There is a navy suit on the line this month that has been in my head for a long, long, long time. I have never owned anything like it myself — but a major moment in my youth made it a permanent fantasy suit for me. I have already gone on and on about our suede safari-style jacket. I own it in chocolate brown and a softer tan color and I wear both so so often — I find it to be the perfect travel jacket year-round and it adds that extra bit of cool when I am running out the door. So I grab it a lot. But I have not been able to shake the idea of this silhouette in a lightweight, traditional menswear-style tropical wool. Why? I will tell you.
In the very early 70s, my mother and father took a trip to Las Vegas together. I would have been about 11, and a trip like this was a totally rare occasion — they never traveled together without the four of us along for the ride. I cannot remember which grandmother would have come to stay with us, but it was likely my mother’s mother. She would have been less scandalized by the final destination of Vegas. Gambler Helen, who always played cards with us when she came to visit. 21 was her game. My father’s mother, Lana, whom I loved equally but differently, would have been totally shocked. I don’t think she ever had a drink in her life, whereas Helen enjoyed a scotch every night and it is hard to picture her in my mind without a cigarette in her hand. (I believe she made it to 96 although I am not pushing this as health advice.)
My point was that this trip was deeply exciting to me as a preteen. They were flying on a plane and leaving us behind… it seemed glamorous. It was glamorous. And when my mother took me along to JCPenney to have a look around in preparation for the trip, I found a pale pink wool pantsuit in this exact same style: stand collar, safari pockets, buttons all the way to the top, belted waist. I literally begged her to buy it. It was everything. She needed it for her trip to Las Vegas with Dad!
Unbelievably, she agreed. Rarely in my life have I felt such a thrill. (Perhaps that was my first move as a fashion editor!) I do not remember hearing much about the trip, where she actually wore the pantsuit, what shoes she wore with it, or even whether she wore it again after she got home. What I do remember is seeing her as this beautiful woman who needed this beautiful suit for a beautiful time she was about to have… and I remember her listening to me. It felt powerful.
I wonder if my girls ever had that same experience with me. All those feelings. Seeing your mother as this beautiful being and wanting her to look a certain way to properly live up to it. It meant a lot that she took me seriously. I am grateful to have had a mother who showed me her way of doing things… but also gave me the freedom to figure out my own ways of doing things… and seemed to delight in both the similarities and the differences. Just the right amount of laissez-faire (much like her own mother!) She really was kind of incredible in this way. She taught me to sew (with a little help from public school home economics) and took me to the fabric store and let me go at it. Encouraged me to go at it. I tried to be this way with my own daughters as well. As much as I loved dressing them up my way as little girls, I allowed two of them to wear dazzle-cloth gym shorts and t-shirts to elementary school every day in the dead of winter. If their parkas and snow pants kept them warm enough at recess, who cared? There were a few more controlling blips along the way. I still remember telling my oldest daughter, when she was in seventh grade, that her smudgy eyeliner was not exactly my thing. Actually, more specifically, I told her that it looked like someone took a Sharpie to a Degas. Why graffiti something so perfect? I would learn to hold my tongue a bit as I got used to having a young teenager, and helped her sew all the cool punk things she had in her head. When she found a never-worn red Chanel purse in my closet from a long-ago sample sale, I let her have it and dye it black in the backyard. I helped her put pyramid studs on her old ballet slippers as an act of atonement for my original ballet-inspired critique. I think my own mother would have done the same with me. My point is, the amount of leash she gave me when figuring myself out was just as important as the tight grip she held on it. The give and the take of it all. I think of her so much more often now that she is gone, and every year I feel more appreciation than sadness. I hope the same will be true of my girls one day. It is a beautiful treat for her to pop up in my overly full mind. I think of her every time I take a tissue to dab the shine off my lipstick. She used to do the same, tossing it in the toilet afterwards. I would go into the bathroom as a little girl and see the pink outline of her lips staring up at me. Does anyone else do this with their lipstick? I have no idea. She pops up on this column often, and one of my all-time favorite posts is the one I wrote about peanuts near Mother’s Day. It was long ago enough that I cry when I go back to it.
But back to her suit, because that was the inspiration for this one, and quite a long time coming. This was the era of the “leisure suit” for both men and women: a shirt-like jacket with matching trousers, designed for relaxed socializing and not for business meetings. Big collars, huge lapels, and often with a coordinating shirt underneath. Almost always polyester. Do some Googling if you don’t remember… the only word is GROOVY. There is no way the fabric quality of my mother's suit was anything sensational (like I said, almost always polyester), but it was perfect for her trip and her budget. She had an awesome Jane-Fonda-in-Klute-style shag haircut and I can envision her perfectly wearing this very cool, pale pink, chic-as-can-be pantsuit. It truly kills me that I cannot get my hands on the photo. I am certain there isn’t one. For as under-documented as the 70s were, my mother was even more so and rarely got in front of the camera. (I am constantly wondering if that might be better than the way we live now… but here I am taking my own photo in my living room to show you this suit. Anyway!) I’m not cutting my hair into a shag, but I am definitely channeling her in this elevated, navy version of my own.
I won’t bore you with the YSL inspiration which I probably overuse as I speak about the 70s and my mother’s style so often here. But the translation from couture to her little Midwestern life is pretty remarkable, and for me that is what makes fashion so special. The famous Miranda Priestley lecture about cerulean blue comes to mind. From the YSL runway in Paris to JCPenney. I knew absolutely nothing as an 11-year-old, but I thought it was cool and sophisticated enough to plead with her to purchase it. My own grown-up Barbie doll, I guess. It is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, so I wasn’t the only one who was struck by it. And now, fifty-something years later, we have our own version in this fantastic, indoor material. Tropical wool is nearly year-round in my book (can you tell by the name?) and I think it would make an amazing travel suit as well. To Las Vegas or anywhere else. The fabric is from one of our very top menswear mills so it has amazing recovery and you can wear it over and over again without dry cleaning. Something sexy (or nothing!) underneath is amazing for evening, but a simple striped t-shirt and minimal sneakers makes it sporty for day. This one is a real must-own. I will not beg you to buy it, as I did in the Milwaukee JCPenney in 1971, but I will tell you that at least I need it. I promise. Might even play a little game of 21 with Sid in it just for fun.
