IT’S IN THE GENES

“A HAT FOR ALL SEASONS” watercolor painting by kayti sweetland rasmussen

Is there a different category for each of those tiny gene things we confidently assume make up our personality? Just because Great aunt Hattie was an accomplished oboe player, will that make us a musician? If Uncle Henry cashed it in at the ripe old age of 102, does that mean we will follow suit?

Of course not, what a silly thought. But what about the clothes shopping gene? I can only answer for myself, and I’m sorry to say that because of the women in my family and their example, I have not only spent an inordinate amount of time and money in the rag trade, but have passed that gene on to my female descendants, including a ten year old great granddaughter, to my shame.

Call me shallow, but I even remember the new coat I had at age 11 when we went to see “Gone With the Wind”. The Depression made it difficult for people to indulge themselves, so that pink coat was a one-off experience for me.

I can’t remember a time when shoes have not attracted my attention; either on someone’s feet or in a store display. Perhaps it was the effect of the shiny Mary Jane’s my Grandmother bought me. I spent a lot of time washing their soles at the end of the day. One of my first jobs in dressing window displays was trying to make men’s work boots attractive. This was before I made a business of doing it a few years later.

No one can go into the clothing trade unless you truly love clothes. My grandmother, mother and aunt were accomplished seamstresses who also had a great deal of good taste, and I became comfortable sitting at a sewing machine as well. One of my daughters at age six was annoyed with me for not mending the hem of a dress as soon as she wanted it, so she grabbed a needle and thread and did it herself. I think sewing may be a lost art among the young today.

My mother in law tired of sewing soon after I married and gifted me with her old electric sewing machine. They were not always electrified. As a small child staying with an auntie, I slept in her sewing room, where her old foot pedal Singer machine stood.

My ‘new’ sewing machine was a Damascus Grand. It had copper fittings inside and when it need repair, there was only one old man in town who knew how to fix it. It perked away for years, keeping me and the girls presentable, eventually turning out clothes for the grandchildren. When it finally gave up the ghost, we made a lamp out of the head, which stands now in my studio.

We seldom throw things away, sometimes keeping them long after their usefulness is a memory. It is fortunate to have a friend of the same size and taste as your own, and closet cleaning is a fine time to share. Some years ago a friend called and asked if I could come help her clear out her closet. You can only do that with a close friend. At the end of the afternoon, glass of wine in hand, she decided she could bear to pass along a pair of light green sling back shoes I had admired. A few days later she knocked on my door at 7:30 a.m. to say she really wanted them back. What could I do? Sometimes we become too attached to our belongings.

So saying, I said a sad goodbye to my collection of ‘never-to-be-worn-again shoes by loading them into the trunk of a friend’s car. She is happy.

DON’T CALL THEM DUMMIES

Have you ever tried to slip a long silk stocking onto the unwieldy plastic leg of a department store mannequin? Take it from me it isn’t easy.

Straight out of my high school art class, I was hired by the local department store in my hometown of Alameda to not only hand paint the signs which advertised the clearance and sale items. From there it was an easy jump to being the resident window dresser.

The mannequin’s view from the inside of the window is of course quite different from yours looking inward. Their job is to show off the clothing, and do it in such an appealing manner that the passing “window shoppers” can’t bear to stand outside another minute without that particular outfit. It is a proven fact that mannequins are a spur to helping customers buy more clothes.

These are stressful times to be a mannequin. She’s under pressure to do it all—she needs to show off the latest beach wear, be more athletic, glamorous, businesslike, and even ready to rope a calf. Fortunately today’s mannequins come ready to be rearranged into more believable positions. Arms and legs are detachable, head and neck positions can be screwed into different positions.

For decades store mannequins were eerily headless, then bald and featureless. Now certain companies have magnetic lips, eyelashes and nails which are changeable to reflect the latest in makeup colors.

An artist friend working freelance, used to draw the figures for the newspapers for a number of years. The earliest use of mannequins in a retail setting dates back to the 1800’s with some being made of papier mache, wicker or having wax heads and glass eyes. Their use climbed with the rise of store windows in the 1900’s. In the late 1940’s more durable fiberglass began to replace plastic and allowed for more realistic features.

In the 1980’s and 1990’s faceless and headless mannequins became more prevalent. They didn’t require professional makeup artists and hairdressers. One factor was cost; mannequins sell for $750 to $900 each, and even an average size store is now using them throughout the stores various departments. A large store like Nordstrom may use 2,000 mannequins throughout the store. Clothing today doesn’t have much hanger appeal; you need a body inside to give it shape and show off the cut. Even a table full of folded colorful sweaters benefits from having a mannequin wearing an outfit featuring one of the sweaters.

My life as a window dresser picked up again later in life with a successful display business begun with one other woman. The lure of the shop window has never left me, and today I sometimes become more entranced with how the window is displayed than with the merchandise inside it! The holiday windows were by far the most fun and creative. Macy’s in San Francisco, in conjunction with the animal shelters, for several years showed puppies and kittens for adoption in the windows. Remember that the window display, whatever it may be, just gets people into the store. After that they’re on their own!

THE COLORS OF YOUR LIFE

“Swirling Colors” original watercolor painting by kayti sweetland Rasmussen

We each live many lives. While looking out my kitchen window this morning, watching the life of my neighborhood, I realized, that I have not always lived in a neighborhood, and it’s really quite nice. Color swirls about us moving us through to the next phase of our existence.

There are the new neighbors from Burma trimming their garden painstakingly. A young girl passes by frequently and we wonder about her. She is sad looking and does not look up nor answer a greeting. She just plods along to somewhere. There is the man we call the “Rock man” because we thought he always had a load of rocks in his backpack. It turned out to be his groceries. We recognize the neighborhood dogs being led on their daily excursions. It is through them that we ask their names and finally the names of their guides.

An old couple go by holding hands. They are stooped and have that peculiar rocking motion old people frequently have. The ethnic diversity has changed through the years. Instead of predominately blond, blue-eyed children walking to local schools, we see more dark hair these days. Mothers who help teachers walk past on field trips to the nearby children’s museum, frequently wear head scarves or saris. Through the years, the clothing may have changed, but the quirky behavior of the kids remains the same. Each year we seem to lose a few plants in the parking strip as energetic boys push each other into them. The language has changed however, with an inordinate use of the “F” word.

It also made me think of all the places I have lived in my life. I am a “Navy Brat”, which is what the children of Navy personnel are called. It is a proud appellation, and I’m sure all the “Army Brats” feel the same pride in their father’s career. The actor, Robert Duvall is an Army Brat, and has the same history of moving to new ports. You learn to make friends fast because you probably won’t stay long. During my school years up till the end of high school, it meant an annual migration for me. Even the birds migrate. We lived in a series of forgotten apartments, a couple of which had bathrooms down the hall.

I got used to always being “the new kid” at school. The routine was always the same. Someone took you to the right room and the teacher introduced you to the class, who then looked you over closely, and determined immediately whether you were worth knowing. The boys took the opportunity to make faces at their friends and the girls narrowed their eyes and sent the message that you were not “one of them”. I was never invited to an “overnight” stay until I was thirteen, and my father would not have allowed it anyway. The argument “all the other kids get to do it”, never went over with him. Girl Scouts and Campfire Girls were out of the question.

On my tenth birthday I had a birthday party with three other little girls in our neighborhood in Long Beach, California. I wore a peach-colored dress and a birthday hat. In New London, Connecticut, I was invited to a party when I was eleven, at which “Spin The Bottle” was played. I wore a new yellow silk dress, and when I found out the game meant you had to actually kiss a boy, I called my mother to come and take me home! We went as a family to see “Gone With The Wind” in 1939 when it opened in Hartford, Connecticut. I had a new pink coat, and hat with a streamer. My mother had a new dress and my father was out of uniform in a new suit which I had never seen before.

Strange how I always remember what I wore on various special occasions. In my last two years of high school, I joined the ROTC and wore a cool uniform. When I graduated from high School in Alameda, California, I wanted to join the Navy and wear a WAVE uniform, but being only 17 and underage, and my Navy father would not sign.

Though I love color, I have always identified myself as a sculptor who happens to paint. In sculpture, color merely enhances what the lines have already accomplished. We are all a mass of swirling colors hurrying to the next phase of our existence.

YOU CAN’T TRUST YOUR MIRROR

I have always felt that the mirror takes advantage of our gullibility. For instance, when I pass a mirror, I see a middle-aged blonde woman, who at one time, if not exactly pretty, is at least interesting.

The word ‘interesting’ is interesting in itself. It’s a word people often use to comment on something, rather than telling them what they really think. If they don’t want to insult the artist’s latest effort, which they hate, it seems kinder to tell them it’s interesting.

Some years ago while we were at a family gathering, while watching a cousin across the room, a relative said “You’re not attractive, and I’m not attractive, but she’s attractive. To show that I don’t hold grudges, I am still speaking to her.

But back to the mirror, I was shocked to find from a photograph, that my hair is silver! Everyone else had told me it was, but I chose to believe my mirror. In the 70’s, when hippie clothes were in style, I bought a long denim dress, which I thought was quite cool. But when I saw a photograph of myself wearing it, I looked just like a mushroom in a long blue dress. The mirror had lied once more.

****************************************************************************************************

I don’t obsess about my clothes, but I must confess that I do have a fixation about my hair. Along with so many other things that youth steals, I truly miss having good hair. Throughout the years I have invested in numerous wigs and hairpieces in a variety of colors, and it has always been fun. I was greeted by a fairly close acquaintance once at a large dinner party while I was wearing a very cute wig, and she asked to be introduced. What is true is that I am older than I look, and the hair on my head is exactly where it should be given the hard life I’ve given it.

At one time or another, I have been a blonde, had various shades of brunette, or a combination of the two, and for one luau we gave, it even became black. Later instead of actually dying it, I bought a black wig. This was after seeing the movie “Chicago” with Katherine Zeta-Jones dancing her way through killing her husband.

I was astonished to discover that the nice woman who cuts my hair, is wearing a wig! You just never know.

I always wanted to have red hair, since so many people in my family have it, but the only time mine became red was an accident. I gave myself a home perm, and instead of following directions and waiting a certain amount of time, I put some brown coloring on it. It immediately bunched up, became brilliant red, and looked exactly like a Brillo pad, or Harpo Marx in drag.

It would have been OK except that a widower friend of ours brought a new girlfriend to dinner that night to introduce us. She was a pretty and much-younger natural redhead with long flowing curls she had a habit of tossing around during dinner. Worse that that, she arrived accompanied by an unannounced Schnauzer dog, who snarled at my two dogs, a German Shepherd and a large Dobermann, who did not snarl in return. It was not a happy occasion. However, it did put the lie to the old saying that people look like their dogs because she did not look at all like a Schnauzer. And they did not marry.

So what I needed to tell you is not to believe anything your mirror or your friends tell you about your hair. If you think you are a willowy 5″8″, and blonde, then you are, and in the real scheme of things, why does it matter anyway? It’s OK to believe whatever you wish.

GARDEN-CHIC STYLE

Give us a few days of sunshine and a bit of warm weather and the gardeners climb out of their comfortable chairs and set aside the seed catalogues to see what winter has wrought in the garden.

Time to check the gardening wardrobe. In case you are behind the times, gardening clothes have gone haute couture, adopting the English manor look for yard work, exchanging ratty jeans and worn-out old shoes and $400 waterproof utility jackets from Ireland, for English riding breeches tucked into $500 imported Wellies. After all, you may be outside in full view of the neighbors and you want to dress the part even if you’re only pulling a few weeds. They even have a tool belt you can sling around your waist that they advertise as “sexy”, and it’s “only” $58. It sort of identifies you as a gardener without looking too corny. Gosh, where have I been all these years? I always thought garening almost required you to get dirt under your fingernails.

I remember when I first saw the “boots”. We were having lunch at a small restaurant in Malibu when I saw the greatest boots I had ever seen. I had actually seen them on someone on TV a short time before and thought they were the cat’s pajamas, so when I looked up and saw them again on an actual person I flipped. Before I could ask where they got them, my daughter cautioned me by saying “That’s Larry Hagman, you can’t ask him!” Well, O.K., but my husband had gone into another part of the restaurant to watch a football game and so had Mr. Hagman, so I sauntered over and just happened to mention the boots. By the time I arrived, the two men had become football friends, and had exchanged pleasantries and addresses.

As it turned out, they were the first Ugg boots we had seen, and not too practical for garden wear, but his jacket, from L.L. Bean was a real keeper. His wife was also an artist and had painted fish motifs on the coat, which was warm and waterproof and cost about $75. It goes well with my ratty jeans, worn-out tennis shoes and baseball cap. And who cares what the neighbors think?

A PAEAN TO THE LOWLY FOOT

I know you probably don’t want to think about it, but that appendage at the end of your leg has become big business, both for the fashion and the medical industry.

Jimmy Choo, Ferragamo and Dr. Scholl are coining big bucks off those twinkle toes. From classy six-inch heels to corn plasters, we tender a lot of our hard-earned cash to heal and enhance our feet.

After the first inspection of the baby toes to ensure that all ten are present, we tickle them, play “this little piggy”, and then forget about them, leaving them to fend for themselves.

During our young adulthood, we reach a comforting concinnity with our feet, annointing them, adorning the toes not only with polish, but with tiny rings, hoping they will reach the same level of beauty as the hands. We read phrases such as “her graceful white hands, long tapering fingers, etc.” But your never read such accolades given to the foot. Feet are crammed into too-tight shoes, sloppy flip-flops and expensive athletic shoes and expected to thrive and remain beautiful. Instead, they go their own way.

In their beauty period, while revelling in the toeless barefoot sandal, we carefully trim and clip the toe nails, but when the mature arms can’t quite reach them and older eyes can’t see them we must pay someone to look at those long-gone cute feet and cut the thickened unpolished toenails. I’m not there yet, but I can see it coming some day and it isn’t a pleasant prospect.

Companies such as Dr. Scholl’s supply a myriad of aids for the tired and aching feet. There are supports for flat feet, hammer toes, corns and bunions, toe spacers and even “dropped foot” (although I can’t imagine where they go if you drop them.) Without these palliative aids, bad feet can cause a misalighnment of the spine and other unpleasant problems, not the least of which is having to resort to ugly clunky shoes, canes and walking sticks.

Yes, we take our feet for granted, but try walking around without them.