PEARLS & AMBER

THE WEARING OF HATS

Hats are back.  Last month, big as life, the New York Times said so.

All right--they waffled a tad, and teetered a bit, by allowing the popularity of hats was no where near what it had been in the past, and probably never would be again.  But nonetheless, the article averred, "there clearly has been a resurgence."

The article went on to describe how items like candy colored bowlers had swept out of Sonia Rykiel's shop.  I had to pause here and adjust what I know and love about Sonia Rykiel's fashion design with pink and cherry bowlers.

The article closed with advice as to how to carry off wearing a hat.  "Make it your own," a designer of hats said--

Puhleez.  Of course.  What else is one to do in order to make a hat their own.

I used to wear hats.  To Mass every Sunday when I was growing up, back in the days when if you appeared at the church door sans hat, a piece of Kleenex bobby pinned to your head sufficed.

I loved my Sunday hats. My mother wore hats.  My little sisters wore hats.

We had big, beautiful hat boxes on the closet shelves, where now flat folded sweaters sit.  I don't remember where the sweaters sat when the hat boxes reigned.  I remember how elegant and beribboned those hat boxes were though. 

I'd love to wear hats again.  But it is work to wear a hat--

Hats blow off in the wind.  Hats blow off in the slightest breeze.  Hats blow off standing still. 

Most importantly, hats are ruinous to the hair.  So one must be committed to keeping the thing on all evening. 

It's hard to kiss someone while wearing a hat.  So he sweeps it off, in a moment of reckless passion, and is confronted by your hair.
I have it on the best authority that he doesn't give a damn about the state of your hair at this moment.  But it is difficult for the hat wearer to keep on track at that moment.  Because, the kiss finished, he draws away, looking down at you with...all kinds of beautiful and wordless emotion.
You however, are desperately trying to check the state of your hair in the reflection of his eyes.
He doesn't know this, and interprets the intense stare as meaning his passion is returned.  He moves in for step two.
This may be true love, when even though you have ascertained your hair is as flat as roads in Kansas, you toss beauty to the wind, and sink into step two with him.

Finally, hats are a must indoors on cold winter days.

SHOOT FROM THE SHOE

Okay, I am filled with worries and questions and doubts as to just how effective carrying my pistol on the heel of my shoe could be--

I've always envisioned carrying a pistol, a small, jewel encrusted pistol, in a vintage beaded bag.

I have the beaded bag.  I don't have the pistol.

I don't have the pistol because, OF COURSE I don't believe in owning firearms of any kind.  But I also don't have a cute little pistol because someone informed me, lip curling, that pistols are ineffective if I actually intended using it...for protection, that is.

I didn't dare inform this person that I merely thought of carrying a pistol in a vintage beaded bag as a kind of a hipply irreverent thing to do.  If I was actually carrying an effective kind of gun, well, that might have moved into edgy, and while I admire those women who have the energy to be edgy, I am not one.

But the whole myth was destroyed for me the minute I was informed--it was a stormy day, cold, and very very edgy--that the kind of pistol I had in mind was a silly, girly, indeed useless, piece of equipment.

I see.

So, now comes Lagerfeld's show.  Certainly I stopped at the photos and stared.  My fond notion of owning a pistol?  Would it do it for me if it were on my shoe?  Grinding into the sidewalk, getting chipped and nicked--

And worse yet, looking...SILLY?

God forbid.

SUNNY DAY POLKA DOTS

The latest from fashion--

SUNNY DAY POLKA DOTS ARE OUT.

I didn't know that there was a need to actually mention this.   

God knows I never ever wore polka dots on a sunny day.  It would have been too much.  Polka dots, like so much pastel confetti, all over my body, in the, god forbid, glaring sun?  Shouting to the world just how chirpy I was feeling that day?  Or more likely attempting to allow the world in on my personal malaise?  Because why wear cloying and clingy polka dots, if not to be attempting a too subtle form of statement.

Therefore I am completely confidant that no person--man, woman or child--ever emerged from their home, clad in polka dots, on a sunny day.

Polka dots require rainy weather for their raison d'etre.  Polka dots should only be seen in the rain, anyway, the better to diminish their appalling impact on the senses.  And to add levity to the pitiless gloom of rain.

BRIONI LOSES OUT TO FORD

Aahh well, times change.  Life marches on--

BRIONI has been axed, in favor of...TOM FORD--

For Bond's suits.  That's Bond, James Bond.  I knew you knew that.

I believe in life marching on, but only because I have no choice in the matter, so therefore I am almost at one with Brioni losing out to that perilous Tom Ford.

I remember him from his Gucci days.  I remember his scandalous exit, his brash foray into Hollywood.  I think no one told the worldly Ford that Hollywood is basically a one car town that brooks no new people, especially, god forbid, a fashion person who thinks he has more of a raison d'etre than donating free garments to red carpet moments.

My Brioni experience is personal.  My father bought a Brioni suit for my daughter's wedding.  He bought it because it was a pale green silk suit which was absolutely gorgeous, and it befitted the Grandfather  of the Bride.  He bought it without asking the price....

After shopping we set off for lunch.  It was there he thought to see how much he'd just spent at the very fashionable men's shop....

Since that moment he has thoroughly researched the reasons for the er...priciness of Brioni suits, and still will not allow the price to be discussed in polite company.

Sean Connery's Bond was dressed by Anthony Sinclair whose shop was on Conduit Street.  Anthony Sinclair is no longer with us, so he couldn't be reached for comment--

But all is well.  James Bond is in good hands.  The world is looking out for him, which is a good thing, because for him, our dear dear James, life doesn't march on.

Life, his very busy, very sexy life, continues on and on and on and on and on andonandonandonandon....

Which must certainly delight him, and most definitely delights everyone else.

PLAID

Plaid is in...again.

WHY?

Is there not one person in the fashion industry today who didn't spend time in a Catholic school?  Maybe even a lot of time? 

Or did their time spent either wearing plaid skirts (girls), or looking longingly at them (boys), etch into their designing brain an irrevocable love for plaid? 

And is there an unspoken rule that every five years plaid is brought out again, so that those such as I, who did grow up enduring fourteen years of plaid uniforms, may yet once again be flung back to the days that harkened to sunshine, Popsicles and plaid skirts so faded and ragged that their mothers begged on bended knee to be allowed to replace the offending plaid, even though the uniforms were ridiculously over-priced? 

But how could the girl acquiesce when she was about to go down in the history of her very own convent school as the girl who wore her plaid skirt to such a state of decay, it was enshrined in the chemistry lab for future generation of students to admire?

A victory eroded ever so slightly each season plaid makes a return to the catwalks.