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March 06, 2005
On the youthful discovery of fashion sense and the essence of femininity
"Has anyone ever looked happier? Has anyone ever been more beautiful? Suzy Parker and Cary Grant. She was the first supermodel, anointed by Coco Chanel and Diana Vreeland.
"...Where could I have seen this picture in the year 1957? Certainly not in my own home on Long Island, the home presideed over by mother, who did not believe in fashion, who prided herself on being too smart for it, too serious, above that sort of thing. It must have been in the room of my baby-sitter's daughter, in the house where I went while my mother worked as a legal secretary...
"...The baby-sitter's daughter believed in fashion. She was glamorous. She would have been nineteen that year, newly engaged. Every movement she made was slow and provisional; she was languid by nature, and her two plainer sisters served her. She lay on her bed and smoked cigarettes and slowly turned the pages of magazines. Her sweaters clung to her curvy bosom as if it were a privilege; before going out, she would stand for a long time in front of the mirror making sure the seams were straight on her long, well-muscled legs. She had, below her lip, a beauty mark, which I believe she accented with some kind of pencil. On the top of her dresser, always in disarray, was a collection of items that puzzled and fascinated me: tweezers, tubes, pencils, eyelash curlers, mascara with its magic wand, and in the air a heavy scent of perfume. Dangerous, even in its name: My Sin.
"Although I was supposed to be watching cartoons, I was drawn to her room, to near her as she lay in bed; I understood that she knew something important about being female, something my mother and my pious, no-nonsense aunts didn't know, or had deliberately forgotten, or were keeping from me. I was eight years old, stiff and uncomfortable in my Catholic school uniform, white socks, and navy-blue oxfords. My mother would not allow me to wear straight skirts or shoes with a hint of a pointed toe. Yet when I was in other people's houses, I often looked in magazines (not the ones we had at home, which were Catholic, except for the Saturday Evening Post, which had no information I believed to be of use) for hints on the creation of my future womanly self..."
--Nostalgia by Mary Gordon, Vogue March 2005
Posted by astor at March 6, 2005 02:47 PM