This is how this post started:

“After all I’ve watched since the 1960s of the women’s movement, it bothered me that women are told that the ultimate expression of dressing is red-carpet worthy”

he said.

“There is something powerful about a dress that is exquisitely tailored and perfectly correct.”

continued William Norwich in an interview with NYT's Dan Shaw talking about the inspiration behing his second novel, “My Mrs. Brown”.  The story of a woman who lived in Rhode Island as a maid and, stricken by an out of the ordinary black dress she peeked in a client’s closet, initiates a trip to the City to look for her version of the same dress, no matter how much it will cost her. Because it’s never too late to find [fill in the blank] ... the Prince, happiness, joy, peace, the job of your life, or, above all, yourself. After you found yourself, just please remember to never feel overdressed and keep your chin high.

Taste is like truffles, must be enjoyed in small doses and it grows on you. 

Today’s fashion’s “business-as-usual” is a "loud" photo-shopped sponsored in-your-face #OOTD after another that somehow has come to overtake and abandon to oblivion a more genteel sophisticated slow-pasted personal style. It may be generational. 

Fashion is in our way of life, style is our lives, whether you live and work for the fashion business or not, style is what says who we are and helps us shape who we want to be. Virginia Wolf is known to have said that no matter how much clothes are sneered at and considered frivolous, “they change our view of the world and the world’s view of us”.

And then, while I was writing, Bill Cunningham dies in NYC at 87 and the post took a different direction, unexpectedly.

The ultimate gentleman, discreetly documenting the real runway that always will be, the street. Not even the father of street style, because that street style we know is commercial, staged, artificial, with no passion other than the temporary happiness money will procure you. Bill says, in the documentary dedicated to hi, “there’s nothing cheaper than money” that is what Cunningham was all about, that’s why he was a one-of-a-kind rare bird of paradise.  

Him and his bicycle, his blue jacket during the day for the “Off the Streets” page and him and his suit or tux when needed for his social page, a frugal and simple life, a reserved, intimate person whose soul, creativity and imagination would peak at the corner of 57th & 5th Avenue, the heart of New York City. There’s a parallel with Mrs. Brown’s life, off the limelight yet lightened up by that Oscar de la Renta black dress.

We live in loudness, arrogance, we are surrounded by vulgar disrespectful presence, “I post ergo I live” people feel alive only if they are visible, no matter if what they showcase is real or purely constructed. Life is not propaganda, thinks Norwich and women exist even when they are over 40, it takes introspective, it takes looking at yourself from the balcony as if you were a passer-by, then looking at your wardrobe and finding out maybe that what you are wearing doesn’t really reflect your YOU now.

What’s the take-away?

Let’s just remember that “beautiful things don’t ask for attention”. We have all been a Mrs. Brown and the time to go to the city and find THE dress is always now, not "one day" and that corner of 57 & 5th is a fleeting one, one snap away. We will always "dress for Bill" with a genuine smile. 

Have you ever had a black dress you have dreamed of all your life? or a boyfriend or a job ... something or someone to stamp that big smile on your face and everything is gonna be alright.