Category Archives: fashion

Aug2

It’s all smoke and mirrors,

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sometimes, quite literally. Why are we so afraid to express ourselves? I’ve always been a maximalist. Really, from the time I was a little kid. I was in grade school or junior high when my best friend nicknamed me “the perpetual arranger.” Keep rearranging it until it relaxes you and tickles your fancy.

I have also never had any budget for decoration. I’ve been the thrift queen since high school, shopping at St. Vincent de Paul, garage sales, and the Goodwill for clothes and jewelry and lamps and rugs and cute little chairs. And when I am not wearing the green velvet jacket I don’t hang it in the closet. What a waste that would be. I drape it over the shoulders of a chair. I hang necklaces on a lamp, I pin found feathers and postcards from friends to the lampshade. I’ll drop today’s beach stone finds in the bathroom sink. A friend once asked me how I clean the sink with the stones in the way…and don’t they get toothpaste on them? I responded “they love it.” Who told you the rules?

Hutton Wilkinson says the worst thing a house can be is boring. I couldn’t agree more. Design mentor Alexandra Stoddard calls taupe boring, “…the insidious, evil, creeping taupe.” Taupe. Who needs it? Just say no. Let your house express you. Don’t you want to walk out to your kitchen in the morning and be delighted? Come home from your yearly physical and feel renewed? Let your soul play and sing here – here – where it is for you. One of my life goals is to become increasingly brave and eccentric – and embellish everything. Stand right there a minute…

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Jun12

work like a woman

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Okay. New week, new rabbit hole. Same theme: what do fashion, storytelling and rest have in common? I’m going to be a social archeologist until I grok this equation thoroughly. I’m certain there is some pearl of useful wisdom in here that I can build my empire on. Or at least get inspired to get out of the chair…

Enter Mary Portas, Habitat Voyeur. The creator of the kindness economy, Queen of Shops, considered a conscious entrepreneur, and dare I add, wizardess extraordinaire? Let’s just say, she gets it. She came from the future back to rescue us from ourselves and walk us into a new paradigm. We need a new paradigm. Sustainable. Inclusive. And nothing if not hopeful.

Very few people know that my teenage years revolved around fashion. My parents indulged my obsession by letting me go to finishing school on Saturdays during junior high. In addition to the cost involved, it meant my Mother drove downtown, about 20 miles each way from our suburban home, to drop me off and then again to pick me up eight hours later. That’s where I learned fencing, among other (mostly useless) skills. I loved it.

Around this same time it happened that my sister’s piano teacher had a daughter who produced shows at the big network affiliate in Detroit. Mrs. Hanes suggested her daughter use me as a model for The Jackie Crampton Fashion Hour, which followed the mid-day news on ABC. I guess you could say I was “discovered” in my own home. It began a bit of a teenage dream career, and before long I was making better money than I’d ever earn again the rest of my life. I worked as a model and then as a dresser and fashion assistant for Saks Fifth Avenue, and then for Belle Jacob Wigs. At the time they were one of the largest wig manufacturers in the world. I fell in love with wigs. I found I could create an entirely new persona on a daily basis. They really are an art medium all their own.

My first semester of college was in fashion illustration at The Detroit School of Arts and Crafts (now the College for Creative Studies.) But long before that I got in trouble in grade school for making anatomically correct paper dolls. It hadn’t occurred to me not to draw them correctly. Duh. By high school in the 60’s, where the girls were required to wear dresses, I was shopping at St. Vincent de Paul and other charity shops and taking the clothes apart and reconfiguring them to make outrageous outfits – but they had skirts! I was born this way, apparently. I still design clothes in my dreams. I often get up and draw them so that I won’t forget them. I have designed entire lines of shoes – none of them brown. Decades ago I designed a line of attachable pockets that you could mix and match and move from garment to garment. And a series of baggy linen tops with subtle tarot symbols embroidered on them. I’d love to wear them all.

But it was a different era. And I was learning to survive in a chaotic and sometimes violent home. A career in fashion was not to be. Mary Portas exemplifies the business woman I would like to support. Well, second only to Estella, perhaps. I do love trouble…

Mary Portas, Work Like A Woman, A Manifesto For Change, https://amzn.to/4edEGkN

Jun3

the only egg in the room…

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…besides my head. Pardon me, I couldn’t resist. If God is in the details, Fiona de Lys is an angel incarnate. Here I am, still in wonder. Join me in my rabbit hole this morning? What do fashion, storytelling and rest have in common? Let’s visit Fiona and have a look ’round and see what we can learn about living a creative life…a deep, soul quenching life of peace.

Her home tells a story, a “narrative” as she calls it. She is telling us her personal story – about what she loves about her home, color, and her work. She can’t separate those out, nor should she. Let’s face it, our homes are at once metaphor and expression. Fiona was being restored as the space was being restored. When life’s changes (whether chosen or forced) require a move we must slow down and listen.

When she talks about the home needing to breathe she is describing a physical characteristic of many European and northern African houses. The lime finish on the walls is an organic material, a kind of chalky plaster. The climate is not friendly to gypsum, or what we call drywall. In her stairwell you see it’s natural state before any color is added. It’s a soft, mottled finish. And it does contract and expand with the temperature and humidity.

She likely added solid flooring. That is a fairly new addition there. Many old English country houses are open to the ground underneath the floorboards or bricks. Most of them do not have central heating systems. That is why you see doors on every room; they closed the heat of the fire in to stay warm. If they are listed (on the historic registry) they were built long before these amenities had been invented. Having a “cooker”, or Aga, later became the only source of heat other than open fires. Notice the desk in her dining room is almost as old as the U.S. How is it that we are not humbled by how much we have to learn and how much we take for granted? I’m convinced that if we possess any emotional intelligence at all it came from our ancestors through our genes. But I digress…

This home is full of interesting details and ideas. I’d love to hear what you noticed and liked. Fancy trying any of them?

I am new to the Amazon Affiliate program, and have yet to figure out the technology of adding a section to the blog. Any link from inside the YouTube video is from the sponsor, in this case, Homeworthy. The links following here provide me with a small commission should you make a purchase. Let’s start with the shoes. I have these! They look just like the Amazon essentials I love, found here: https://amzn.to/3X7y3e0 They’re comfortable and I wear them often. William Morris coffee table book for inspiration: https://amzn.to/4c2om4B, Green Kimono: https://amzn.to/4aEln1a

May29

Tchotchke City here we come…

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The year was 1966. My Mom took me to Macy’s in New York for school clothes and we bought Betsey Johnson paper mini-dresses…I was obsessed. I asked her if she could paint matching flowers on my face for the first day of junior high. About halfway through the day the Vice-Principal grabbed me by the arm with a stern look and nodded me toward his office. I was told in no uncertain terms to walk home for lunch and return without that stuff on my face.

My Mother was quite surprised when I walked in the door just after noon. She wasn’t expecting me. When I told her why I was home she was livid. She marched me right back into the Principal’s office – but I wasn’t in trouble – HE WAS! I wore painted flowers on my cheek every day after that. It wouldn’t be long before I asked my Dad to contribute: he gave up a pair of black socks so I could cut them into strips and hem the edges and my friends and I would wear them around our right upper arms. Black armbands signified our protest of the Vietnam war. My life as troublemaker had begun…and my wild parents sanctioned it.

Gil-Scott Heron told us the revolution would not be televised. Bess Myserson told Mrs. Smith that she didn’t have to buy war. And Betsey Johnson gave us fuchsia pink and lime green mini skirts. I was born this way, baby!

Suffice it to say Betsey Johnson has been a personal icon for over five decades now. I was in my 20’s when a roller skating friend came over to help bake cookies and declared my home “Tchotchke City.” Apparently there was a lot of stuff. Once again, light years ahead of my time (okay, a couple decades) I was a self proclaimed maximalist. I loved it when McDonalds started making Happy Meals. I collected the toys and proudly lined them up on the kitchen windowsill. Like my parents before me, I was a child with a child…in case I needed an excuse.

Betsey did not need an excuse. She never lost her playful spirit through codependency, as far as I can guess, because she didn’t have to. It was another influence, Virginia Woolf, who so wisely said, “Money justifies what would otherwise be frivolous.” I was young and my parents were still quite affluent and I had no idea of hardship. Not consciously, anyway. Life was still a lot of fun.

When did life become not-so-fun? I do know the answer to that question. I would never go back. That’s a saga that would span more than fifty years (so far,) and I am only now beginning to unravel the complexities of my life. I will say, if I have anything worthwhile to share as we venture forth, it’s that we must learn to live in the contradictions.

Last week I asked you to join me on a little adventure, to explore the connection between fashion, storytelling and sleep…and then I had a bout with illness. Seems I have to factor that in to my enthusiastic (and often unrealistic) time goals. Okay. But I am fascinated by the idea of what motivates us, how we treasure our creative spark as long as we live, and why. Do we lose our mojo because we get old, or do we get old because we lose our mojo? You don’t need me to answer that, do you?!

Let’s change sleep to rest and re-visit the concept of rest as conscious resistance, as withdrawal from the culture and our learned dissatisfaction. Let’s re-frame some of this curious exploration and learn to live in the questions – but let’s keep going. We owe this to ourselves, to get to the healing. Let’s honor that inner child and take her out to play…

Betsey Johnson Earrings: https://amzn.to/3KriCFG

May24

Peace and thank you

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My Mother never ever complained. About anything. She would famously say, “there’s nothing wrong with me” when we kids would corner her. We could see the pain on her face. Then she’d say, “there’s a hitch in my giddalong…” or, “the only thing wrong with me is that my children are trying to find something wrong with me.” Every so often she’d finally admit to a headache. I don’t know how she did it. She had five very spoiled children, 6 if you count my Dad, and most certainly many mornings had a hangover. As she aged her hands began to cramp up and become crippled with arthritis like her fathers had.

I am not my Mother. Try as I might to emulate her talent and tenacity, I whine. Regularly. I’m not proud. But today I have a hitch in my giddalong, both physically and mentally. Nothing is really wrong, but somethin’ ain’t right. Let’s just say it’s been a week. I began this week of writing most enthusiastically, setting out to explore the common denominator between fashion, storytelling, and sleep.

I think I do know the connection – it’s creativity, of course. But when I don’t get enough sleep I am anything but creative. Surly comes to mind. Coffee and Morning Pages certainly help. As I’ve talked about since I began this blog over 12 years ago now, Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages practice has saved my life, and certainly my sanity. When I don’t feel like writing – or think I have anything interesting going on, I may write stupid trivia, but I write. Some days I can barely think, and I might start by “reporting” to myself, the weather, the night’s holdings, any plans for the day, all of my frustrations, what I’m most surly about, and eventually listing things I am grateful for – even if I don’t feel grateful. Sometimes I can write myself free; sometimes I can’t. By free, I mean through a change of mental state, from anxiety or perfectionism to optimism and more creativity. It’s an invisible door that I have to find by feel.

But the real goal is always peace. Creativity is the how. It’s how I get to peace. It’s how I shift out of fear and toward expansion, possibility, and hope. It’s how I re-member myself. And that, quite simply is what fashion, storytelling and sleep have in common. Fashion, design, architecture, color – the ideas of others that excite and inspire me. Storytelling, mine or others, that incite curiosity and invoke my sense of human-ness, of belonging. And sleep, even if it wasn’t enough…dreams or nightmares, rife with the potential for more. These simple elements get me up, curious about what the day might hold, moving forward.

Ever forward, toward peace and thank you.

May20

Coco Chanel’s Tarot Cards

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What does fashion, storytelling, and sleep all have in common? This week I’m hoping you will join me on a little curiosity journey. I wish to explore some of the homes of artists, beginning today with the New Orleans home of Debra Shriver. I am also going to explore our personal development using our intuition, or psychic abilities. AND THEN, because I cannot separate these things in my own mind – I think we will discover the common denominator here. I believe there is an integral link that creative thinking has with intuition, or psychic awareness. Furthermore, I not only believe they are all part of the same function, but entirely dependent on one another. And, I am also convinced that our very survival depends upon us recognizing this. As it happens, this awareness is also intricately connected to our sense of safety, physically and psychically, and to our ability to rest and relax. They are all components of freedom, and I want more of that.

If you will indulge this exploration with me this week, I believe we will all feel better about ourselves a few days from now. Ready?

Mar11

“terribly, terribly lucky”

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People often assume I have money. I don’t. Actually I qualify for government assistance as I now live below the poverty line. I’m not ashamed of that, nor proud. It just is.

I grew up with some affluence, and was fortunate enough to attend a private high school, Kingswood School at Cranbrook, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. My name, along with the other sixty-two girls in my graduating class, is carved into a wooden panel in the assembly hall. If you’ve heard me talk about that experience, you have heard me say that it was “the real Hogwart’s.” It was a magical time for me. For starters, I got to leave home. Not only could I fill my senior schedule with art classes, but I was allowed to audit some of the graduate courses at The Cranbrook Academy of Art across campus…the gorgeous, mystical campus.

We were required to wear dresses or skirts back then, and so I set about finding a way to rebel. Let me just admit here that I would often thoughtlessly rebel just for the sake of rebelling, cushioned by affluence and privilege. There was much to rebel against in those days, but I certainly didn’t understand the scope of my naivete’. Saturdays I worked at the Saks Fifth Avenue store next to the Fisher Building in downtown Detroit, my other magical haunt. I wanted a discount and money to buy my own clothes without scrutiny. And I also shopped at the Goodwill and my favorite store, St. Vincent de Paul Charity shop. I’d buy vintage corduroy poodle skirts (it was the early 1970’s) and take out the front seam to show as much thigh as I could get away with, pair them with the craziest patterned stockings and leggings I could find, and my $350. dollar Italian leather platform shoes I paid for with my Saks earnings.

Give yourself the gift of watching these wildly indomitable women through the entire film; you’ll be so glad you did. And then take a tour of the magnificent art and architecture of Kingwood School. “Heaven” was my favorite escape. Even then I would sneak out through a window to daydream on the roof in solitude. Believe me, I never took a moment of it for granted. I still don’t.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=3bzELvR6wks%3Fsi%3DHft8m1DPKUcuWcx1
https://youtube.com/watch?v=sULP5Wo00CA%3Fsi%3D4PCl8EEdodmcgP9I