May I say first of all that this book was a pure pleasure to read. It was funny and intriguing and -- fair warning-- opinionated. Skip it if you don't want to be exposed to some feminist polemics. Skip it if you are not open to the possibility that a homeless guy's fashion statement might be just as valid as an Ole Miss alumni's. Skip it if you really love Reed Krakoff's designs, because she trashes them hilariously and without mercy. But if you want to be inspired to pay a little more attention to your own fashion statement and to what other people are trying to say, if you want to think a little bit about what clothes mean (and if you don't mind a little rude language), all while getting a cultural tour of the US and having a LOT of laughs, this is your beach read.
Wilson's central thesis is that "fashion is a joyful and important way to empower yourself," and she travels the country looking for people who do that. But first she tells us about her own fashion journey. I could see that we were going to be friends when she mentioned her "nearly pathological Victorian prudishness," and I knew I had something to learn from her when she discussed her "insatiable craving" for "aggressive fabulousness." I don't know that I myself have the energy or commitment to be aggressively fabulous on a daily basis, but I certainly admire those who go for it.
In Utah, Wilson writes about Elizabeth Smart that "she had endured the most intense case of social brainwashing via fashion victimization since Patty Hearst... even Elizabeth Smart herself didn't know who she was." (It's a great line, but it turns out Smart herself tells the story differently. So just bring the salt as you read.)
In Wyoming, she writes about the power of a hat to transform. Oh yes. If you know me, you know I'm there already. Mary Poppins hat? Check! Mary Tyler Moore snow beret? Check! Crocodile Dundee hiking hat? Of course! All worn with great sincerity, of course.
In Miami, she writes about the origin of Lilly Pulitzer prints-- apparently, they are designed to hide juice spills!
And in the Kansas City, Kansas/Missouri area, Wilson made up for what she may have got wrong about Elizabeth Smart by getting a rural midwestern clothesline exactly, beautifully, lyrically right:
...well-loved, embroidered cotton pillowcases, hand-stitched aprons, appliqued napkins and tablecloths, secured on a fuzzy white rope with hingeless wooden clothespins, waving in the breeze before a wall of pine trees. It actually brought tears to my eyes; it was like stumbling on a time capsule full of lost femininity...
I didn't want to love it, but there was something so careful, constructive, and deeply good about that ravishing laundry. It was a genuine example of home-making as a verb-- a creative act that reifies the idea of "home." There is a lost paradise evident in these mundane niceties that is very moving to me. The most undervalued thing in this world is the time, attention, concentration and patient effort of unhurried human beings. There is a distinct improvement in the quality of life when one is the midst of that uncelebrated cornball magic known as the "female touch': that mythical lattice-crusted pie made with blackberries from the garden, cooling on the windowsill...It's the kind of modest, good-faith creative energy that exists only to dignify and spruce up the immediate vicinity. It is a drive to beautify that never seeks anything so vainglorious as outside affirmation, because it would never put on such ludicrous airs as to call itself "art." These elegant works are merely (merely!) well-practiced, gorgeously skillful experessions of care.
Again, if you know me, you know I react to a piece of hand work in a thrift store the way some people react to a puppy at the SPCA: I must adopt it, take it home and love it with all the honor it deserves. Somebody's "time, attention, concentration and patient effort" is recorded in every stitch, and, in turn, our attention must be paid.
Wilson winds up in Brooklyn, where she observes that "Many items in New York's more avant-garde boutiques have entirely relinquished any pretense of being viable clothing." This section, by the way, is where I started chuckling on the beach. Yup, LOLs in the 390s, hot fun in the summertime. She then goes straight to a comparison of Madison Avenue in Manhattan and Jamaica Avenue in Brooklyn, both home to purple furs and giant handbags... either way, she quips, "The New York fashion statement is, essentially, a bank statement." She's obviously most at home in New York and also makes a brilliant observation about pricey (but well-made and non-experimental) clothes; "If you try on a piece of clothing that is perfect, you should buy it... I calculate that every time I have denied myself a perfect garment, I have bought at least six, and sometimes up to ten inferior versions of it, for years afterward." Preach!
Take this trip through the sunny heart of America with Wilson. She'll annoy you at times, but she'll also entertain you, and maybe you'll get an idea for a new hat.
