Another dress from MacWise. Although the neckline was much too low, I loved this black-and-brown-striped dress and often wore it on dates.
This red T-strap was a favorite “going-out” shoe. Dora and I wore them but Gay’s feet were too big to wear that style.
Most of the time we wore black Capezio ballet slippers, which we bought on the sixth floor of Bonwit Teller’s on Saturday afternoons.
I bought this coat at Klein’s on 14th Street. It had very avant—garde styling—like a sweater. Dora’s mother saw it and told Dora to get one, too. Mine was red and green. Dora’s was purple and blue.
Dora’s mother, Miriam Landey, was a dress designer for rich ladies who lived on the West Side. She would go to Europe in the summer to buy fine and fancy fabrics. She designed only a few styles but made them up in different fabrics.
Her showroom took the entire second floor of 22 East 65th Street. Dora and her parents lived on the third floor. Seamstresses, who did exquisite beading, worked in the back room on the second floor, surrounded by mannequins padded with tissue paper to duplicate the full figures of customers.
Dora’s mother always hired beautiful models to show the clothes. The models changed behind a mirrored screen with cupids on it. Dora’s mother loved cupids.
Dora’s father’s name was Harry. He drank martinis and listened to WQXR.
We bought our make-up at Liggett’s Drug Store on the corner of 65th and Madison. We’d sit at the counter and order grilled-cheese sandwiches and cherry Cokes while we talked about what color nail polish to buy.
Typical underwear we wore on a date: girdle, garter belt, and stockings with seams. If we had our periods, we also wore a sanitary belt and a Kotex or Modess pad. We wore underpants over everything, then a half-slip, then a crinoline.
Crinoline petticoat worn under skirts and dresses to make them stand out. Often we wore several crinolines.
If you forgot to wear a half-slip, the crinolines would frequently make runs in your stockings.
Dora’s mother lent me this gown when Dora and I went to the Choate School for Boys in Connecticut for the weekend. The dress was mauve satin with delicate beadwork on the bodice. It had a long train.
We carried our evening dresses (we each took up two evening dresses) in a huge black-zippered dress bag.
Dora had a real date for the weekend with a boy named Lee. We used to laugh at him because he thought he was very good looking (we didn’t) and his clothes smelled from mothballs. He was very, very rich.
Dora fixed me up with a blind date. Whenever Dora went someplace special, her mother would say, “Take Gingy along.” So Dora had arranged for the blind date.
We took the train from Grand Central to Choate. It was full of other girls also going for the weekend. They were very preppy and gave us mean looks.
My blind date was named Jim. I didn’t like him. I met another boy, also named Jim, and liked him. We necked a lot.
My evening dresses were much too sophisticated for Choate. Some of the preppy girls called us whores. Probably because of the dresses and the necking.
The Jim I liked wrote me love letters for several months after the weekend. I got embarrassed when I read them.
This was the other evening dress I took to Choate—black taffeta. I remember also wearing it to the Horace Mann senior prom. I went with a boy named Larry Janos. After the prom, we went to the Copacabana on 60th Street off Fifth Avenue, double-dating with Larry’s best friend, David, and his girlfriend.
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were the attraction. We sat ringside, drank Tom Collinses, and smoked Pall Malls. I stole a Copacabana ashtray.
For another prom I had a teal-blue ankle-length ballerina dress with a full tulle skirt worn with several crinolines. I don’t remember the boy I went with or the prom, just the dress.
Babbie had a beautiful ice-green flapper dress with silver beads from when she was young. She kept it in her drawer. I wore it to a costume party at Dora’s and the silver beads kept falling off.
In another drawer, she kept a long, thick, auburn braid that my mother had saved from when she was young and had cut her hair. It was about fourteen inches in length, and I sometimes wore it as a chignon.
For my Hunter College High School senior photograph in the 1953 yearbook, I wore a white dotted-swiss blouse with large, bouffant sleeves.
I wore it backwards because I thought the neck looked more attractive on me that way.
This is the coral wool jersey dress I bought for a New Year’s Eve date with George Feifer, in 1954. I was madly in love with George.
I saw it in the window of a store on 58th Street and Lexington Avenue and admired its boat neck and princess styling.
I had planned to go “all the way” with George that night but it didn’t happen.
We went to a party in Passaic, New Jersey. My friend Marion Brody—we both went to Simmons College in Boston—came too. I got her a date with a friend of George’s.
I thought after we drove Marion home we would have a wonderful opportunity to “do it.” But we had car trouble and George was driving. He had to drop me off first.
Light-blue ensemble—coat, cashmere sweater, and matching skirt I wore to the Harvard/Dartmouth football game.
George and I had broken up and I was going to the game with a blind date. I borrowed this outfit from a friend in my dorm.
I selected the outfit very carefully because I thought wearing all light blue would make me stand out (most of the girls wore very bright colors, especially red) and George would see me.
Light-blue bridesmaid dress I wore to Gay’s wedding to Steve Chinlund. Steve was very handsome. He looked like a combination of Mayor Lindsay and Charlton Heston.
Dora was also a bridesmaid.
We felt daring because we weren’t wearing our bras under the dresses (the square neckline was too low) and no one ever went without a bra back then.
The wedding was gorgeous but not as gorgeous as Gay and Steve.
Pink satin princess-style dress I bought in Filene’s Basement in Boston for my marriage to Harry M. Johnson in 1955. I was twenty and Harry was thirty-seven.
Harry was my sociology professor at Simmons and had a Ph.D. from Harvard. He also taught at the Massachusetts School of Art. His income from both positions was $5,000 a year.
Harry’s mother’s name was Helen. Harry was 6’4” and his mother was almost as tall. She had been widowed when she was young and worked in security at Harvard, and, when she got older as an attendant in a ladies’ room at Harvard. I liked her very much.
Harry and I were married at his best friend’s house in Dobbs Ferry. His friend’s name was Bernard Barber. He taught sociology at Barnard and had married a very rich girl. Robert Merton, the Columbia sociologist, was best man. There was no food, only champagne and wedding cake.
My grandmother and Babbie came to the wedding. My grandfather wouldn’t come because he thought Harry was too old for me and because he was Catholic.
I wore this yellow dress after the wedding ceremony on our drive back to Cambridge. The dress was one I had bought at MacWise. I later dyed it red. We drove up Route 1 to Boston in Harry’s light-blue Dodge. We had our wedding dinner in a truckstop.
Our first apartment was at 888 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge. Later we moved to 27 Lanark Road in Brookline.
Black dress with cut-out neckline and matching bolero jacket.
Harry always liked me to wear my hair off my face.
I could wear very high heels with Harry because he was so tall.
I never called Harry by his name. I called him “Man.”
Iridescent-brocade Chinese-style dinner dress I bought in Cambridge for a New Year’s Eve party that Harry and I went to on the eve of 1957.
Harry went with me to buy a dress. He convinced me to buy this one even though it was expensive. He said it showed off my arms, which he thought were pretty. I loved the dress.
The party was at the home of Harry’s friends Penny an
d Ecky, in Wayland, Massachusetts. I got very upset because I couldn’t find Harry at midnight. Then I saw him kissing Penny.
After my divorce, I went back to New York and lived with Dora, who was studying to be an actress.
This yellow-ochre wool empire dress was Dora’s but I wore it a lot. I particularly remember wearing it on a date with Al Beckerman.
Floral-print cotton pique dress I purchased in a small, snooty store in New Canaan, Connecticut, for my marriage to Al.
The ceremony took place in the rabbi’s chambers in Rego Park, Queens.
The reception was held in Al’s parents’ house in Forest Hills.
I used to call Al “Becky.”
My grandmother and Babbie came to the wedding. My grandfather wouldn’t come. He was still mad at me for marrying Harry.
Al’s father, Jack Beckerman, gave me this two-piece gray organza Anne Fogarty dress. It had a beautiful accordian-pleated skirt. Anne Fogarty was a very popular, expensive designer but since Jack was a patternmaker in the garment industry, he was able to get it wholesale.
I accidentally burnt a cigarette hole in it.
I think one of my daughters has the dress now.
The 1960s
Black-and-red-print taffeta maternity dress worn to holiday parties.
First worn Christmas, 1960, in Stamford, Connecticut, when I was pregnant with Isabelle, and then in 1962 when I was pregnant with David. (David died when he was eighteen months old from a forty-eight-hour intestinal virus.)
Also worn after we moved to Livingston, New Jersey, when I was pregnant with Lillie in 1963, Michael in 1964, Joe in 1965, and, for the last time, when I was pregnant with Julie in 1967.
I was influenced by Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Kennedy when I bought this white empire dress at Loehmann’s in Florham Park, New Jersey. I hadn’t bought a dress in a long time. I only went to the food store or the pediatrician. I shouldn’t have bought the dress because by then my body was nothing like Audrey Hepburn’s or Jackie’s.
I wore the dress to Al’s Christmas party at the advertising agency where he worked. I had rushed to get the children settled, to pick up the baby sitter, and to catch the Lakeland bus to New York—so I didn’t eat. I was so hungry when I got there, I ate too many hors d’oeuvres and drank too much champagne too quickly. I threw up in the ladies’ room. Though none of it got on my white dress, I never wore the dress again.
The 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s
Copy of a Pucci minidress I bought on impulse at Bloomingdale’s. I was never comfortable wearing it. I thought it was too bright and too short and that I would run into somebody else wearing it who looked a lot better in it than I did. My therapist told me I shouldn’t feel guilty if I didn’t want to wear it.
I wore Al’s ties occasionally because I’d seen pictures of Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, and Katharine Hepburn wearing ties, but when the movie Annie Hall came out and everybody started wearing men’s ties, I stopped wearing them.
My grandmother let me have my ears pierced when I was thirteen. She went to the doctor with me to have it done. Julie, my youngest daughter, came home from the mall one day with three holes in each ear when she was twelve. I told her I thought it was barbaric to have so many holes, but the following year I went to the mall and had a second hole made in my left ear.
I ordered this beige wool pants suit from the Spiegel catalog. It was my first mail-order purchase. I thought it would be a good interview outfit because, now that the children were all in school, I wanted to get a part-time job.
When I was offered a job as a public relations assistant, I accepted. According to the women’s magazines, having a job qualified me to be one of those lucky women who had it all—a husband, children, and a career. But things hadn’t been the same between Al and me since the baby died.
I loved this print jersey Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress. It was easy to put on and very comfortable. I wore it the day I had my hair cut and permed at Sassoon’s in New York.
Driving home, I knew I had to tell Al that I couldn’t stay married to him anymore.
I bought this three-quarter-length long-haired raccoon jacket from Bonwit Teller’s fur department in the Short Hills Mall. I had opened a charge account in my own name after I got a job and it took me a year to pay for the jacket. I was glad I had bought it, though, because after Al and I separated, money became tight.
Getting ready to sell the house, I went through the attic and basement and made three piles of clothes—those to throw out, those to give away, and those I didn’t know what to do with but couldn’t throw out or give away.
For my fiftieth birthday, I had the bags removed from under my eyes and bought these black suede boots on 8th Street in the Village. I recalled that Al’s mother had been fifty when I first met her. She’d never owned a pair of high heels in the sixty-five years she’d lived. When I think of her, I always picture her with a dish towel over her shoulder.
For Isabelle’s wedding, I wore a short white silk pyramid dress with white embroidery on the collar and cuffs that I had bought at a Neiman Marcus outlet store. By the time Lillie got married a year later, I felt more confident. I wore a black strapless faille dress that reminded me of one Rita Hayworth wore in the movie Gilda. Over it I wore a Donna Karan long white silk shirt.
When my first granddaughter, Allie, was born, I found some of my daughter’s baby things in one of the boxes I had saved and gave them to the new baby.
Now that Allie’s four, she loves to play dress-up when she comes over. I polish her fingernails and toenails bright red and let her play in the drawer where I keep all the awful colors of lipstick, rouge, and eyeshadow that aggressive saleswomen talked me into buying.
But what Allie really loves are my boxes of old clothes, high-heels, and hats. I watch her face as she looks in the mirror and sees how beautiful she looks in my old dresses. I wonder if she’ll remember some of them when she gets older.
Recently I spoke to Dora. We call each other once or twice a year. I asked her if she ever thought about the clothes we wore when we were growing up.
“Never,” she said. “It was such a painful time.”
I keep thinking about what she said. I always thought she’d had a fairytale life—a mother, a father, beautiful clothes, and even a beauty mark.
EPILOGUE
Sometimes if can’t sleep at night I think about how my life used to he when I was young.
Some nights I try to remember my mother. I don’t have too many memories of her. I can remember more things about Dora’s mother. Our mothers were very different—Dora’s mother wore real jewelry, sailed to Europe on the Ile de France, and went to the theater. My mother didn’t do any of those things.
But they also had things in common. Both made clothes (Dora’s mother for fancy ladies, my mother for my sister and me), and both died when they were young—my mother at forty-four and Dora’s mother at fifty-two.
I like to think I got my fashion sense from my mother and from Dora’s mother.
For the past few years, I have usually worn black. Not because I’m sad but because dressing in black is always chic—and makes shopping choices much easier. And also because Audrey Hepburn wore black a lot and later so did Jackie.
Recently, however, Allie told me her favorite color is pink so I thought maybe I’d try a pink scarf.
Love, Loss, and What I Wore Page 2
