Wilfred sweater (similar)
Vintage skirt (similar)
Mango boots
Anthropologie beret (similar)
Vintage Birks bag (similar)
RayBan sunglasses
Linjer ring (c/o) (similar)
Location: Place Dauphine – Paris, France
Paris, October 10, 2021
Dear friends,
It’s Thanksgiving weekend, back home. My family will be preparing for dinner – turkey or ham, maybe even both. As a sometime vegetarian and life long picky eater with little interest in meat, I am not a great fan of Thanksgiving. An annual dinner missed is no great loss, as far as I’m concerned. But as I get dressed this morning, standing in front of the mirror in our still dark bedroom, I can’t help but think of family. The skirt I’m zipping myself into belonged to my grandma.
I don’t know when or where she bought the brown suit from Morlaine Montreal. (The skirt comes with a matching jacket, complete with fabric-covered buttons which, when paired with the skirt, quickly becomes a lot of look.) But the style, those fabric-covered buttons in particular, is decidedly sixties. I’m also not sure why this suit, of all the garments in her wardrobe, which was extensive – I vividly remember an array of stunning fur coats – survived long enough to be passed down to me when so much else was donated or repurposed. But I have it. It lives in my closet at home, usually leaving only to be part of my annual Halloween costume.
The skirt is a lovely piece though, really. And it fits like it was made for me. If I have the era right, grandma would have been just a bit younger than me when she bought it. She had four kids by that time, so circumstances were a bit different. But it was the sixties, and the available options for women weren’t the same. There were no female senior managers leading departments at large corporations; women in the workforce were secretaries and assistants, mostly. Birth control pills weren’t widely available yet, and international air travel was still in its infancy. I doubt my grandma could have imagined the life I live now, the same way I struggle to imagine myself living her life back then. But there is so much that still connects us beyond our simple family tie, including this skirt.
I look at myself in the mirror again, twisting the waistband around my hips. The sun is rising outside the window, illuminating condensation that clouds that glass panes. This skirt has lived a longer, more interesting life than anyone might have expected. When my grandma bought it sixty years ago, it might have been for a friend’s wedding or a baby’s christening. It could have just been for everyday wear. I don’t know much, but I do know she never planned to take it to Paris. In truth, I don’t know if she ever wanted to see Paris. She travelled widely, but, as far as I know, never got to the European continent.
We were different in a lot of ways, my grandma and me. She loved to bake, while I can’t be bothered. She was a sports fan, and I can’t for the life of me wrap my head around the appeal of watching a bunch of sweaty, overpaid men compete for a ball. But we both loved home pedicures, oatmeal raison cookies and a good red lipstick. And I still sometimes hear her voice fly out of my mouth when Ian lets a wide open door swing. “Don’t slam the – !” I can’t count how many times she shouted that at me as I was going out the verandah door to play in the front yard. To this day, I close doors as gently as I possibly can, ensuring that my exit makes no sound.
Today, we’re together in Paris, in a way. We’re going to visit some of my favourite places; place Dauphine and the Cafe de Flore and the Musee Rodin. I’m a bit of an odd one out in my family, in a lot of ways. My deep need to be surrounded by beauty is not something I share with any of my relatives. Many of them have visited us in Paris over the years. We’ve seen the sights together and they’ve been glad to do it, but I know that the way I see this city is unique to me. There are no words I can say that can make someone else see it that way. I suspect it would have been much the same with grandma, if we’d ever gotten the opportunity. But it didn’t work out that way.
Today it’s just me, our shared skirt and the idea of what might have been. I’m thankful to have that much.
It’s really lovely that you have that piece of her – such a nice connection both to family and the past.
Courtney ~ Sartorial Sidelines