The Balenciaga

Mavis Gallant in Paris in the '50s

Mavis Gallant, who wrote for the New Yorker for 60 years, is one of the names that I suggest at parties when someone inevitably asks, “Read anything interesting lately?” The “lately” always has me stuck: I mean, who hasn’t read Capital by John Lancaster by now? (You haven’t? Oh dear: Really?)  But few people in the United States, it seems, have  heard of Mavis Gallant. And I get to introduce them.

My favorite is Paris Stories, quirky and sad, and devastatingly witty short stories written about Europe during the time around the second world war. The common thread, she once stated in an interview, is that they all were written in Paris, where she has lived for decades. In the first story, Sheilah and Peter, a desperately sophisticated middle-aged couple, broke and living on her sister’s couch, sit down at morning coffee for a rare talk about the past. The narrator informs us: “It is wrong to say they have nothing to show for time. Sheilah has the Balenciaga. It is a black afternoon dress, stiff and boned at the waist, long for the fashions of now, but neither Sheilah nor Peter would change a thread. The Balenciaga is their talisman, their treasure; and after they remember it they touch hands and think that the years are not behind them but hazy and marvelous and still to be lived.”

Oh my. The Balenciaga. Yes.  You can see it, can’t you?  The sculpted black dress setting off the lovely poignant part between shoulders and the neck? (“Clavicle” hardly describes such an evocative place.) 

We should all have our Balenciagas. Not the real one, of course, unless you have that kind of money, but our own versions.

Suits have become a tiresome workday staple, but it has not always been that way. Women use to wear suits to travel with white gloves and an elegant hat, or to go shopping, or to lunch with friends. They use to, at least in my imaginative world, have dress-up lives. I’m not sure I’d be up for such a dress-up life, but there is something appealing about the premise that we can do better.

I have a lined silk suit from the early fifties with a flared waist and pencil skirt that is beautiful.  But its elegance, for me, comes from a picture of my mother in the dress around 1954 when she is in her mid twenties.  She is laughing and shivering in the wind, gleeful and glamorous, playing at being grown up.  This suit is spirited. Her style is effortless.

This is the kind of suit that encourages a woman to laugh at the edge of a windy beach after a long drive, the kind that is abandoned on a chair for a lover on a winter afternoon, the kind that says I am positively giddy about the future.

I don’t wear it ironically or as a costume. I feel sexy when I wear the jacket alone except for a black lacy slip, with pencil heels, and my hair up in a loose French twist and, of course, red lipstick. I go to work with a black turtleneck and black patent loafers. Add a vintage rhinestone pin or pearls, silk shirt, and pointy flats and I am ready for family holiday parties and a neighborhood ladies' luncheon.

I think pearls are incredibly sexy, don't you?

I look at my young mother’s suit and I am reminded that  life is still marvelous and still to be lived.  Life is full of spirit and glamour and glee.

The Literary Bag

This Birkin was probably the inspiration for the  Jenny Colon.

When Kemel, the protagonist of Orhan Pamuk’s novel, The Museum of Innocence, steps into the shop in 1970s Instabul to buy a designer purse for his intended, he is buying  a fake, a "knock-off" but meets the genuine love of his life. The woman that he is suppose to marry, the far more suitable Sibel, spots the “cream- colored Jenny Colon” bag in a shop window as they stroll through the spring twilight.  He goes back, like a devoted suitor, to purchase it the next day.  The shop girl, Fuson, a poor, distant relation to his mother, becomes the object of his true love and obsession for the rest of his life. 

When he gives the bag to Sibel, she informs him that it is a fake: “This is not a genuine Jenny Colon, my dear Kemel. It is an imitation. See the way the label is stitched to the leather? Now look at the stitching on this real Jenny Colon I bought in Paris. It’s not for nothing that it’s an exclusive brand in France and all over the world,”but Kemel is troubled by her “triumphant” and smug tone which gives away her bourgeois insecurity.

When Fuson and Sibel meet at the couple’s lavish engagement party, a brokenhearted and bewildered Fuson delivers a speech about the bag: “It is not in the least important to me …if a thing is genuine or fake. If you ask me, people’s dislike of imitations has nothing to do with fake or real, but the fear that others might think they’d ‘bought it cheap.’ For me, the worst thing is when people care about the brand and not the thing itself. “

Well said!  Fuson glances meaningfully at her lover and turns on her heel to leave with her heart broken, but her pride intact.  Nothing better illustrates Fuson’s point than the unfortunate practice of tacking a designer label or name on an expensive purse.  A conspicuous designer label is a sign of  crassness  on the part of the designer and pathetic insecurity  on the part of the buyer.  Beautifully designed and well-made purses are their own advertisement. A woman with confidence and intelligence does not need to show off.

Our bags are important to us, aren’t they? Even women who profess not to care about such things are careful to let you know that they carry any old backpack or some snake-like thing around their ample waists.

Bags should reflect your life.  What is it that you do?

I like cross-body bags because I bicycle to as many places as I can. I like structured pocketbooks that make me feel dressy and polished when I need to boost my confidence at a meeting.  I like tote bags that I can carry around some essentials, like a slim notebook and pen, laptop, library books, or even piecing for a quilt and not feel like a load-bearing mule.  My bags perch carelessly on the seat of the coffeehouses where I often read or write, they go with me as I bike to the market, I hold them delicately at the opera or lunch out with friends, I throw them on the ground where I pull out a book and spend a blistering Texas summer afternoon in the shade.  I can count on a leather purse to mean business when I need it to.   

Bags should be beautiful in their simplicity, well-made, and useful.

I own a small honey-colored saddlebag made especially for me from Mitchell’s on Water Street in Milwaukee.  Mr. Mitchell, a courtly gentleman from Romania, took us up on the creaking, aged elevator to the vast second floor so that I could choose the bag’s material from the endless tables layered with sheets of smooth leather.  He graciously spent an afternoon teaching me about process and stitching. When he sent it to me, I found his signature in the inside flap. Mr. Mitchell has since died, but I remember his pride in craftsmanship.

 Our best bags are meaningful.

One advantage of age is that I have had time to acquire bags that I love, but I never stop looking for the next one. Right now I'm on the look out for a cross-body messenger bag and the perfect clutch.

I have a mahogany leather cross-body bag that I bought in Madrid in a little alley shop where they had been making leather bags for generations. I have a bag woven from hand-dyed wool, that is perfect for my laptop, bought at a local Mercado de Paz from a craftswoman from Michoacana. My daughter and my mother were with me when I bought it and each of us has a version that we have swore never to carry at the same time.  I have some thickly-woven hemp summer bags with leather handles that I bought for a few dollars at a rummage sale and have used for years. They have stood up to summer use: I can use them as a purse; or to tote vegetables from the community garden; or carry the sunscreen, towel, and a book when I go to the beach.  I have several vintage pocketbooks that belonged to my mother.  One beautiful purse was from a good friend, given to me after she died by her husband. She bought it in Italy and through it, she inspires me to travel more because she dearly loved to.  I didn’t spend a great deal of money on any of these bags, but they have value and more importantly, memory. 

Find your iconic bag.
What is your life like? What is your bag for? Is it a worker or just for show? Is your bag structured, dainty, or is it a large hobo that you could live out of for a year? Do you like color? Canvas, cloth, or is a natural leather your favorite texture? Where do you look for bags and purses?
And most importantly:  Are you patient? Finding the right purse, if nothing else, will cultivate patience.

By the way, one of my favorite lines from the book is when Kemel's mother, consoling him, says, “A woman who doesn’t love cats is never going to make a man happy.”
 

I don't own a cat. Does one ever?