Favorite Post: The Perfect Honor

If you follow me on twitter, you've seen #wearing tweets where I mention vintage pieces. They're usually my late grandmother's. I inherited a lot from each of my grandmothers, and miss each of them every day. Back after I lost my second grandmother, I posted about part of how my family dealt with her passing.

I've got lots of thoughts brewing on this lil' ol' blog here, and while I mull them over, I thought I'd pull some of my favorite posts from the past 6+ years (yes, I'm an Old Blogger).

If you have thoughts, ideas, questions, Style Dilemmas, please do send them along! I'd love to hear what you want to read!

Favorite Post: In Honor Of

I've got lots of thoughts brewing on this lil' ol' blog here, and while I mull them over, I thought I'd pull some of my favorite posts from the past 6+ years (yes, I'm an Old Blogger).

This one, "In Honor Of," was 3 years in the making, a post I wanted to write after I went to the first funeral, the one I get to at the end. It's a tender subject, for all sorts of reasons, and I'd love to hear what you think.

In Honor Of

Yesterday, I had to attend a service for a friend and colleague. 52, just remarried with a son who'd just joined the Navy and a stepson who needed him. A fun, vibrant human being with stories to tell and a ready laugh.

It wasn't such a terrible thing, picking out my clothes yesterday. It seems trite, I suppose, to be worried about a thing like that when others have lost their heart. All I had to do was reach in the closet and pull out a dress. T can't ever reach next to her, where B's hand should be, and touch him, just to know he's there.

Yesterday's service got me thinking about the last few I've been to...my cousin, last fall. At 37. I'm sure I thought about it, but have no idea what I wore. He wouldn't have cared, of course. My grandmother, last March. Then, I just had to worry about - ahem - access, since I had to pull out ye olde pump in the car on the way there and back. My grandfather, a few years before that...couldn't tell you.

But about 3 years ago, I had the awful chore of getting ready for the type of funeral (as if there are any) you never, ever, want to have to go to - a child's. He was 17, the only son of friends. He'd had a heart condition, and went into what should have been relatively routine surgery to repair his heart, and never woke up. The grief is unimaginable.

I was pregnant. I was torn. I in no way wanted to be pregnant in front of his mother, the woman who had just lost her baby. I tried on every outfit in my closet, asking H each time which one made me look the least pregnant. I couldn't bear the idea of hurting her any more. Looking back, I'm sure there is no way she would have ever noticed in her grief. How could she have seen anything at all?

But what struck me at the time, and still does, is the delicate dance of showing respect. Clothing may not be important at such a horrible time, but we still use it to try and honor. We probably fall short, but still, we don our grey and black, and wear an appropriate solemn face. Our servicemen and women - whether military or law enforcement - pull out their dress uniforms and shine their buttons.

We tell ourselves it's to honor. I wonder if it's really to sheild.

Style Remembered: The Perfect Honor

People keep asking - which is very nice of them - how my Mom-Mom's services were on Friday.

"Wonderful," I find myself saying. A strange thing, I suppose, to say that memorial services were wonderful, but they were. All of our family - all 5 of her children, 15 grandchildren, and several great-grandchildren (of 13), along with a few of her nieces and nephews - was together for the first time in quite a while. The room filled out with her Alpha Chi Omega sisters, golf buddies, bridge partners, and friends from way back when.
We spoke (yup, I managed it), sang, listened (to my littlest cousin, who's not so little anymore, play Fuer Elise), prayed, and cried.
Then we had lunch.
Then we hit her apartment.
What started as H and I swinging by to see if there was anything we wanted to keep as memories ended up as the whole family laughing, sharing, trading, and honoring my grandparents. The hottest negotiated items? Her hats.
Kept lovingly in John Wanamaker* hat boxes, I never saw a single one of them on Mom-Mom's head. By the time I remember her, she'd emancipated herself from hats and gloves and donned slacks. My cousins and I tried them all on with cries of, "Oh, that's perfect on you, you have to take that one." We may never wear the pillboxes, but we have them (though I'm determined to find an occasion to don the cream wool topper now sitting on H's dresser).
We all attempted to slip on the delicate white kid leather opera gloves with sweet little pearl buttons at the wrist. They don't fit anyone's contemporary hands, but I have them safe and sound, and will find out how to preserve them best. Most of the rest of the gloves ended up in my care (I'm the romantic, impractical one of the bunch). Some I'll wear, and some I'll keep for The Bean.
Her purses lay neatly on the bed, just begging for each of us to take one home. I ended up with 2 amazing frame bags and 2 clutches. I have her opera glasses, which she let me use when she took me to the symphony. Each of us has handkerchiefs, a scarf here and there, and most of us took some linens, some handmade by her Irish American mother (holding Mom-Mom in the picture, at right).
My sister is storing what we think was her wedding night negligée. My aunt has her wedding dress, to be kept and shared around as we each want to hold onto it for a while.
We each have little memories of this and that - very few of them from the articles themselves - but we all now have a teensy piece of her we can wear for a special event, or put on a bureau or nightstand, displaying it with pride and sweetness.
I'm fortunate I can now wear something of hers every day to honor her and remember her.

*Strangely enough, my other grandmother worked at the flagship Wanamaker's. It's a lovely little connection between two of the most important women in my life.

Stylishly Honoring Where We've Come From

Apart from being grammatically incorrect (never end a sentence with a preposition*), it's ever so important to remember where we've been - and where we're from. As I wrote before, Justine Picardie's My Mother's Wedding Dress touches the subject of heritage and memory clothing ever so delicately. Reading her essays reminded me of all sorts of clothing-related memories of my own (my brown & cream polyester "cheerios" pant suit at age 2).

This weekend I cemented a little bit of homage myself. Just before The Bean arrived, my grandmother realized that she could no longer safely drive. So she gallantly (and painfully, I think) offered to sell her Freedom Car to me. I say "Freedom Car" because it's the car she bought all on her own after my grandfather died following a long illness. Not that she didn't have a say in earlier car decisions, but after 50 years of marriage, I know she felt a certain glee at picking out something and not having to check in with someone else (allthough for sad reasons). As it turns out, her gift (of "selling" it to me at a price ridiculously below Blue Book - all has to do with an incredible sense of "fairness" she has around 17 grandchildren) is an enormous blessing, and she delights in hearing how I'm driving all over the place after 33 years of being a public transport user.

So on Saturday, H picked up my vanity plates. Or rather, in this case, memory plates. I named the car after my grandmother. "Roberta" now stands clearly on front and back of the mom-mobile, a quiet reminder of an Irish Catholic woman who did - and does - things her own way. I haven't yet called her to tell her they're in, but am very much looking forward to it. Just as much as if she'd given me a brooch and I'd worn it for the first time.

This all makes me think of the little things we do and wear to remind ourselves of whence we came. On my wedding day, I wore bracelets and a brooch from my mother's family, and our wedding rings were H's parents'; we're expected to honor family on those "red letter" days. But what about every day? Browneyz99 commented that she's going to renew her wrap dress shopping with her grandmother's brooch in mind. I proudly wear a signet ring given me by my parents from a store owned by a dear friend's grandparents. A scarf here, gloves there. A color that reminds me of another grandmother.

It's all a way of honoring, remembering, and keeping them close.

*In itself an homage to my hertiage. My mommy's a reformed English teacher.

In Honor of Liz (1929-2007)

Thank you, Liz, for lots of things...

...for supporting the influx of women into the workplace with clothes that work for you, rather than work you.

...for being a woman in a business not often welcoming of women.

...for being an icon.

...for being what many of us aspire to be, an entrepeneur, a business woman, your own woman.

...for changing the way women - and the world - look at work attire.

...for, as Robin Givhan writes, leaving your "mark on the fashion industry because of [your] respect, admiration and empathy for working women. [You] changed the nature of department stores, cracked the Fortune 500 and successfully took [your] company public in 1981. And [you] never shied away from the notion that celebrating personal style is good for business."

Take a break from work to honor her today by tuning in to the Post's chat, "Remembering Liz Claiborne," at 3pm.