Constant Curiosity | What we wear

"That season we were loaded with pizazz. Earrings of fuchsia and peach. Mind you, peach. And hats. Hats, Hats, Hats, for career girls. How I adored Paris."--Diana Vreeland. 

Although she was no DV, I credit my grandmother in part for my interest in fashion and beauty.  She was always known as "Nana," not Granny or Grandma, had a closet full of evening gowns and treacherous high heels; she was in her 70's when I got married and she wore an ecru lace sheath dress, champagne colored 3/4 gloves, high-heeled mules and a big picture hat.  I wore a home-made empire waist "granny" gown, with a big picture hat.  You can't pay for that kind of irony.

At any rate, I have always loved clothes, shoes, and adornments of any kind, except possibly those scratchy yellow party dresses my sisters and I had to wear when we visited Nana; our pedal pushers and Keds would just not do.  When we went to town, we always wore our little striped sleeveless dresses. 

I recall even wearing cotton gloves once. 

My mother, who had once wanted to be a fashion designer, was no slouch in the style department.  And my Dad wore Pendleton shirts with silk scarves tucked inside the collar (to keep his neck warm, of course.) 

So of course, I jumped at the chance to see the new film Diana Vreeland:  the eye has to travel all about the legendary fashion editor of Harper's Bazaar, editor-in -chief of Vogue magazine and finally a consultant to the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

What makes Mrs. Vreeland so amazing was that she had a natural eye for beauty and style--she was no beauty herself and had no real formal education, yet in her surety and audacity she became the most feared and revered fashion trend-setter of the 20th century.  She is credited with "discovering" Lauren Bacall and promoting Twiggy and famously said "The bikini is the most important thing to happen since the atom bomb."

                                                                      

"The only real elegance is in the mind; if you've got that, the rest really comes from it."  --Diana Vreeland.

Constant Curiosity | Wish Books

When I was little, maybe 7 or 8, I liked nothing better than to lie on the living room floor in a sunny spot and pore through the Walter Drake catalog.  We lived way out in the country and the nearest small town was nine miles away, so a wish book opened a whole world of amazing stuff unknown to my young self.  No money was no problem; dreaming was enough. 

I like the self-contained nature of catalogs; shiny paper cabinets of curiosities; treasures yet to be discovered.   The delicious anticipation when a new one comes...sit down, have a cookie and a cup of tea and just turn the pages.  Like being in the best kind of bubble.  Who needs Calgon?

One of my all time favorites is The Metropolitan Museum of Art catalog.  It's not the same as visiting the museum, but imagining the exhibits that inspired the beautiful objects contained within can be very diverting. 

If you sign up for a Harrods catalog, the form has a nice list of titles: Prince, Princess, Viscount, Viscountess, Wing Commander, His Royal Highness, Her Royal Highness, etc. in a pull-down menu for your convenience.

Fortnum and Mason, famous purveyors of hampers full of goodies for Christmas and other occasions, doesn't offer a catalog, but one can subscribe to their various magazines (online only, alas.)

 

As with Fortnum and Mason, the Internet has rendered catalogs somewhat redundant, even though, according to the National Mail Order Assn., some 20 billion catalogs are mailed each year (at least a million end up at my house.)  Ease of ordering and all; instant gratification takes too long.

That's not really what a wish book is for, at least in my view; the sentimental name sort of says it all--you can wish for something you never knew existed and never knew you could want or need.   You can let your imagination fly to parts unknown or to well-remembered places:  journeying via catalog can be a great way to armchair travel.

Constant Curiosity | Hunting & Gathering

A few years ago, I decided that owning a whole lot of plain old books wasn't enough (this was before e-book readers came out) and that I had to own first editions and even autographed first editions.  I think  this particular obsession was an offshoot of other collecting enthusiasms plus that old treasure hunting lust, that took me to a local thrift store.  While browsing books, (and why not?) I happened upon an autographed, first edition copy of The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde  in almost new condition. 

Well.  I was like a duck on a junebug.  A big juicy junebug.   Then came research on first editions, first state, second state, number of printings and a whole arcania of terminology and information that I never knew existed. 

Since I do nothing by half, I not only looked into identification and price guides, but also read books by other collectors:  Used and Rare by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone and of course, fiction on book collecting such as John Dunning's Cliff Janeway mystery series.  It was all fascinating and kept me happily busy for a year or so. 

Finally, I had had plenty of fun and was able to go on to collecting other things.  But I did ask myself: does owning more than two of anything make one a collector?  Or is it a desire to own more than two of anything?  When does the hunting and gathering gene kick in, causing one to become a devotee of ebay and estate sales and second-hand (aka antique) shops?   Is it a trip to the bookstore or library to study one of the many antiques and collectibles identification and price guides?  Is it the need to watch Antiques Road Show on PBS every week?  Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes.

Actually, I've decided that it's probably not a good idea for me to delve too deeply into my own collecting habits, for fear of inviting comparisons to the famous Collyer brothers of New York.   It's still a lot of fun, though, and feeds my habit of research, the need to know all about whatever it is I'm interested in at the time.  And that's when I'm glad the profession I'm in chose me.

Constant Curiosity | Oh look, a duck!

Hello all and welcome to my blog.  They say curiosity killed the cat, but since I'm not a cat, I'm not too worried.  I am worried (just a little) about how to boil down all the interesting things I'm interested in and make them interesting enough for others to read about them.   

O.k., enough worrying.  I like books and art and music and movies and theater, and many, many other things.   When I read a book or see a film I invariably get curious about something or someone in the book and have to look it up.  I understand that one of Amazon's newest Kindles gives viewers a way to look stuff up in IMDB (Internet Movie Database) while watching the film on your Kindle in case you wonder where you've seen that actor before.  My own Kindle Fire offers word definitions at a touch as one reads.   It's a boon to the curious, but that's where the duck comes in.  

To my easily piqued curiosity and equally distractable nature a duck signifies for me yet one more random thing that has caught my attention.  I even know a quote about ducks:  "How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks" says Lord Peter Wimsey in Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers.

I'm lucky I work where I do and do what I do, but it's sort of a blessing and a curse, since one thing invariably leads to another.  I had to quit looking at old newspaper microfilm because reading all the articles other than the one I had been looking for was just too fascinating.  I found out one time that Oscar Wilde had actually visited Stockton.  The description of his outfit was quite vivid.  Something about brown velvet trousers and a big green floppy tie. 

These sorts of occasions make me long for the ability to move around in time the way characters in these books & films do: The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, Time and Again by Nora Roberts, films like Somewhere in Time, The Philadelphia Experiment and Time After Time, starring a young Malcolm McDowell (as H.G. Wells) and an equally young Mary Steenburgen.  David Warner played Jack the Ripper.  In case you were curious.

Well, you get the picture about what my various themes might be...oh look! A rabbit! (Harvey, 1950, starring James Stewart) but wasn't Harvey really a Pooka, a mythological being...sorry gotta go look something up.  See you next time.