it as much about what we conceal as what we reveal? Tell me, what IS seductive in or on a woman?



























Corset circa 1903


























Jane Régny evening dress circa 1931, France


























Red organza evening gown, circa 1950

























John Galliano for Christian Dior, black leather circa 2000, France

























Sárka Sisková evening dress circa 2008, Czech Republic

Glittering Trees

All the trees in our neighborhood are crusted with ice that glitters in the sun. This one was calling softly to me from across the street. A line from Lucy Maud Montgomery's poem A Winter's Day describes it best:
A glistening splendor crowns the woods.

Winter Berries

I'm working from home today because we have a lovely winter mix of snow and freezing rain, but I couldn't resist taking a picture of these berries crusted with snow.

A Little Spring in Winter

For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter that only by wintering through it all will your heart survive.
Rilke

Every year when the first frost hits, I usually dump out my herb pots and store them in the shed. This year, the lavender was still going strong, so I decided to see if they could last the winter. I've been waking up to lavender blooms every morning, which makes the weather predictions that much more bearable.

Tout le Monde

When I was in high school, my girlfriends and I listened incessantly to Kate Bush, The Smiths and Depeche Mode. We didn't know anyone who wore a babushka. We also didn't know anyone named Kashka from Bagdad or anywhere else for that matter. We didn't blog, twitter, flickr, peek or google, and we certainly hadn't heard of instant messaging.

But today ... today my sister Carol shared this wonderful video with me on Facebook, and I find that tout le monde is at my fingertips.