I began to understand that clothes are poetry when I was 9 or 10, and Aunt Glady took me to Canandaigua, NY to buy the petticoat I so fiercely wanted. I knew by the intensity of my desire for this frothy thing that something beyond simple wanting was at work.

Dreaming of petticoats, I doodled them over and over on the brown-bag covers of textbooks and envisioned myself as the radiantly beautiful, captivating girl I was really meant to be…in spite of obvious evidence to the contrary.

It was January. Snow was piled high outside the old store with its oiled wood floor and high tin ceiling. The petticoats were hung along the wall on a pipe rack like ballerinas at the barre. I choose the one I wanted, the one of my dreams, and Aunt Glady smiled and paid for it.

Magic was at work here. When my sister and I banked twenty-five cents a week (money from our grandmother), and even five cents for a bottle of chocolate milk was not to be taken lightly, and Aunt Glady worked on the assembly line at the doorbell factory and brown-bagged it every day, the advent of the petticoat into my life was about as likely as Chucky, the neighbors’ dog, growing a fourth leg to replace the one he lost under a car.

I wore that petticoat out. First the elastic went on the waist and then the various tiers began tearing away and threads drifted from the hem. But wearing it under my skirts, seeing them bloom like plaid roses and hearing the dry-maple-leaf rustle when I walked to school, I knew the ordinary day was anything but, and I knew that with the flouncing power of the petticoat, I was anything but shy, plain, invisible.

Now so many years later with a closet full of petticoats, I try to remember that each day is worthy of its own special sartorial presentation. Today might be the black, torn net with faded velvet flower, tomorrow…layers of violet tulle. And even on a petticoat-less day, there is poetry in Doc Martens and a silk skirt tied up with organdy ribbons.

Every day warrants its poem; the petticoat concurs and is only too happy to oblige.

Come Right In!

The idea of a Dress Shoppe (spelled just like this) has captivated me this afternoon, and the building too has taken hold of my imagination. I took this picture in a sleepy little town in upstate New York, one of those countless Main Street villages displaced by malls and expressways, now given over to moribund antique shops, For Rent signs, empty sidewalks.

Some wayward, stubborn part of me believes these towns can revitalize, can rise from the dust of neglect and the trammelings of “progress,” believes that the stately brick and iron buildings with their poetic transoms, signboards, cornices, and columns can be reclaimed. They are just too beautiful, too original, to remain obscure, unused, uncared for in our increasingly uniform box store/Internet world.

When I saw the Dress Shoppe door in this lost town, I thought about a magical place where dresses would spin and twirl from the tin ceiling or hook with rusty, twisted hangers from faggots of sticks, or adorn turn-of-the-century mannequins with bedsprings for heads and feathery crows perched on their shoulders. I thought of snippets of poetry clinging to hems and surprising fortunes under large round stones.

There would be autumn leaves on the floor. Birds’ nests on the shelves. Shutters, old doors, cloudy and corroded mirrors on the walls.

The dresses would be mostly black and netty with tulle and starched underskirts. Many would be recycled, made fresh again with fripperie and frou-frou, or simply plain as a single curved line down a white page. There would be shoes too, my kind of shoes: thick soled, thick wedged, balanced…no ballerina flats here, nothing so vacuous or insubstantial. Socks, the only color allowed. Socks woven in slices of citrus or honeybee stripes. Socks patterned with witch brooms or bearing tercets of poetry, images of subway cars, freight trains, farmhouses.

At the Dress Shoppe, we would hold morning coffee meetings to discuss impossible French verbs and ingredients for secret charms. Someone might come in and teach us how to make soap or write an irresistible love letter. At the slightest provocation, we might break into song or do a little dance. Cats and dogs always welcome.

The old building would sing too, and then, the building next to us would pick up the refrain with a hot cross bun shoppe and across the street, the library would hold evening soirees among the biographies. And building by building, the town forgotten for the past forty or fifty years would wake up, shake off its lethargy, make itself known to a world so acutely in need.

Headdress by Stephen Jones

You should only wear a hat on the days you’re in love with yourself. If you wear a hat on a day that you aren’t, the hat will become bigger than you, and it will wear you instead of the other way around.

Sometimes I wear a hat around my house when I’m working in the little factory or vacuuming or drinking a cup of coffee. It makes me feel spirited, brave, eccentric, mysterious. Often though, I take the hat off when I go out the door because I know on that particular day, the hat will wear me and people will stare and I won’t be able to take the heat. This is especially true on the Cape where I live, since most people dress for comfort and sartorial statements issue too much of a proclamation.

A couple of days ago in a little Provincetown shop, I bought a beautiful hat and even though it’s wool, I wore it all day and felt radiant and quite at home with myself. This confidence was no doubt attributable to the prior three days spent in Manhattan, observing New York in full summer regalia: floaty trapeze dresses worn with black socks and short boots; long black dresses with sliced wispy skirts and thick platform shoes; big baggy trousers with tight muscle-y tops; and lively sneakers all over the place.

It was also a delight to visit the Metropolitan’s Costume Institute’s exhibition: “China: Through the Looking Glass,” a full-scale, multi-media spectacle showing the strong influence of China on Western fashion. All the headdresses on the splendid mannequins were created by Stephen Jones, a designer who knows a thing or two about imagination and probably wears a hat every day.

Such sights are good for my soul. I come home refreshed and reconfigured, ready to mix a pair of stylish black sneakers with Charlie Chaplin pants; ready to try a shimmering platter of freshly dug littleneck clams on a summer night; ready to take down the tattered lace curtains and put up valances of crumpled moving paper; ready to sit in the dusky twilight and count fireflies; ready to hang an old door out in the Italian courtyard; and quite ready to wear a spunky little hat with all systems go, all the quite necessary aplomb.

Dress in Prism Light

If I can figure out a way to make magical dresses, I will, and for a while at least, this is all I will do.

I will make these dresses out of wrinkled secrets and cobwebs and prism light and the crickets’ black songs, out of dark photographs of stonewashed streets after midnight. I will stitch them with threads the mourning doves drop by mistake. The little Husky Star sewing machine wll buzz and whirr into the wee hours with only the Pleiades for illumination. All of the cats who have left me: Dylan, Harvey, and Carlie will curl up on the rickety sewing table and tell me about heaven and what they are served there for breakfast and cocktail hour, what the chairs are like, also the saucers and the spoons.

Magical dresses journey to imaginary places far away from the grocery store and the mechanics’ garage, far away from the unmade bed and the dust under the dresser, from pots and pans, and the routine morning toilette. These dresses have a life of their own whether you wear them or not, making a ruckus in the closet, shimmering on a wall, turning a hall tree on its head, knocking over the bread basket.

You probably only want one because that’s all you need to captivate a handsome fellow and at the very least, compel him to declare his love forever.

In fact, each dress will come with a tag replete with caveats: never wear when the moon is full or when the wind picks up; never wash with water, only with blue ocean air; watch out for humming birds who may nest in your hair; tread gently in gardens or parking lots; wear with great caution on birthdays or the solstice; and above all, pay attention, don’t drift off into reverie or once-upon-a-time or heaven knows where you might end up, since these dresses are already inclined to wander.

When a dress is complete, I will take it out for a twirl in the backyard (keeping my wits about me, of course). And I will listen to what it has to say about itself and the whole wide Universe and the person it is looking for. Magic is indeed looking for us; I didn’t know this until the dresses informed me that magic is incomplete until it is shared…kind of like pancakes and pizza and love.

They’re out there, these dresses, and when you pull one over your head or step into it, you’ll look in the mirror and discover someone you barely recognize but know you’ve met once in another chapter, another country, another lifetime. One of these dresses will call your name in a strange language you’ve never heard before but manage to speak fluently. Magic is like this: a palm outstretched, holding a quite impossible world. Ours for the taking.

Victorian Wedding Boots

Sometimes in places like flea markets, thrift stores, and museums, I discover things that are so full of story, I want to stand still, barely breathe, and let my heart do the hearing. Such was the case with these soft, lace-tangled boots with linings the color of sea shells.

Other things beckoned that day in the hushed little museum: jet beaded collars that trailed over bone-thin shoulders; an old book open to a love-lost poem; the steep ladder-like stairs that twisted to the crooked landing above; a Victorian hair wreath tangled around delicate wire and housed in a golden shadowbox.

But that afternoon, it was these boots.

I listened. They told me they were worn only once on a wedding day in mid-April when the forsythia had just blossomed and the daffodils were tossed in the gray winds off the leaden sea. An afternoon parlor wedding with the piercing eyes of the bride’s grandparents looking on from their oval picture frames and quite possibly wondering what in the world their granddaughter was doing, marrying a sailor! Handsome, yes. Young, yes. But what were his prospects?

He owned no land, no house, nothing really, but his wild sense of adventure and the scope of imagination that went with it. Rather their granddaughter, wearing these soft boots and her best dress, be wed to the widower farmer who lived nearby and often brought the family apples and bushels of corn, fresh eggs, and bottles of sour dandelion wine.

The beautiful boots were a gift from the bride’s elderly aunt, who never married but believed in love all the same. And her young niece wore them that chilly spring day and looked at her handsome husband, knowing he was leaving for a long voyage on the dangerous and yearning seas, leaving in three days. Looked at him and saw only his vitality, his comeliness, his grace.

Year later, gently folding back the yellowed muslin, she unwrapped these boots and it all came back: the faded parlor, the slate skies and the fierce wind, the forsythia through the watery windows. His face. Her heart. The boots, holding the story, keeping it still and close.

Shoes Heavy as Stones

September makes me think of saddle shoes. It also makes me think of polished corridors and early mornings and the smell of pencil lead and chocolate milk and peanut-butter-white-bread sandwiches in waxed paper. But mostly, it’s saddle shoes.

All I ever wanted was a pair of shiny brown loafers with a penny tucked in each one because I was sure that loafers were the answer to my strong yearning to disappear at the beginning of each school year. And I was equally sure that those saddle shoes, heavy as stones on my narrow feet, were part of the reason why disappearing seemed my best option.

Marking the end of summer, September couldn’t help but be a hard month. Summer in Honeoye Falls meant sun and heat and fireflies and sweet corn and tree climbing and long bike rides out into the farmy lands. It was two months of glorious freedom, pulling on shorts and little tops and worn sneakers and seeing what adventures the day would bring.

We were feral creatures with skinned knees and dirty fingernails, messy hair, and furiously pounding hearts. We fended for ourselves in summer, and no one ever managed to make us feel small.

But then, September, and the long walk through town to the big brick school and the classrooms full of popular girls wearing loafers and popular boys wearing loafers and incomprehensible arithmetic problems and stern teachers and the ugly saddle shoes. My father insisted that my sister and I wear them so that our arches would not fall. I may have tried to make him understand the correlation between the shoes and invisibility, but he couldn’t or wouldn’t get his mind around that.

So every September, I taught myself to disappear. Here’s how you do it: first, imagine yourself far away, riding the very top branches of a maple tree or lying in a green rowboat on a deep, even greener lake; two, hide your hands in your desk so no one can see them and they’re safe; three, never ever raise your hand; four, never say anything unless you have to; and five, pretend your feet in those shoes were never born.

For the most part, this worked pretty well, and now a lifetime later, the saddle shoes have left their mark. I love to wear shoes like Doc Martens or policewoman shoes or thick-soled boots, all heavy and sturdy and decidedly there. They make me feel grounded and sure and safe and quite, quite visible. So the saddle-shoe suffering showed me this: I like stones on my feet.

Witchy Shoes & Bare Trees

This is a photo taken by my friend David a while ago when we journeyed out to the Berkshires and stopped to see the selected works of Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison at the Simon’s Rock Gallery in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. When I saw this sculpture, I stood transfixed, knowing I would be possessed by these shoes forever. Quite simply, because I love them.

They combine three of my favorite things: witchiness, shoes, and bare trees. But the thought of putting them all together could only come from artists with exquisite and edgy imaginations, which this couple has in abundance. You can see more of their work at www.parkeharrison.com.

I once wrote a poem about witchy shoes: shoes that have enticing eyes and are not afraid of thunder or dark alleys or stepping on toes. They can easily cast a spell on the innocent, like the unknowing man behind the seafood counter. Witchy shoes are always cool and haughty; they hunger for the night, for the stars, not salmon, not mackerel, not even scallops at $16.99 a pound!

Imagine having a pair of witchy shoes with bare trees sprouting out of their eyelets! I’m in a swoon, just sitting here, my chilly fingers in their fraying gloves racing across the keyboard, trying to consider what a day would be like wearing shoes with bare trees. It would be foggy, of course, and the wind would blow salt off the water, and the crows would be completely understandable, sharing their secrets about buried treasure down by Town Dock and who is currently courting whom.

Wearing such shoes, I would hear poetry recited everywhere, even the surly man at the Transfer Station would be spouting sonnets one after another and the dentist would be savoring the delicious words of Keats. My house would recount stories of all who who have lived here before me, their favorite windows and places to read, what they enjoyed for breakfast.

I would easily find my way in the fog, the shoes clickety-clacketing down the misty road’s pale yellow line all the way to the shoes’ ultimate destination. And once there, dangling above the clouds, I would hold my breath, carefully cross my ankles, and watch the stars tangle in those bare trees like a song.

Stories to Tell

Shall I start with this black crepe dress I found hanging rumpled and discouraged from a bent hanger in the basement rummage of Barnstable’s Saint Mary’s Church?

Shall I start by wondering who chose it brand-new from a rack of store dresses long ago? In my imagination, she had long arms and was probably tall and had straight hair and wore reading glasses. She no doubt had a silver tea set and believed in long walks, fresh air, and good manners. She may have summered along the New England coast.

I am certain that beneath the patrician veneer, there was a mysterious, even otherworldly aspect  to the prior owner of this dress, though carefully guarded and only allowed out in dark, playful moments.

Shall I start by believing that she knew about the worlds beneath the senses, beneath her carefully ordered life? The worlds of clouds and deja vu, shadow, and memories of memories? There were spirits in her driveway; her cats had eyes like stars; the wind roused her heart; the broom twitched in the corner; the moon begged for her glance. Now and then, she woke up at first light and wondered if she had made it all up: the night, the wind, the moon, the pounding of her heart, the voices filled with songs of all she had been before the tea set, the beautifully set table. Before the church dinners, the library sales, the sensible shoes.

I put on the dress. It is October. The leaves are dry and raspy from September’s hurricane, and the air is full of golden smoke. The little neighborhood cat at the back door meows when she sees me, and I swear the broom by the fireplace quivered once or twice. I shall have a cup of tea by the fire. I shall listen for the clink of silver and the wind in the brittle leaves and the stories I know this dress can tell.

Girls of the Epiphany

Every spring and fall, my sister and I participate in an epiphany of sorts at the Church of the Epiphany in Winchester, Massachusetts. We call our very down-to-earth epiphany a rummage sale. Like its kindred spirits the yard sale or the flea market, a rummage sale requires a keen, quick eye, an equally keen, quick hand, and the ability to appear quite nonchalant when in actuality, you’re on fire.

As far as this particular rummage sale goes, we’re part of an elite team that goes in the day before and sets up. Even better, at Epiphany, we’re creating  the “French Room,” a biannual phenomenon located in the brick and stone foyer of this lovely old church. The maroon choir robes are scrunched way at the end of one coat rack; the rest of those racks belong to us.

After the cheerful greetings and hugs, we set to work: one lean mean five-member team of the most astute shoppers this side of the Mississippi. Our mission is a serious one: in four hours, we’ve got to find, stock, price, and display our wares in such a way that tomorrow night’s shoppers know right away this is no ordinary collection of cast-offs.

It’s a daunting task but not for this team. In minutes, we’re out in the “big room” where everything we’re looking for is buried under heaps of jeans and double-knit ensembles, sweatpants, polyester blouses, skirts with stretched waistbands, t-shirts with corporate logos, sweaters with nearly invisible moth holes, and coats redolent with cedar.

Our team knows its cashmere, its pure wool and linen and cotton; it knows its labels from Gaultier to L.L. Bean; it knows good vintage; it knows that style in the French Room is a little quirky, a little offbeat, very affordable, and best worn with verve or at the very least, insouciant nonchalance.

The French Room is counting on us, Epiphany is counting on us, the madcap rummage-sale shopper is counting on us. And we set to work with a focus you’d have to witness to believe. We chat a bit (multi-tasking is second nature), but we rarely look up; our eyes never waver; our nimble fingers sort, flip, tug, yank, fold, and unfold. And the treasures surface like sprinklings of diamonds buried in the back garden.

Triumphantly, we layer the wool and the cashmere and the linen-so-delicious-you-could-eat-it over our arms and deliver our finds to the French Room, where everything is hung and priced and displayed for all the world as if Paris might indeed be watching.

Here’s my fantasy: a renowned photographer finds his way from Milan and Barcelona and New York to Winchester. He pushes open the heavy oak doors. His camera is on the hunt, hungry for style. He stumbles into the French Room. He sees the arresting Girls of the Epiphany displayed forthrightly on the old gray screen. His camera flashes like lightning. The photographer trembles. He is on fire too.

Dream Dress Dreaming

Dream dresses look like this. I think this is a Vera Wang dress in her shop window on Manhattan’s upper East Side, but I can’t remember. All I know is that this dress is a web, a weaving of dreams. To wear it, you would have to be tall, beautiful (but in a jolie-laid sort of way), accomplished (violin? poetry? venture capital? architecture? ballet?), well travelled, at least bi-lingual, financially secure, and probably vegetarian.

In short, perfect.

Most likely, this dress is a wedding dress to be worn once in an emerald garden or on the glittering rooftop of a sumptuous hotel or the porch of the family’s old shingled summer home. And after that one magical occasion, perhaps passed on to an equally accomplished and beautiful daughter or hung forever-in-state in an upstairs guest room closet (all clean and sacheted, of course).

I look at the dream dress, and I sense that it wishes otherwise…wants a different kind of future. Maybe something like this: to be worn on fresh Monday mornings while hanging out the sheets; or dancing in front of the fireplace on a mid-January night as the snow blankets the world; or apron-layered and rolling out a real pie crust; or driving in a perfectly ordinary car with the windows all down, headed west on a black October night; or making out in the front seat of that perfectly ordinary car by a dark green lake, the night fragrant with earth and iron and cornfields.

Maybe this dream dress makes its way to Port Clyde, Maine or Honeoye Falls, New York or Quebec City or even Dublin or Venice or Paris or Tokyo. Or maybe it just stays put in its own back yard, happy there with the ordinary: the maples and cedars, the petunias, clover, and dandelions, the robins, the stray cats, the humming mowers and rusty swing-sets, the crooked snowmen and the barking dogs, the ordinary people dreaming in front of the square white windows showing dresses such as this…dreams all spun and webbed in the living room’s corners of the heart.