A lonely Texas dandelion in the backyard grass at our Airbnb house.
The play last night, Thornton Wilder's Our Town, was pretty triumphant: a really, really strong cast, including the Viking, who said he was channeling his dad for his role as Mr. Webb. He was a very convincing father, with excellent comic timing, and stole every scene he was in (not that I'm biased). We had all been speculating about his hair, which was definitely not long for this role. Had he cut it?? Turns out that they had rented an extremely realistic, real-human-hair wig for him --- it was so good that I really thought it might be his own.
Tonight the college kids have their spring formal, in addition to the play (performance is early so that the cast don't have to miss the big dance), and I think Grammy and I are going to go to Forth Worth for the day with the Texasgirl. There are art museums in the historic downtown, and as many times as I've been here I've never been to Fort Worth, so that seems like a plan. Tomorrow maybe we'll do downtown Dallas and museums there, and Sunday the plan is to attend this weekend's Dallas Pottery Invitational with the Artgirl.
We had lunch yesterday at a Mexican/Salvadoran restaurant with the Fire Son, who's in town to see his light of love. He had texted me on Tuesday to ask if it was all right for him to drop by home on Wednesday and have dinner with us, because he was flying out, &c. I said that that was fine, that his dad would love to have dinner with him, and that I would see him in Dallas, as indeed I did. It's been a trip of seeing everybody, which I hadn't expected when I made this plan, but life has a way of being like that sometimes: better than you think it's going to be.
Wearing today, when the high is about 82F, with lots of sun:
*Secondhand Not Perfect Linen Leila dress (S/M) in Cinnamon Rose, bought December 2023
*Secondhand J.Jill linen-blend cardigan, bought March 2023
*Secondhand Birk Mayaris, bought April 2024
I was reading a long Derek Guy thread on Twitter this morning, about the disappearance of the idea of "shape and drape" from clothing --- mostly men's clothes, because that's what Derek Guy comments on, but what he has to say applies to women's clothing as well. His basic thesis: people's clothing in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and 50s, into the 60s, looks good to us not because it's "dressier" or "classier" or more conservative or whatever, but because clothing designers were interested in shapes that were not necessarily the shapes of the human body, and in the way that fabric draped on a human figure, and that these were the elements that made clothing hang well and interestingly on pretty much any human body.
So I was thinking about that when I chose today's outfit, but I think that as a general principle this really is something I've unconsciously applied to how I dress --- at least in the several years since I've been wearing Wool& and, more recently, Not Perfect Linen and Flax clothing. The styles I've chosen work for me --- I think --- because I like the shapes they make. I like the line and flow of a swing dress. I like the fit-and-flare of this dress, on its own, but also with cardigans of various lengths (Derek Guy also laments the disappearance of the jacket as a standard layer of clothing, indoors and out, a staple when nobody had central heating). A shorter cardigan is an obviously good match for a dress with a defined waist, but honestly, I like the flow and drape of this longer one just as much. It's light enough not to obscure the spread of the skirt (and can kind of fall behind the line of the skirt, too, depending on how I'm standing or moving).
The linen weave of the dress, meanwhile, has some nice structure of its own, but it's a soft, fluid structure --- more "stiff" than a wool knit, but not too tailored. It has its own shape that isn't dependent on my body's shape and is kind to my not-flat stomach, especially since I had the shoulders taken in, to raise the neckline and bodice by about an inch. The thing about women's clothing of the eras we think of as better dressed is that no woman would consider herself decently dressed if she wasn't wearing a girdle and stockings --- and I don't miss that. Yes, it looks good. No, I don't want to have to wear all those things, or heels, either. There are things I prefer about today's style climate: Birkenstocks, chiefly. My feet are a lot happier than my grandmothers' feet ever were --- my grandmothers, who were young women in the 1930s and wore the clothing of all those eras when people looked better than they do today. But the general principle of considering the shape and drape of your clothing, as an element independent of your body's shape, is a good one, I think.
My friend Paul Pastor, meanwhile, spent time in an airport recently remarking on the state of posture in America. People who stand up straight, he said, stride through the airport like gods --- noticeably so, because everyone else is schlumping around with their backs bowed. If you hold yourself upright, your back straight, your shoulders maybe not forced back but not rounded in on yourself, then you. will. look. automatically. better. I am old enough to have a) had ballet as a regular part of my school physical-education regimen, and b) to have received regular instruction from my mother, my grandmothers, and all my teachers at school in How to Stand and Move. We did in fact practice walking with books on our heads and all that. And I'm glad we did. I'm glad all the older women in our lives harped on us about our posture. For one thing, holding myself upright decreases my chances of being a bent-over old lady who has to look at her feet because she can't look anywhere else. For another, holding myself upright makes my clothes hang automatically better, my body look better, my whole persona look better --- without my having to develop some kind of perfect physique. You just literally look better when you hold yourself well, with dignity. It's the best, easiest makeover that anybody can achieve. Yeah, you want to work on your health and fitness, because your body will thank you down the line (as I am contemplating continually, in the company of someone who is almost 88 . . .). But you can transform yourself in the time it takes you to stand up, simply by holding your back straight, raising your ribcage, and pressing your navel toward your spine with whatever abs you might have (and we all have them, even if they're buried, as mine are). You can transform yourself by simply practicing attention to your posture as you stand, sit, and move. Just doing that will strengthen your body without your having to break any particular sweat, so that the habit becomes easier over time. But also, whatever you happen to be wearing, your clothes will look better on you because you are standing and moving better.
So that's my lecture of the day, on How to Appear. Now I think I shall gather myself together to appear at the grocery store, so that we have breakfast supplies for tomorrow and Sunday.
Washed my hair yesterday afternoon before the play, refreshed it with a misting of water with my little spray bottle this morning:
Another thing that people did in the past that made them look better, but that I'm not going to do today: spend a ton of time on hair, and get it professionally done. When I was a child, ladies went to the beauty parlor and slept in hair nets or bonnets, and I guess their hair looked good, though to me it just looked old. I don't really desire the hairdo of yore. But I do like for it to look . . . I don't know, as though I cared. That is the nice thing about gel, and about the quick misting of water in the morning, the quick comb-through and scrunch. My hair is never going to be sleek, because it's not that kind of hair. But it can look intentionally wavy, with some shape and finish at the ends, without my having to spend more than two minutes in the morning. OR I can pull it back or put it up, also in about two minutes.
Also, women my age covered up their rankly chests, but I just am not doing that. I like the air on my skin. And now I had better make a grocery list.
