American architect Michael Herrman gave his own Parisian penthouse terrace all the elements of home. / Photo by Veronique Mati. From “Inside Outside: A Sourcebook of Inspired Garden Rooms” by Linda O’Keeffe.
UK garden designer Stuart Charles Towner devised a fourth “wall” for this modern Hampshire, England, garden with a sculpture that mirrors the sleek lines of the house and lawn. / From “Inside Outside: A Sourcebook of Inspired Garden Rooms” by Linda O’Keeffe. / Photo by Stuart Charles Towner.
An old gate–at least an artfully rusted old gate–can serve the garden. This one divides flower and shrubbery beds and is a “doorway” to the rear of designer Mark Ripepi’s upstate New York property. From “Inside Outside: A Sourcebook of Inspired Garden Rooms” by Linda O’Keeffe. / Photo by Mark Ripepi.
Designer Mark Ripepi calls hedges his preferred garden “structure.” Here in his upstate New York garden, pruned and notched boxwood shrubbery lends some privacy to a seating area. From “Inside Outside: A Sourcebook of Inspired Garden Rooms” by Linda O’Keeffe. / Photo by Mark Ripepi.
The living room of Alex Meconi’s Venice, California, home is both inside and out, thanks to a wall of sliding glass doors. From “Inside Outside: A Sourcebook of Inspired Garden Rooms” by Linda O’Keeffe. / Photo by John Ellis.
Linda O’Keeffe’s “Inside Outside” is a book for humble gardeners to base dreams on.
Linda O’Keeffe’s book shows how designers have structured gardens to be places for living. Image from “Inside Outside: A Sourcebook of Inspired Garden Rooms” by Linda O’Keeffe.
BABY’S PERSONAL PRINCE Pete moved her teapot to an upper cabinet in the kitchen the other day.
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It’s a MacKenzie-Childs bauble, all black-and-white checkerboard with a cinnabar bobble on the lid, very Alice in Wonderland. Take me to your tea party.
The Courtly Check Enamel Teapot from MacKenzie-Childs, banished from the stovetop by Prince Pete, is $150 at M-C shops and at mackenzie-childs.com.(Don’t worry: It’s back in it proper place.)
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She bought one for me a decade ago, and I returned the favor last Christmas. This makes us both happy.
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In my kitchen it’s nearly lost amongst the, um, stuff I accumulate. In hers it’s a playful exclamation point in her streamlined working space.
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“I don’t like clutter,” Pete said as he swooped it off the sleek black surface of the stove. “Take it down and put it on the burner when you need it.”
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Pete is not a mean person, he’s just all about function. Function and straight lines and clean surfaces. He preferred the simple teapot they had before. Not in the least whimsical, all business. He served for a time in the military. It shows.
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Baby, meanwhile, respects the ruler’s edge but embroiders outside the lines, adding pleasure to business. Like me, she sees that there should always be a dose of fantasy, of wit, of giddiness in any space, whether inside or out in the garden.
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Which brings us to Inside Outside: A Sourcebook of Inspired Gardens, by Linda O’Keeffe (Timber Press, $35), fresh and new and perfect for holiday gifting for someone, or for yourself. A tutorial, of sorts, on building the bones of a garden—and then taking fabulous creative flight.
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O’Keeffe, a design writer and editor who was creative director of Metropolitan Home magazine for 16 years, provides beautifully photographed and delightfully detailed commentary about of the homes and gardens of an inspirational collection of designers, architects and gardeners. They include a formal courtyard in Palm Beach; a manor-house in England—complete with moat; and a garden of hostas (and nothing but hostas) in upstate New York.
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Some are flamboyant, like Mark Ripepi’s splendid six acres in New York’s Hudson Valley. His mentor was Luther Greene, O’Keeffe writes, a theatrical producer turned landscape designer who “operated out of a chinoiserie– and Delft pottery–filled greenhouse on Sutton Place, in Manhattan. He visited sites dressed in white linen suits and commissioned Salvador Dalí to design his stationery.”
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Ripepi, she says, absorbed his flair, designing gardens like ever-changing theatrical sets.
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There’s a wabi-sabi wonderland in Laguna Beach, California, created by Greg Salmeri, who delights in the gentle aging of plants and furnishings, sourcing the imperfect for himself and clients while he “welcomes the prospect of the sun bleaching the vibrancy from fabrics or patterned ceramic tile.”
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There’s a dose of surreal in the roof-top apartment in Paris of American architect Michael Herrman. Here a living wall of greens surrounds a 10-foot-tall gilded mirror atop a baroque—working—fireplace. A wall of glass that separates it from the living room, or not. The seasons change in this living tableau. Birds fly in and out, snowflakes fall, and the sun slants through.
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Interspersed are O’Keeffe’s own inspired takes on space and harmony, color and fragrance, and most of all the value of creating rooms within the garden, carving up a space, no matter how small, to create a delightful sense of “intrigue and adventure” around every turn.
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Some of the gardens profiled are, to my mind, too serious and structured. Lovely but overly designed. I didn’t think there would ever be a day when I’d say, Too many hydrangeas. And no matter how lovely, a garden requires a place or two to sit and daydream, preferably comfortably, an idea that several of these gardeners reject, preferring that visitors view their grounds as if they were touring an installation at MOMA or the holiday windows at Saks.
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No matter. The inspiration is bountiful, no matter your gardening taste. One of those perfect books for dreaming of what might be, could be, will be . . .
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As for that teapot, as soon as Prince Pete left the house, it was back on the stovetop, for no greater purpose than to make one smile.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” gardens in her mind when the real thing isn’t possible.
MyLittleBird often includes links to products we write about. Our editorial choices are made independently; nonetheless, a purchase made through such a link can sometimes result in MyLittleBird receiving a commission on the sale, whether through a retailer, an online store or Amazon.com.
I THINK OF the end of Daylight Savings as the time of year when the clock in my car is once again correct. But that was more than a week ago, and now we’ve plunged into the first dark harbingers of winter. That’s when our complexions (and spirits) call out for something softer, cozier.
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Call it “blush,” as we have for the last little while, or “rose” or plain old “pink,” that quiet color seems to give us back what November wants to take away. It’s out there in profusion in the stores. Of course there are the fluorescent pinks and the wan little pinks that can look washed out; but there are stronger, yet soft, versions that hold their own while lending us their style and pretty reflection.
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A whole coat or just a scarf or backpack, a touch of pink just may give us a bit of the softer season to get us through the next few months. Here are some ideas.
—Nancy McKeon
“Clearly . . . Readers” in Pink Crystal are from Eyebobs, and the rosiness of the translucent frames will complement lots of skin tones. $89 at Eyebobs.
LEFT: Weekend Max Mara makes its double-breasted “Dionigi” coat of 50/50 alpaca and wool. The big patch pockets and wide lapels give the pink classic a 1960s vibe with a modern edge. It’s $995 at matchesfashion.
RIGHT: From Urban Outfitters comes the Willow Fuzzy Drawstring Teddy Jacket in pink, with zippered front closure, funnel neck, cropped slightly short and slightly wide. It’s $69 at Urban Outfitters.
LEFT: Everlane is promoting its first alpaca sweater in part because alpacas are “gentle grazers” better for pastures than other herd animals. But we think the oversize alpaca-blend (60% alpaca plus wool and nylon) crew-neck sweater in Rose sounds cozy for days! It’s $95 at Everlane.
RIGHT: The sporty details of this Grosgrain Trim Wool and Cashmere Coat by Herno are sumptuous: the slightly sparkly ribbed standing collar, the grosgrain-ribbon drawstrings at waist and hood, the oversize two-way zipper. This blush beauty is $1,315 at Nordstrom.
LEFT: J.Crew updates a classic turtleneck in Pale Blush by adding “balloon” sleeves and elongated ribbed cuffs and making it more body-conscious than the usual billowy winter sweater. It’s on sale for $87.99 at J.Crew (also in 7 other colors).
RIGHT: Asos is touting this Maxi Patched Fleece Coat, with its teddy-bear texture, as a “top gift for her,” and it’s hard to argue with that. It’s not for the coldest days, but you’ll look warm. By Asos Design, it’s $104.50 at Asos.
LEFT: JoyLab is pitching its recycled-polyester “trench jacket” as a $39.99 topper over post-workout sweats.
RIGHT: One of the sweats it has in mind are its Rosy Pink jogger pants, $32.99.
CENTER: The perfect pal for those pieces is from Universal Thread, a blush pebbled faux-leather sling backpack, $34.99. All three pieces are from Target.
MyLittleBird often includes links to products we write about. Our editorial choices are made independently; nonetheless, a purchase made through such a link can sometimes result in MyLittleBird receiving a commission on the sale, whether through a retailer, an online store or Amazon.com.
From the Musée de Cluny – Musée National du Moyen Âge in Paris, comes this wedding ring, the most technically accomplished example of goldsmith’s work in
the Colmar Treasure. Its miniature dome and supporting arches mimic the imagined form of the lost Temple in Jerusalem, metaphorically connecting that site to the newlyweds’
home in France. Hebrew letters spell out “mazel tov” (good luck) and are enhanced by red and traces of green enamel. The ring is thought to have been made on the Italian peninsula before 1349. It is part of the Met Cloisters’ “Colmar Treasure: A Medieval Jewish Legacy” exhibit, open through January 12, 2020.
A ceremonial Jewish wedding ring, from a private New York collection, supplements the items from the Colmar Treasure on exhibit. It dates from the late 13th or early 14th century, and a description from the period explains that it would have been placed on the index finger of a Jewish bride during the wedding ceremony. Between the columns of the little “temple” are Hebrew letters spelling out “mazel tov.” The ring is part of the Met Cloisters’ “Colmar Treasure: A Medieval Jewish Legacy” exhibit, open through January 12, 2020.
One item from the Colmar Treasure is this Jeweled Brooch, made of gilded silver, sapphire, garnet, ruby and pearl. The central garnet is the only stone that is faceted, a technique that originated in the 14th century–although it may be a later replacement. From the Met Cloisters’ “Colmar Treasure: A Medieval Jewish Legacy” exhibit, open through January 12, 2020.
This silver key is part of the medieval cache called the Colmar Treasure. Because it was made of a precious metal, it could be carried or worn as an accessory outside the home during the Sabbath. From the Musée de Cluny – Musée National du Moyen Âge in Paris, it is part of the Met Cloisters’ “Colmar Treasure: A Medieval Jewish Legacy” exhibit, open through January 12, 2020.
This simple Star and Crescent Ring is made of gold and thought to date from the 13th or early 14th century. It was one of several rings and sequin-like decorative studs found in the jewelry box discovered in Colmar in 1863. From the Musée de Cluny, it’s part of the Met Cloisters’ “Colmar Treasure: A Medieval Jewish Legacy” exhibit, open through January 12, 2020.
This onyx ring from the Colmar Treasure features clasped hands fashioned of gold, the motif still common today. Onyx, however, is highly unusual among medieval rings. A Hebrew treatise from 1290 links onyx with communicating with a departed loved one. From the Met Cloisters’ “Colmar Treasure: A Medieval Jewish Legacy” exhibit, open through January 12, 2020.
This silver and gilded-silver double drinking cup is from the Met Cloisters’ own collection and thought to have been made in Prague. The “three hats” design on the lid of the cup corresponds to the symbol of a Jewish family from Zurich. Circling the lid are the names of the Three Magi: In medieval Europe, both Christians and Jews invoked their names for good health. From the Met Cloisters’ “Colmar Treasure: A Medieval Jewish Legacy” exhibit, open through January 12, 2020.
BEING AN OUTSIDER or a newcomer can confer advantage: You may see things with fresh eyes, see possibilities where old-timers don’t. But it can also be a liability. Ask any American immigrant who is nervous in the current climate.
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Now consider the 14th-century Jewish community of Colmar, an Alsatian city along the Rhine River in what is modern-day France and then was part of the Holy Roman Empire. Those residents too were recent immigrants, living alongside a largely Christian population and making their livelihood as merchants as part of the growing wine industry. They flourished under the pope and were governed and in some ways protected by the emperor.
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Then came the Plague of 1348-49, which wound up killing an enormous percentage of the European population. When it spread to Colmar, the fearful, angry townspeople blamed the disease on their water—and then accused their Jewish neighbors of poisoning the wells. The pope asserted their innocence, but the emperor turned a blind eye to the rule of law, and in the end the townspeople of Colmar burned the city’s Jewish residents to death.
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Fast-forward to 1863, when workmen were renovating a confectionery shop on the Colmar street once called the Rue des Juifs (Street of the Jews). Immured in the structure was a small cache—rings, brooches, keys and coins—tucked away by the building’s inhabitants no doubt to protect their possessions until they could return home. It’s unlikely they ever did.
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The so-called Colmar Treasure has belonged to the Musée de Cluny in Paris since 1923 and is now on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Cloisters outpost, in a verdant setting at the northern reaches of Manhattan (but still accessible by subway!). The Cloisters team has added precious objects of a similar nature to bulk up what is a small trove of rather delicate treasures.
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The location of the find (talk about objets trouvés!) on the “Jewish street” suggested the original ownership of the jewelry and trinkets, but the Hebrew writing on several pieces—rings, a drinking cup—certainly seems like proof that these were owned by middle-class Jewish residents who kept their ancient traditions while living as a religious and cultural minority.
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Time spent with the Colmar Treasure is time well spent. Then you can nip upstairs to reacquaint yourself with the Unicorn tapestries, the Merode Altarpiece and other marvels of the Middle Ages.
—Nancy McKeon
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“The Colmar Treasure: A Medieval Jewish Legacy,” Met Cloisters, 99 Margaret Corbin Drive, Fort Tryon Park, New York, New York 10040; 212-923-3700, met museum.org.
The garden’s winter secret: a flat of pansies hiding a whole platoon of tulip bulbs waiting for their spring break. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
TEN YEARS AGO my heart was ripped out of my chest and flopped on a steel tray for a little emergency repair. And, dammit, I hadn’t yet planted my tulips.
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It was just about two weeks before my birthday, which was celebrated as a resurrection party. I sat in the big black wing chair, moved into a corner of the dining room for the occasion, and held court. Baby put together a Mexican feast with a tank of margaritas for maybe 30 guests who actually seemed relieved that I hadn’t passed on. How heartwarming it was.
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As a result, the bulbs didn’t go in until Thanksgiving, which is also the best time to fertilize hydrangeas (fertilize again at Easter for summer flowers; easy to remember, yes?), though that is neither here nor there.
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Lollygagging with the bulbs is not a problem (though the bulbs had been bought before Labor Day and the Prince kept sticking the bag, with a sign saying “Plant Me,” under my nose). They can even go in after frost, if you’ve really dragged your feet. It’s harder, of course, carving through the cold, hard ground. But they will come up and do what they do in a timely fashion as expected.
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I hate planting bulbs, though I love the spring display. This year I’m called upon to do it twice. There were several hundred planted in Raleigh, North Carolina, a few weeks ago for Baby, who is pregnant with my first grandchild and is close enough to her due date that she has something of an excuse for leaning upon my arthritic bones for help.
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This year my own back yard will have pink and purple tulips again, a combo I never grow tired of. (But then I’ll see red ones and go OH. Well. The same thing happens with geraniums. But that is also neither here nor there).
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Anyway. I didn’t go nuts with the bulbs for a change. Usually I buy a few hundred. This year I got only 50, sticking six in each of four big pots and topping them with pansies. The rest of them are scattered about in the most naked spots. Thirty purple allium, planted last fall, should come up in a far corner where I can see them from the kitchen window. Alliums make me happy, with their popsicle heads bobbing about.
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But first the tropical plants had to be uprooted or their pots moved to make way, always an ambitious effort. Thankfully, the garden is small so it just takes a single wildly energetic afternoon with a lot of dirt tossed around. I’m leaving some of the elephant ears in place; they’ll make it or not. Others were pulled, their leaves lopped off, and will be set to rest along with the cannas in a pot under a table. No special care needed, I’ve found. Come spring, pop them back in the garden.
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The parlor palms go in the living room, and a massive schefflera winters in the dining room, but the rest must be moved upstairs to the second-floor sunroom, which gets, you know, sun. This requires Princely effort as some have grown to a size more suitable for the Botanic Garden than a petite 10-by-10-foot conservatory (which I call it with maximum pretension). This was supposed to have been enlarged by this winter but . . . let’s not go there.
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The white bird of paradise is bent over at the ceiling. It was one of those ill-advised I want it purchases of a few years past. I didn’t bother to read up on it until I had it home and then found out it can grow to 30 feet. It also hasn’t flowered, so you have to trust me when I say that when it finally does it will be spectacular.
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I didn’t have much of anything to do with the moving project. Instead, I pretended sudden urgent unspecified business and flew out the door with a vague promise of return, leaving My Prince to move the plants in and up by himself.
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While I always fear that one of these years I’ll come home to find his carcass splayed out on top of the jasmines, yet again he managed without breaking a pot—or his neck. What a man.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” promises to put her heart into planting, not onto a steel tray, this season.
That’s me, and my hair, back in around 1985. / Photo by Polaroid Corporation.
LAST WEEK we went rummaging around in our closets looking for the oldest clothes we had and tried to figure out why we still had them. Then reader Carol Lichty told us about the black cashmere coat with the mink colllar she had received in 1964 while a high-schooler—and she discovered she could still button it!! (She subsequently reported that she found the mink pillbox hat that goes with the coat.)
But I have a sadder tale to tell. In the back of a closet I recently found a large photo of myself from around 1985. It was shot on a large-format Polaroid instant camera, 20 by 24 inches, making it quite unusual (Polaroid apparently made only five of these big cameras in the 1970s, and a few are still available for rent for studio photos and art projects). What I first noticed—what anyone with eyesight would notice—was the abundance of frizzy hair. But when I dropped my gaze chestward I saw it, a Kenzo sweater with a colorful dragon embroidered on the front. A big colorful dragon.
Where is that sweater? How could I have given it away? Between sentences here I’m searching eBay for my onetime treasure. Lotsa Kenzo tigers but no dragon. It must have been the embroidery that sold me because a dark brown sweater with metallic gold horizontal stripes would simply not be my first choice.
But at least I have the photo.
LittleBird Janet mourns a full skirt and cropped-top duo by Chacok, similar to this Chacok outfit found on eBay, that “were so French.” She bought them back in the late 1970s in Monaco and wishes she still had them.
Anyone else have a lost treasure they’d like to mourn?
Okay, maybe not in current style, but classic enough to get another winter wearing by owner Carol Lichty. / Photo by Carol Lichty.
THE POST about old clothing we can’t bear to part with hit home with some readers. But reader Carol Lichty made a comment about a piece of clothing that turned out to be an out-and-out lie: She can still wear it!
Here’s part of what Carol wrote:
“I have saved items for various reasons you named . . . sentimental or I paid a lot for that dress! . . . but the scariest thing is my black cashmere coat with a mink collar that I got for Christmas my senior year in high school [in 1964]. No way I could ever wear again. Just can’t bear to put in the old clothes bag.”
But guess what? Carol further reported:
“I can still button it so it must have been big 🙂 Cashmere with real mink collar purchased at Kaufmann’s.”
And:
“I am shocked too that I could button the coat, I just may wear it this winter. . . Thanks to all the Little Birds (especially my friend Janet) for your great blog.
And thank you, Carol, for sending us the picture of your vintage treasure.
Avocados can really grow from those pits we used to plant (and then toss). Who knew? But it’s even easier if someone delivers them. / iStock photo.
I WAS LEAFING through the current New Yorker magazine this morning when my eye landed on a story about a man who delivers avocados to your door. This is, of course, in New York City. Where else could someone make a living delivering avocados and only avocados. Like, you get this sudden desire for guacamole and you’re in your pajamas, engrossed in some show on Netflix, and you can just call this guy and he’ll deliver three avocados for $7.50. Five go for $12.50.
If you happen to have lump crabmeat on hand and suddenly think, “Stuffed avocados!” he can deliver firmer fruit that will hold up as a shell. Miguel Gonzalez has so perfected the ripening process, he can deliver exactly what you need for whatever it is you’re making.
$7.50 is not a bad price, either. This week avocados were $2.69 each at Harris Teeter in the Washington DC area, and you had to put shoes on and maybe get in the car (if you were in a real hurry), all of this taking some quantity of gas and many minutes from sofa and TV viewing.
Instead, this guy shows up with the avocados and drops them with your doorman. It is a fairly minor inconvenience to get in the elevator and go downstairs—I’ve never seen a sign in an apartment building saying “No Shirt No Shoes No Elevator Service.” Much easier than leaving the building and maybe requiring a sweater.
If you’re generous with your doorman during the holidays he (or she—are there any female doorpersons?)* might even deliver them up to your apartment.
Gonzalez also delivers to restaurants and delis. Crates-ful each day. Degree of ripeness to order. I do not know what he charges per crate. This is not mentioned.
I used to grow avocado plants from pits when I lived in New York. Stick four toothpicks in the sides of a pit, balance it over a scotch glass full of water, and set it on the windowsill. Soon the pit cracks and a little tow-headed seedling gropes blindly toward the light, quickly enough turning green and sprouting leaves above and roots below. Now stick it in a pot of dirt. The plant grows and grows and eventually, or so I’m told, will grow fruit. Amazing, isn’t it, that I lived, shall we say, many years, without realizing that avocados grow from avocado pits. I have never seen this happen, but the guy at the plant stand a few blocks from me said it’s so.
If you’re making guacamole,** by the way, you also want western avocados like Hass (she, meaning me, gracefully gestures toward where she thinks the west might be). These are the bumpy-skinned, nearly black ones, not Florida avocados, which are the big shiny green ones that taste like water when mashed.
Because I ate many avocados, I had many little trees in New York. They were not particularly attractive, but they took the place of drapes, and a pleasantly greenish glow filled the living room at certain times of day. There was a tennis court across the street where Robert Redford used to play. I’d peer through the leaves with my binoculars like a big game hunter. He is rather short and has disappointingly thick legs, a discovery that quashed my lust for the Sundance Kid. I prefer my men long and lean. But that’s another story.
Speaking of deliveries. My baby sister’s ex-husband used to deliver ostrich eggs. They lived in Texas at the time and ostrich meat was being touted as the new steak. He considered raising the birds for a while but decided they were too nasty, smelly and dirty so he contracted with growers or breeders (I suppose they are called) and would pick up fertilized eggs, which are apparently fragile, and drive to places like Colorado or New Mexico, where fledgling farmers yet to learn that not only are these birds nasty, but they (the fledgling farmers) were not going to make a fortune raising them.
Ostrich meat never caught on. Restaurants tried serving it. Supermarkets stocked it in the freezer section (since there wasn’t yet and, it seems, never would be much of a demand for fresh).
What ever happened to the ostrich meat business?
When he stopped delivering ostrich eggs, my baby sister’s ex-husband sold thread out of the trunk of his car.
One imagines him lurking in an alley: “Pssst, lady. Wanna buy some red thread?”
This enterprise obviously headed nowhere. Except a well-deserved divorce.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
* LittleBird Nancy reports from Manhattan’s Upper East Side: None that I’ve seen so far!
** Baby lived in Austin for a few years, working in the restaurant biz. They KNOW from Tex-Mex in Austin. I visited for a week and gained 10 pounds. She offers a delicious twist on the usual—try it on football (or Jane Austen) night.
Monica’s Guacamole
2 large, ripe avocados
1 medium tomato, diced
¾ medium red onion, finely chopped
Big handful of cilantro, chopped
Juice of 1 to 1½ limes
Dash of garlic powder
Salt & pepper
Spoon halves of avocado out of the skin into a bowl. Add ingredients all at once, then chop/toss the lot with a wooden spoon to achieve a somewhat chunky consistency. Everything is to taste and to personal preference, and you’ll know the proportions are right if you have a little bit of everything in any given sample. I usually add the onion and lime gradually, and taste-test throughout.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” reports that none of her avocado plants died for this recipe.
Will this navy Chanel number ever re-emerge from the closet? Doubtful. But the elegant cream-on-navy Natori Classics robe (and gown, not shown) is still in LittleBird Nancy’s nighttime rotation, and has been for decades.
Two of LittleBird Janet’s long-lived treasures. On the left, a Dior jacket that still gets out quite a bit, especially now that puff sleeves are back on fashion’s radar. On the right, a brass Indian box she carries as a minaudière.
LittleBird Janet’s mother wore this Pauline Trigère gown to a wedding . . . in 1970. Janet herself wore it, once, to a gala. Mention Trigère’s name to anyone under 40 and be prepared to be met with a blank stare, but the French-born designer was once a real force.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, or is it the other way around? The fatigue shirt on the left came courtesy of the US Army. On the right, a blond beaver coat that was a gift, from Henri Bendel, back when Bendel’s was Bendel’s.
It’s hard to imagine LittleBird Nancy’s very tailored, very classic sister wearing this Pucci-design robe, but she swears she did. What’s more, she has held on to it.
YEARS AGO, when I was editor of the Washington Post’s Food section, I asked readers to tell us how old the spices in their cabinets were. What was the oldest thing they had? Why? Did they ever use it, or even intend to?
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The responses were hilarious. One woman wrote to say she had packed a small jar of cream of tartar through two house moves and still had no idea what it was for. And I wasn’t the only one with a couple of little rusty tins of Ann Page (an old A&P house brand) . . . curry? nutmeg? Hard to tell.
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Now it’s my clothes closets’ turn. As I unpack (having recently moved), I’m finding clothing I haven’t seen in years.
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There’s a Chanel dress I bought in London for my goddaughter’s christening (God bless the wonky exchange rates that year). Anna will turn 34 in November. (I could still wear it . . . almost . . . but I wouldn’t want to disturb the moths that have taken up residence.)
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Then there’s a “Natori Classics” robe and nightgown that I bought at Bloomingdale’s back in the Pleistocene. I love the pattern so much that I keep the nightgown going with a patch here, a seam reinforcement there. If Natori were ever to use this print again I’d buy it in a heartbeat.
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I asked a few friends and colleagues to ‘fess up about the garments they have tucked way, way back in the closet.
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Washington DC superstar real estate agent Nancy Taylor Bubes was quick with a response: “I am a nut for purging. It doesn’t last much longer than 2-3 years in my closet.”
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She added that she bet I “still have one of your black Chanel sweaters that you said was a wardrobe basic.” (She’s right, but I only ever had one.)
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Jura Koncius, a reporter for the Washington Post, piped up with, “I have two pairs of Prada flats that must be 15 years old that I can’t bear to toss. Also my school uniform blazer from Catholic high school school—I can’t fit into it, but my sister wore it to my 40th birthday party, which was a costume affair!”
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And, she added, “I actually have a 35-year-old long Jaeger wool coat that is threadbare at the cuffs, but I still wear it on super-cold days. I wore it when I was pregnant in 1990!!!”
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I wasn’t surprised to learn that design writer Patricia Dane Rogers still has a black velvet ermine-lined(!) opera coat given to her in the early 1960s by her Park Avenue neighbor Marcella Shubert, widow of Broadway theater’s Lee Shubert. (Nice to have fancy neighbors! And I would never give away something like that either.)
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But I was surprised to learn that my sister, Pat Byrne, has held on to a rather lively robe (dare I suggest “house coat”?) by Emilio Pucci for Formfit-Rogers from around 1972. (My surprise makes sense if you know my sister, who rarely ventures beyond the most tailored, conservative clothing.)
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On the other hand, it makes sense to me that she still has a dark green WWII army fatigue shirt that belonged to our father, who got out of the service in 1944 or ’45. I asked her if she ever wore it. “Could I? Barely, but I’m not 6ft tall and 142 lbs,” she emailed. “Would I? Doubtful, but I think I keep it for historical or sentimental reasons. Boy, are they [her son and daughter] going to have a field day when I go.”
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She also has our dad’s NYU letter sweater; he graduated from the university in 1931! (It’s not in great shape, she says. Really!?)
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Writer and MLB contributor Ann Geracimos points to her dyed blonde Canadian beaver coat, a gift that must date from the late 1970s, after the successful Congressional campaign by her then-husband. “Weighs a ton . . . was a lifesaver when the pipes froze in my DC house one winter. . . . I’ve dragged it out in fierce weather and felt great love for the poor animals . . . ” She adds, “No, I never would buy one” and it “lasted much longer than my marriage.”
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One English-born New York PR veteran still occasionally wears a navy blue duffel coat “that was de rigueur at the University of Bristol.” The odd thing? It used to fit just fine. But “I’ve gained—well, let’s just say a LOT of weight since then [and] it seems much larger!”
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Editor Jill Wechsler Nelson reports a real blast from the past: an Indian mini-dress from around 1969 with little mirrors sewn all over, and a Mexican serape from visit during high school, “plus the tie-dyed peasant dress, Greek dress from trip in 1968.”
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We remember 1968 too!
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Lifestyle guru and cookbook author Corky Pollan remembers a little fashion legerdemain: “I’m such a hoarder, I still have the pleated top I used to wear when we were invited to formal events as the Best Bets Ladies [our column in New York Magazine]. So many people would come up to me and ask if it was a Fortuny. But it wasn’t a vintage Fortuny—it came from a neighborhood store that sold Indian clothing.”
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LittleBird Janet has a little bit of the real thing, a Pauline Trigère dress her late mother wore to a wedding in 1970. “I think I wore it to the National Symphony Ball one year. I can’t bear to ditch it.”
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She adds, “Remember when Bloomingdale’s had their India promotion? Maybe 1978 or so. I have this thingy from then. Don’t know if it was meant to be an ashtray or what, but I carry it as a teeny, tiny metallic purse.”
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Needless to say, Janet has probably been the same (tiny) size for the past 40 years, and she has a Christian Dior jacket with puff sleeves, probably from the late ’70s. “I still wear it.”
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Designer Denise Dickens, of Washington DC’s Outside Designworks, stopped wearing clothing made by others back in 2002, when she started designing and selling clothing. But she acknowledges, “I do still have a few evening ensembles that I should consign because I clearly don’t lead the nightlife that these gowns are missing.” But the day she removes them from her closet, she says, will be the day a fancy invitation arrives in the mail.\
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So . . . what about you? Do you have garments lurking in your closet you can’t bear to throw away? (Or maybe haven’t even seen in a while?) Do they have sentimental value? Did you pay a lot for something and just can’t discard it? Do you ever wear old things? (Can you??)
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There’s no prize here, but I dare you to outdo a former colleague who is still wearing things from high school! (But, um, they look it.)
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Please tell me—I want to know!!! (Maybe you could even take a snapshot of one? Email it to me at mckeondc@gmail.com and I’ll be sure to share on MLB.)
This was the original centerpiece at the bash for Margot’s 95th birthday. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
Is the monkey on the lamp wondering where all those orchids came from, or is that just us? / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
A bisque bust nestles nicely with a single hydrangea and a spray of orchids. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
Feathers and tortoiseshell. The only thing better is to add some flowers. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
Atop the newel post in the entryway, a silver bowl benefits from a “wreath” of lemon leaves. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
MARGOT, THE PERSON, not the hydrangea, turned 95 the other day. She threw herself a big bash. “It’s the last one,” she said. But she also said that at her 90th.
She’s the most energetic and optimistic person I’ve ever known. Starting with virtually nothing, she built a small commercial property empire on Washington DC’s Capitol Hill, which she still manages. She just finished renovating her beach-house kitchen. She also plays poker, travels, gardens, has a book group, has season tickets to various theaters and sits on more boards . . .
Which is how she had about 75 of her favorite people and closest friends at the seated dinner at Washington’s Arena Stage theater complex. A major donor, she gets to do things like that.
A string quartet played in the glass-enclosed setting, the wine flowed, the meal was superb. Of course, each beautifully draped table had a centerpiece: a beautiful mix of pale green cymbidium orchids, orange zinnias, soft purple hydrangeas, thick-leafed purple succulents, lemon leaves and spikes of black berries.
“Take one,” she said as I was leaving, so I did. Of course.
The funny thing about centerpieces is that no matter how lovely the composition, they always look as if you just took home a centerpiece from an event. What dazzles at a banquet looks far too stiff at home where, to my mind at least, flowers and greens should look simply gathered from the garden, not like an event venue.
Besides which, with a little playing about you can often create multiple arrangements from the one. In this case, I got four.
I usually use containers that are fairly small at the mouth so there’s no need for a frog, wiring, or floral foam—the flowers are self-supporting. Hydrangeas are great for creating a base. Two or three in a vase and you can poke bits of other stuff among their poofy heads to flamboyant effect.
It is a little intimidating, ripping apart the artistry of a first-rate florist, and these arrangements were gorgeous. I just held my breath and plucked.
There’s one I did for the china cabinet in the dining room, just a single hydrangea and a little spray of orchids in an inkwell. Set beside a bisque bust and flanked by fat candles, the mirrored backdrop gives oompf to what is a rather delicate assemblage.
Most of the orchids were plonked into a crystal vase on a marble side table. I didn’t want to diminish their beauty, just punctuated the mass with the rosette head of one succulent. In the background is a favorite lamp, a bronze monkey sitting under a palm tree, scratching his head and looking up, as if wondering where the hell I got all those orchids.
Another side table has only orange zinnias and hydrangeas in a tortoiseshell-print glass vase, adding softness and a burst of color to a rather hard-edged tablescape of silver and gold and bronze objects. The feathered lampshade helps here too, as does a paisley wool cloth and a gold-framed photo of Baby in Paris. I do like feathers. I also like Paris, and Baby.
My favorite arrangement is in the hall. The ornate silver bowl was too wide for my nesting trick, given the odds and ends I had left. Instead, I stuffed the cavity with floral foam and stuck the sturdy stems of the lemon leaves sideways around the edges, like a wreath. Filling the center is a single hydrangea, a single orchid, a single zinnia and one fat, juicy succulent.
I love this leaf idea, a new one for me. That the arrangement came with lemon leaves was a stroke of good luck, since they’re incredibly long-lasting. But other leaves would be beautiful as well, particularly the reds and oranges now appearing on fall trees.
Pick and poke, add a few bits of something, and done.
CHICKEN MILANESE, or breaded chicken cutlets, a/k/a schnitzel, is my No.1 hands-down crowd-pleaser dinner. Schnitzels are the adult version of chicken nuggets and just as addictive. When my picky extended family comes over, when my teenage sons have friends to dinner or when we just need some plain comfort food—it’s time to bread some chicken cutlets. I make a lot at once, mainly because once you’re frying, you might as well make a decent-sized batch. I need some for the next day anyway because schnitzel is also one my family’s most beloved leftovers. We can eat the cooked cutlets cold, make them into great sandwiches with sliced avocado, tomato and lettuce, or reheat them topped with spaghetti sauce and mozzarella for a quick chicken Parmesan.
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When I was a kid, my mom used veal to make her schnitzels. They were delicious, but veal cutlets are on the pricey side and the quality is spotty, so I opt instead for chicken-breast cutlets. You can buy them pre-sliced or buy skinless, boneless chicken breasts and slice and pound them into cutlets. And you can make them any size you want; just don’t pound them out of existence—somewhere just under ½ inch will do. Season the cutlets with salt and pepper and set aside while you prepare the breading station. Sound scary? Not once you get the hang of it.
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Breading schnitzel: Arrange the cutlets on a large sheet of aluminum foil and season with salt and pepper. Next, lay out another large sheet of foil to protect the counter because things are going to get messy. Make a tray out of foil and fill with flour. A couple of eggs beaten with a few tablespoons of water go into a pie plate. Breadcrumbs go into their own homemade aluminum foil tray. So now you have your 1-2-3 breading station: flour, egg wash and breadcrumbs. ( I like to use Panko, a crispy Japanese take on breadcrumbs, but you can use regular breadcrumbs, matzo meal or my mom’s favorite, seasoned bread crumbs.) If you want to get fancy you add freshly grated Parmesan cheese to the crumbs, but I prefer to keep the cutlets on the plain side, and my main seasoning is a healthy sprinkle of salt and pepper.
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If you want, you can use shallow dishes for the flour and the breadcrumbs and skip lining the counter with foil, but these steps make the clean-up much easier.
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Line a large platter or sheet pan with plastic wrap and go to town breading. Each cutlet starts with the flour: You want to completely coat the chicken pieces with a thin layer. Next comes the egg wash, again to cover. And then on to the breadcrumbs for the final coat. Try to do the flouring with one hand, use a fork to dip each cutlet in the egg mixture, and do the breadcrumbing with the other hand. As each piece is done getting its three coatings, transfer it to the plastic-lined sheet. After you fill the tray, place another layer of plastic wrap or a sheet of waxed paper and keep going until you are done with all the cutlets.
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Basic breading formula: I have a basic formula to figure out how much of everything I need:
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For 2 pounds boneless chicken breasts, about 1½ cups of flour, 3 eggs beaten with 3 tablespoons water, 8 ounces Panko breadcrumbs.
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When you’re done with the breading, the pie pan and fork go into the sink and the whole aluminum foil setup goes into the garbage—the mess is all gone! At this point, you can cover the whole tray in plastic wrap and place in the fridge until dinner time.
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Fry time: When you’re ready, line a large platter or an aluminum foil sheet with a double layer of paper towels. Add oil to a large frying pan to a depth of about 1 inch. You’ll need about a quart of oil; I use peanut or canola oil. Heat the oil over medium-high heat; when a breadcrumb dropped in the oil sizzles, you’re ready to go. Start frying the cutlets, adjusting the heat of the oil so it stays hot but doesn’t burn the cutlets. As the cutlets brown on the bottom side, carefully turn over and cook until lightly browned on the second side. Transfer the cooked cutlets to the paper towel-lined platter and continue until all the cutlets are cooked. Be patient: 2 pounds of cutlets are going to take you some time to cook, but it’s totally worth it.
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Serve warm or at room temperature with lemon wedges so you can squeeze fresh lemon juice over the cutlets. Or serve atop a bed of greens with a mustardy vinaigrette. And yes, the kids may want ketchup or barbecue sauce.
—Stephanie Witt Sedgwick
LittleBird “Stephanie Cooks” is former recipe editor and nutrition columnist for the Washington Post.
Lot 1026 in the Christie’s auction of Lee Radziwill’s household goods is a set of maquettes showing how one of her baths, dressing rooms and sitting rooms would be designed. Above shows one view of a sitting room.
Lot 1026 in the Christie’s auction of Lee Radziwill’s household goods is a set of maquettes showing how one of her baths, dressing rooms and sitting rooms would be designed. The sink and bathtub are made of wood and affixed to the walls and floors of the cardboard maquette.
Lot 1026 in the Christie’s auction of Lee Radziwill’s household goods is a set of maquettes showing how one of her baths, dressing rooms and sitting rooms would be designed. The bathtub in this image is made from wood and glued to the cardboard walls.
Lot 1026 in the Christie’s auction of Lee Radziwill’s household goods is a set of maquettes showing how one of her baths, dressing rooms and sitting rooms would be designed.
THE LATE LEE RADZIWILL is quoted as having said something that resonates with me: “I’m constantly falling in love with objects, and they follow me around the world.”
Radziwill—New York socialite, real-life princess and, of course, younger sister of former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis—died in February of this year, just shy of her 85th birthday. A collection of her furniture and decorative accessories was auctioned off on Thursday (October 17, 2019), in the Manhattan auction rooms of Christie’s, whose story about Radziwill included the quote above. (Though, of course, my beloved objects, of which there are too, too many, don’t have to follow me around the world. I don’t have homes in London, Paris, New York and the English countryside. But never mind.)
Over time, all of Radziwill’s residences were featured in books and magazines. So Radziwill fans would find some familiar pieces of furniture and precious bibelots in the sale. The splendid ormolu toucan on an ebonized base (estimate $2,500 to $3,500) was displayed in Radziwill’s Paris apartment and later in New York. A Napoleon III ormolu-mounted writing table from around 1850 (estimate $1,500 to $2,000) has a velvet inlaid writing surface instead of the more common leather; this piece could live quite happily just about anywhere.
I think the smart money would be looking at the upholstered chairs, sofas and loveseats on offer. These are custom-made pieces whose estimates are lower than the prices you’d find for lesser pieces in contemporary store catalogues (estimates ranged from $500, for a pair of button-tufted armchairs upholstered in Le Manach fabric, to $3,000, for a pair of two-seat sofas upholstered in cream silk wool).
But of course the item that called out to me was a frivolous one, Lot 1026, “A Partial Set of Design Maquettes Supplied by George Oaks of the Design Firm of Sibyl Colefax and John Fowler, 20th Century.” Yes, that Colefax and Fowler. What the watercolor-on-cardboard images show are the “elevations,” each wall of the bathroom, dressing room and sitting room contemplated for one of Radziwill’s UK residences. The little bathtub and sink are wooden and affixed to the appropriate walls of the bath. Watercolor renderings of curtains and wallpaper show how the rooms would be laid out, complete with stand-ins for paintings on the walls.
In other words, Lot 1026 is similar to the doll houses I used to make, on rainy summer afternoons, out of shoeboxes and random bits of paper and paint. Only slightly more refined.
The maquettes, the auction description says, were preliminary drawings and the designs were not executed as shown. The auction estimate for the maquettes was $20,000 to $30,000 (although “name brand” items often sell for far above their intrinsic value).
That price range alone should make those of us without the cash and cachet of a Lee Radziwill feel better: For that kind of money most of us get a real bath or at least a basic kitchen.
Green Acre #170: The Subject Is Ginger (Not Rogers)
It’s unclear why redheads are sometimes called “gingers” when ginger root is nowhere near the hair color. / iStock photo.
THERE’S A GAME I play when I have nothing but pen and paper and time to kill: How many different words can I make from the first word I see?
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I see . . . ginger. I happen to be drinking ginger ale, so this is a particularly lucky break since I’m supposed to be writing a gardening column, not sitting at a café procrastinating.
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There’s gin, rig, grin, egg, erg . . .
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Well, that was a bust. I do see one more . . . but I’ll skip it.
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Here’s another game: How much can I write about a single word without exceeding 800 words. One needs a cut-off, because this can go on forever if you have Internet access. Amazing the paths . . .
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Let’s pick one at random: ginger.
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Here’s what comes out of the top of my head.
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Ginger is a root that you can grate and turn into a powder. “Not enough ingwer,” my father would break out the German over a bland honey cake. Honey cake is an essential for the Jewish New Year, where we hope for a sweet one. It’s also essential to teglach, an impossibly tooth-rotting dessert that consists of nuggets of dough baked in honey, then doused with more honey, then studded with nuts and raisins and sprinkled with cinnamon and ginger.
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It’s also essential to pumpkin pie, applesauce and, of course, gingerbread.
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A swig of ginger ale is supposed to help settle your stomach.
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Most old print ads for Canada Dry ginger ale championed it as a classy thirst-quencher. But one very early ad (not shown) promises that the drink is “absolutely pure and safe to drink.” Well thank goodness.
Does it work? Turning to the web, we find an article in Atlantic Magazine. Ginger ale’s most common therapeutic use is relieving nausea caused by “gastrointestinal bugs, or gastroenteritis. Clinical trials have shown, though, that ginger is at least marginally effective against nausea caused by chemotherapy, anesthesia, motion sickness, and pregnancy.”
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There have not, however, been large-scale studies because there’s “no profit to be made” from natural substances.
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Who ever thought of eating this root, anyway? (Don’t you ask yourself that fairly frequently about strange-looking foods?)
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Ginger is not appealing to look at and not particularly tasty on its own unless you encrust it in sugar. If you were starving, though, I suppose you’d eat it. That’s probably how it happened. A starving person, probably a man, was gnawing on ginger, making a face, and a woman held out a sweet apple and said, “Here, try it with this.”
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You can grow ginger, operative word: you. I bought a ginger plant last year, at Home Depot when I was shopping for light switches or something. It was about 4 feet tall with strappy leaves and a huge honeycomb of a flower in a pink so shocking it was nearly fluorescent. I wasn’t sure if it was wonderful or ghastly. It was ghastly. It also died, which was a good thing. It was certainly flashy, though, which usually appeals to me.
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People call redheads gingers, which makes no sense because ginger is yellow. I just flipped through several hundred photos of ginger—ah, the handy Internet! There are many photos of the bulbous root, grated piles of it, and candied—not a single photo was even slightly red.
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Those with red hair should rightly be called turmerics, which is reddish. Or, even better, paprikas. Paprika is celebrated for its feistiness, a trait assumed of redheads.
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Wasn’t Ginger a character on “Gilligan’s Island”? She was a redhead, as I recall. Glorious Rita Hayworth was also a redhead; I can’t imagine her being called ginger—she’d be a paprika. Prince Harry is called a ginger, but he’s clearly a turmeric. Ginger Rogers, a blond, happens to be properly named.
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You can buy red hair in a box, shades that range from pale pink to strawberry to burgundy—all names that have a real reverberation of red. You can also have it done in a salon. Either way is a bad idea. The upkeep is constant, costly and therefore ridiculous. On the other hand I read somewhere that red hair can substitute for makeup—it can be that striking. But this is not about red.
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Ambling about the Internet, looking for nuggets of ginger I find that one—despite Harry—should be wary of calling a Brit a ginger: It’s slang for gay.
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Canada Dry ginger ale, which originated in Canada in 1904 and used to have a beaver sitting on top of the map on Canada on the label, is now made all over the world. It is called “dry” because it is not as sweet as other soft drinks, or the other ginger beverages being made at the time.
Multiple lawsuits have been mounted (or whatever you do with lawsuits) protesting that the company should not be claiming that it’s “made from real ginger,” as an analysis showed there are only two parts per million of ginger extract. The company has been ordered to change its label to include the word “flavor” or “extract.”
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Says the website MousePrint.org, which I selected as representative because I liked the name, “Consumers who purchased Canada Dry ginger ale are entitled to modest compensation. Without proof of purchase, you can get 40 cents a can/bottle, up to $5.40. With sales receipts, you can get reimbursed at the same rate for up to 100 units.”
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Exciting news, if you’ve been guzzling it in the hope of relieving your dyspepsia.
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And that is 800 words on the word ginger. The end.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” finds amazing diversions on the Internet, many of which have nothing to do with gardening (not really).
Panini with roasted broccoli. / Photo by Stephanie Witt Sedgwick.
This column by Stephanie Witt Sedgwick, which first ran in September 2017, still makes mouths water (especially the panini).
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WHEN WE RUSH into the house late, or when I’m pressed for time, or just want dinner fast, I turn on the oven and line a rimmed sheet pan with heavy-duty aluminum foil. It’s gotten to the point that one of my nieces once asked me if I had an investment in an aluminum foil company. Not exactly, but I’ve come to appreciate how much I can cook on that one pan and how easy the clean-up is—perfect for weeknight dinners.
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My current favorite is roasted broccoli. Roasting gives broccoli a nice hint of bitterness and a depth of flavor you don’t get from steaming. Better yet, it is so easy. You just cut the broccoli into whatever size florets you like; the smaller ones cook faster but also overcook faster so choose your size carefully. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper, place on the foil-lined rimmed sheet pan and pop into an oven preheated to 375 degrees. After 15 minutes, I add thinly sliced garlic, which I have also tossed with olive oil and salt. (Note on the garlic: Always slice it when using it like this. If you chop it, it will cook too quickly and burn; if you leave the cloves whole, they won’t cook quickly enough.) I use tongs or a spatula to mix everything together and continue roasting the broccoli for an additional 7 to 15 minutes. How long you leave it in there depends on how you prefer the broccoli cooked. I like it more on the browned side, so a total of 30 minutes usually works, but if you like yours a little firmer, a total of 22 to 25 minutes should do it.
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And then what? Here’s a few options:
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Roasted Broccoli Side Dish: Remove the broccoli from the oven, sprinkle with fresh lemon juice and enjoy as a side dish. A little freshly grated Parmesan is nice here.
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Pasta With Roasted Broccoli and Garlic: The original emergency meal! While the broccoli’s roasting, cook some pasta; I like shells but it’s up to you which shape you use. When the broccoli’s done, toss the broccoli, garlic and any oil from the pan with the drained pasta. Add additional olive oil if needed. Serve with lots of freshly grated Parmesan cheese and pepper.
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Roasted Broccoli Panini: You have to try one of these panini: They are surprisingly delicious, with the slightly bitter broccoli (roasted with garlic as above) providing a perfect counterpoint to the rich melted cheese. For each sandwich, I brush one side of 2 slices of Italian bread or any country-style loaf (you can keep some in the freezer) with olive oil. The bread goes oiled side down on a cutting board. Next add a layer of sliced mozzarella cheese. Top this with a layer of the roasted broccoli, making sure to include a few slices of the roasted garlic. I put a few teaspoons of ricotta in between the broccoli pieces, then another layer of sliced mozzarella. Top with the remaining slice of bread, oil side up. If you have a panini machine, now’s the time to pull it out; if not, any griddle and a flat pot lid or heavy plate will do. Heat whichever pan you’re using and cook the way you would any grilled cheese sandwich. You can add a slice of prosciutto, salami or ham if you like things more substantial. The sandwich captures the spirit of a calzone but is much more fine-tuned, with a crispy bread exterior, a soft cheesy interior and a great punch of flavor from the broccoli and garlic.
IN THE New York Times Magazine this past Sunday (page 19, if you’re interested) is a crib sheet on finding four-leaf clovers. Over the course of her lifetime, an unspecified period, Leslie Hirst has found tens of thousands of them; they’ve all been pressed and properly stored.
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An artist and professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, Hirst once found 333 in a single day. Science, they tell us, explains that only one in 10,000 plants sports four leaflets, so this is quite an achievement.
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In my lifetime I have found two, and one of those was pressed into the pages of an unabridged dictionary I picked up at a yard sale. Printed in 1938, it includes color plates of maps of long-gone places such as Siam. This is neither here nor there but interesting.
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Baby says her friend Julia finds them all the time, “a completely useless but delightful talent.” Like Hirst, Julia is an artist: Is this an artistic trait?
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On Baby’s wedding day Julia said, “Would you like me to find you one?” She glanced down at the patch of grass they were standing in, plucked one up and held it out. “Here.” Easy as that.
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Tip No. 1: Look out for interruptions in the clover pattern. Hirst claims she can spy them at a full run. Runners, they say, get into this perfect zen-like state, zoned out and unfocused. If you just eyeball a clover patch as you breeze by they’ll pop right out at you, or words to that effect.
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Tip No. 2: If you don’t see any right away, move on. Not every patch of clover includes a four-leafer or 300.
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Tip No. 3: Do not let the clover know you’re serious about finding them. Let your eyeballs glide across the surface, and repeat, “I do not care if there’s a four-leaf clover there.” I made all of that up, but I think it’s good.
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Tip No. 4: They’re easiest to see in the shade, but do not look for them in the dark. They’re nyctinastic, which is a really useful word I just learned, meaning they fold inward at night. For extra credit, please write 10 sentences that include the word.
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There are several explanations for why four-leaf clovers are considered particularly lucky. I like the one that says they can assist in seeing fairies. Four-leafed or not, clover is considered a lucky plant. If you’re “living in clover” you’re in the lap of luxury, having a lucky life. Meanwhile fusspots attempt to eradicate it from their Kentucky Blue Grass and Fussy Fescue.
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Time was, most lawns had patches of the stuff, and at the Old Farmer’s Almanac, they think it’s high time for a return to such mixed lawns, lucky or not.
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There are 300 clover species (genus trifolium). A member of the pea family, they come in shades of crimson and white. Being a legume, they convert nitrogen to fertilizer, practically eliminating the need for additional fertilization. They’re also drought- resistant, stay green in the heat and attract butterflies and bees and other good bugs that fight bad bugs.
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This is an admirable collection of characteristics. Combined with grass, clover also makes a pretty ground cover. “Mix 5 to 10 percent clover seed with grass seed to create a thick stand,” the old farmers say.
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Tip No. 5: They’re easiest to find in the spring, “before the first mowing.” Unfortunately, for me at least, I have enough trouble remembering what I just walked into the kitchen for, never mind remembering to look for four-leaf clover in six months.
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Tip No. 6: Do not try hunting for four-leaf clovers while walking your 65-pound grand-dog, who is probably hunting for cats.
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You are probably not in a zen-like state.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” doesn’t have a clover field in her urban backyard, but she can dream.
The sweet potato vine is still going strong, but the two small, barely visible, kale plants on either side of it will soon be the stars of the Cavanaugh window box. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
SOME YEARS AGO the Washington Post’s fine garden editor scoffed and poo-pooed and stomped about in High British Dudgeon at the proliferation of ornamental cabbages and kale in fall gardens.
I don’t recall exactly what he said, but he expressed immense dislike for the plants and disdain for any gardener who might plant them. Sniff, sniff and so forth.
Oh, let’s toss in another sniff just for the hell of it.
While I’m usually quick to note a trend on the verge of overdone, like those deliberately knocked-over pots spilling out what-have-yous, I had then and I have now an affection—Nay, joy!—at the sight of those leafy, frilly heads of green or purple, or green and purple, or, best of all, purple with hot-pink centers.
I saw them before I even had a garden. They were planted amid a splendid display of chrysanthemums and pansies at a National Symphony Orchestra show house, big fat heads dancing up the path to the doorway of a tiny outbuilding designed by the delightfully named Mrs. McGregor’s Garden Shop, which appears to no longer exist.
One could imagine Peter Rabbit salivating at the sight, though he might spit out the leaves as they are rather bitter, though I’ve read that a leaf or two is tasty in salad. Do let me know.
Such playful fantasy, I thought then, and now.
Is there anything that brings greater cheer to the fall and winter garden? While the edges of kale are frilly and those of cabbages are smooth, both are in the same plant family and will continue to grow through spring, dramatic in scale and color right when you need it most—in the depths of January, when the sky is gray and even those pansies have sighed and drooped, gasping for a little sun and warmth.
We’re at a funny time of year. Fall is here, but the weather is still mild, even hot, so the annuals and tropicals are still happily blooming. Meanwhile, the selection of bulbs and winter-hardy plants is quickly shrinking. This makes for a juggling act, removing plants that might still be looking pretty and replacing them with pansies and such, which will live out the cold.
As the days grow shorter and the air begins to nip, that pretty garden quickly becomes ratty and increasingly bedraggled. Then, one night, a frost strikes and it all goes belly-up in a snap.
Plant now or you’ll be faced with pots of dirt for the coming months.
An antipathy toward ruining what’s pretty now for what will be most attractive later is probably why so many containers and window boxes are left fallow for the cold season. There’s no excuse anywhere south of the frozen tundra of—say Minnesota—for them to sit there looking dead for half a year.
That’s what makes cabbages and kale such jolly additions.
Stick one in the middle of a pot, surround it with pansies, and maybe add a drip of ivy. Done.
In pots, you can start out with large heads of cabbage or kale. They might bolt* before the season is through, though there’s something to be said for instant gratification. But maybe you’ll be lucky and they’ll last until they can be replaced.
For window boxes, keep an eye out for six-packs of very young heads, about the size of a single geranium flower. Unfortunately, these are hard to come by. (You can start some from seed next year, if you’re the sort who does well with them and can figure out the timing and so forth. I am not one of you.)
These smaller heads will not have dense roots and can be easily plopped into a bare space. As they grow they will gradually displace any malingering annuals, which will be looking scruffier by the second as the weather chills.
Or just throw out all the summer stuff and stuff the whole box with them. Magical!
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
*Stop flowering, throw off a stringy stem and set seed. Like basil does, you know?
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” adheres to the Art of the Possible when it comes to winter gardening.
This fashion doll from the 1760s was well traveled, being sent by Paris couturiers to far-flung clients to spread the word of new styles. In America, cabinetmakers of the period had a similar system, sending out representatives with scale models of chests and other home furnishings. / MyLittleBird photo.
The etching exhibited between these two French dresses is circa 1780, but the message might be the same today: It translates “French Fashion Domination Over Europe.” The droll message alludes to a more serious one: The 18th-century French fashion industry was seen as part of a larger French power grab. The Emile Pasquier ball gown on the left is from 1889-1890; the dress on the right, a robe à la française, is thought to be French, circa the 1750s. / Photo courtesy The Museum at FIT.
The confection on the left is a robe à la française from 1755-1760 (leopard-pattern bows even then!). On the right is a couture piece by John Galliano for Christian Dior, fall/winter 2000-2001. The clients for such a dress would be quite limited, but then they always were, as most early gowns were made for the French court and wealthy women. / Photo courtesy The Museum at FIT.
The Paris House of Worth made a splash in the States when Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt wore this “Electric Light” fancy dress in 1883, celebrating the advent of electrical illumination in New York City. / Photo courtesy The Museum at FIT.
American designers Claire McCardell, far left, and Elizabeth Hawes, second from left, certainly held their own in the American market in the 1930s. But there was also an appetite for licensed copies of Paris couture, such as this one of a black Lanvin evening dress, sold by Bergdorf Goodman. Unauthorized copies could also be found in the American market, like this unauthorized copy of the Vionnet “Little Horses” (the beaded motif) dress from 1926. The photo blowup shows the very modest Lower East Side clothing stores of 1910. / Photo courtesy The Museum at FIT.
Dresses got their shape and volume in the 1770s from whalebone stays and leather-covered iron staves. The red couture dress by Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel on the right, from fall/winter 1987-1988, has something of the same idea, presumably minus the heavy-duty armature, thanks to more modern technology. / Photo courtesy The Museum at FIT.
A few years after introducing The New Look following the end of World War II and fabric rationing, Christian Dior produced this simple but sumptuous dress for spring 1951. If it looks familiar, it’s probably because the silhouette was in vogue for more than a decade. / Photo courtesy The Museum at FIT.
A very young Patrick Kelly captured the modern spirit with his whimsical button dress, from fall 1986. Though American, Kelly launched his short career—he died tragically young—in Paris. / Photo courtesy The Museum at FIT.
Jean Paul Gaultier’s infamous Conical Bustier, dating from 1982, helped launch the underwear-as-outerwear trend still in evidence today. A modified bra-corset dress was made famous by Madonna on her Blond Ambition World Tour. / Photo courtesy The Museum at FIT.
Catalogue for the World War I exhibit at the Bard Graduate Center in Manhattan.
Valerie Steele’s catalogue accompanying the Museum at FIT show, “Paris, Capital of Fashion.”
FRENCH AND FASHION are two words that belong together, n’est-ce pas? Through the beginning of next year, two off-the-beaten-path institutions are featuring two very different but compatible exhibits homing in on those very words. And the timing couldn’t be better for those who have a New York City visit in their holiday plans. (Psst! The crowds at these shows will be quite a bit less dense than those at Rockefeller Center. You know why that tree is so big? So you can actually see it despite the 4 million people standing between it and you.) —
The Museum at FIT, the Fashion Institute of Technology, has put together a selection of garments, men’s and women’s, to nail down the premise, disputed by few, that Paris has long been where it’s at when it comes to fashion. Voluminous court dresses from the 1760s share the exhibition space with more modern frocks, such as Jean Paul Gaultier’s infamous “Conical Bustier” dress. (Though from what we’ve learned elsewhere, dress at the Court of Versailles was almost as sexualized as the offerings of the provocative Monsieur G.) There’s even a mockup of the Hall of Mirrors that makes a fitting backdrop to the glitter of the ancien régime.
Part of the exhibit shows how the French couture guided the cutters and manufacturers in the States . . . until it didn’t, as American designers began to come into their own. But one undercurrent of the show—one that should ring a loud bell in today’s anti-immigrant climate—is that Paris remained on top, and in many ways still does, thanks to relatively large doses of foreign talent on the shores of the Seine.
Although 18th- and 19th-century Paris was already known as the fashion capital, with an army of artisans creating clothing for individual clients, the beginning of the couture “system” was triggered by the British-born dressmaker Charles Frederick Worth, who opened the House of Worth in Paris in 1858 and presented a “collection” of his ideas rather than the personalized one-on-one presentations of other couture dressmakers. In more modern times, Patrick Kelly, the young African American designer with a flair for well-designed whimsy in his short career, launched himself in Paris. Karl Lagerfeld, the freelance designer who remade so many brands, was German-born. Azzedine Alaïa was the son of a Tunisian farmer. That most French of French designers, Yves Saint Laurent, was born in Algeria, when it was still a French colony. In the 1980s, Rei Kawakubo, Issey Miyake and other Japanese designers felt they had to show in Paris in order to be part of the fashion conversation.
At FIT, I had the good fortune to fall in with a guided tour being given for a school group. Having a narrative arc was a help for a show with a whole bunch of details clamoring for notice.
The exhibit at the Bard Graduate Center has a more specific focus: the shift in French fashion at home during World War I. Here the clothing is less “aspirational” and more down-to-earth. And here fashion is a moving target, shifting with the needs of women who swung into action to stand in for men gone off to fight. The period was a transitional one for women’s clothing (and women’s rights) and not without controversy. No-nonsense skirt suits and uniforms offended some of society’s notion of what women should wear, and the exhibit embraces postcards, caricatures and fashion magazines that “highlight the tension between fashionable dress, traditional gender norms, and wartime imperatives.”
The French government’s efforts to keep the fashion industry alive while bending to the needs of the hour are illustrated, along with examples of clothing from two women leading fashion houses during this period, Jeanne Lanvin and Coco Chanel, the latter way ahead of the pack in promoting more relaxed styles for women of all classes.
In some ways, the Bard exhibit is the more interesting because it explores more overtly the interplay between “real” women and the fashion world. Both exhibits live up to their scholarly aspirations with detailed catalogues, Paris, Capital of Fashion by Valerie Steele, the well-known director and chief curator of the Museum at FIT, and French Fashion, Women, and the First World Warby scholars Maude Bass-Krueger and Sophie Kurkdjian.
—Nancy McKeon
Paris, Capital of Fashion, through January 4, 2020; The Museum at FIT, Seventh Avenue at 27th Street, New York, New York 10001; fitnyc.edu; closed Sundays and Mondays; open Tuesday-Friday noon-8pm, Saturdays 10am-5pm. Through January 4, 2020. Free admission.
French Fashion, Women, and the First World War, through January 5, 2020; Bard Graduate Center Gallery, 18 West 86th Street, New York, New York 10024; 212-501-3023; bgc.bard.edu; open Tuesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday 11am-5pm; Wednesday and Thursday 11am-8pm; closed Mondays; admission $5 to $7.
MyLittleBird often includes links to products we write about. Our editorial choices are made independently; nonetheless, a purchase made through such a link can sometimes result in MyLittleBird receiving a commission on the sale, whether through a retailer, an online store or Amazon.com.
Many of the pieces from Ann Williamson, of Portland, Oregon, are one-of-a-kind because she works from vintage textiles, often Japanese kimono silks. Like other exhibitors, she offers alterations to the pieces she displays. Sleeves can be shortened, shoulders taken in, garments sized down. Sizing up is harder, but sometimes it can be done.
THERE’S NOTHING like a new jacket to make a woman’s closet happy. And to give a stylish new life to all those pairs of black pants.
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We believers in this wardrobe magic should make a date to visit the Smithsonian’s Craft2Wear show next week. Of course the show will feature jewelry makers to spare, plus handbag and scarf designers. But I’m always happy to add a new jacket to my wardrobe, and that’s a category in which C2W shines as bright as a full moon.
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More than a few of these designers, mostly women, find inspiration in exquisite vintage Japanese obis and kimono fabrics. Preserving the delicate old workmanship is a happy by-product of this up-cycling, with the new jacket owner’s bliss a terrific benefit.
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Ann Williamson of Portland, Oregon, pointed out that Westerners have been using Japanese fabrics ever since the two sides of the world made contact with each other. Kimono silks, she explains, have body and strength but also drape beautifully. One aspect of kimono silks and their popularity that I didn’t anticipate is that, as Williamson explained, kimonos are made from large rectangles of fabric, so when you take one apart you have large, clean-cut lengths of cloth from which to cut out a new pattern.
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Other textile designers work in every fabric from cotton to mohair to alpaca to wool blends and back. One artisan, Mary Lynn O’Shea, works with one of the last jacquard mills in the country in order to produce her exclusive fabrics. Another, Sandra Miller, deploys several expert knitters around the country to loom her intarsia patterns by hand using cotton and wool yarns on knitting machines; she then finishes them with cording, buttons, beads or other embellishments.
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The prices for these hand-crafted treasures are not of the Old Navy variety, nor should they be. The lightweight cotton-blend Mixed Up Jacket from Elizabeth Holliday’s De Novo Style is $245, her all-knit Grommet Jacket of boiled merino wool $360. Mary Lynn O’Shea’s Essex Light Weight Jacket is $595 short, $650 long. For Outside Designworks‘s cheerful rainwear, you can expect to pay $410 for a reversible waterproof car coat and $265 for “Hoodie,” a short rain slicker with hood, available in more than a dozen colors and patterns.
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Other coats and jackets exhibited at the show can run much higher. But customizing is always a possibility here, without the couture price tag. The textile artists will offer a selection of sizes and styles, of course, but many are there also to take commissions to make the jacket you’ve always dreamed of.
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And when’s the last time Old Navy asked you what you’d like to see in a jacket?
—Nancy McKeon
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The Craft2Wear three-day event kicks off Thursday night, October 3, from 6 to 9pm, with an opening-night benefit and preview party (tickets, $75, advance purchase only). Mingle with the artists, get first dibs on their one-of-a-kind creations and enjoy cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. For tickets ($75 each and includes a return ticket to the show on either Friday or Saturday), visit Smithsonian Craft2Wear.
Hours for the show Friday, October 4, 10:30am to 7:30pm, and Saturday, October 5, 10:30am to 5:30pm. Tickets: $15 at the door; $13 advance purchase. Buy tickets at Smithsonian Craft2Wear.
National Building Museum is located at 401 F Street NW, Washington DC 20001 (directly across from the Metro Red Line Judiciary Square Station, F Street exit).
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LEFT: Mary Lynn O’Shea makes her jackets from fabrics she designs and has made on some of the last jacquard looms in the US. In addition, the Vermont-based artisan and her daughter, now also an experienced seamstress and pattern maker, fashion their garments’ buttons on reconditioned turn-of-the-century button equipment. Shown is the Light Weight Essex Jacket in the “zest” color way. CENTER:Jane Herzenberg of Massachusetts makes jackets and coats using the Japanese techniques of Shibori dyeing (a resist-dyeing technique) and Sashiko and Boro hand-stitching, once used to reinforce older garments and now used decoratively. She updates those ancient techniques with bursts of modern color. RIGHT: Sandra Miller of West Chester, Pennsylvania, guides several expert knitters across the country to hand-loom her intarsia fabrics on knitting machines; she then finishes them by hand herself, often adding jacquard fabric accents.
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Elizabeth Holladay’s designs for De Novo Style are made by hand in Memphis, Tennessee, from cashmere, wool blends, alpaca and other fabrics. LEFT: De Novo’s Grommet Jacket is all-knit, made from Italian boiled merino wool that is then painted. RIGHT: De Novo’s Mixed Up Jacket is a cotton-blend knit that is lightweight but warm, trimmed in leather.
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The Paloma jacket and scarf, above, in the “light piano” colorway are from Chris Triola, a textile artist based in East Lansing, Michigan. The simple shape of the jackets allows the color combinations to stand out in graphic ways.
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Denise Dickens’s rainwear for her Outside Designworks studio in Washington DC could almost make you wish for a bit of precipitation. LEFT: The Rain Slicker With Hood starts with cotton in more than a dozen colors and patterns to choose from. The fabric is then treated with a matte laminate for waterproofing. Matching rain hats are also available. RIGHT: The Reversible Matte Swing Carcoat With Hood, with raglan sleeves and slash pockets, is solid-color and waterproof nylon on one side and printed cotton, for sunnier days, on the reverse.
MyLittleBird often includes links to products we write about. Our editorial choices are made independently; nonetheless, a purchase made through such a link can sometimes result in MyLittleBird receiving a commission on the sale, whether through a retailer, an online store or Amazon.com.
This is the way the backyard pond should look: no barriers and brief glimpses of little fishies. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
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A CENTURY ago, when my father’s sisters were in their teens and That Time of the Month rolled around, they were said to be “unwell.”
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During this period, you should pardon the expression, they would take to their rooms in the brownstone they lived in, just off New York’s Central Park on West 91st Street. The curtains were drawn, cool towels were draped over their brows, and they sipped blackberry brandy for the duration.
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How lovely, I’m thinking as I gaze at my garden and wish for someone to cover my face with a cool towel and serve me something to get a buzz on.
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My Prince has escalated his war on the raccoon and I’m feeling unwell.
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When we last left this saga, just a few weeks ago, he’d set a milk crate in the pond so the fish could hide from the midnight bandit. Amazingly, this did not work. The clay flue liner that one reader suggested didn’t work either.
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Either the fish were too stupid (their brains are awfully small) or the raccoon too wily. . . . The fish were plucked one by one and were gone.
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The pond, in theory, is a pretty place. Surrounded by plants and stones with curls of greenery poking about. Moss grows on a rock beneath the headless statue of a Greek (I suppose) maiden, dress chiseled into folds, bare toes peeping out from beneath the hem. The statue’s plump white arms hold an urn or ewer. Water pours forth, greening the moss as it flows into the pond. The sound is either like a gentle waterfall or the gush of a busted toilet, depending on my mood.
With a fully extended baby gate over it, to protect the fish from the raccoon, the little pond looks like a trash heap with a fountain. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
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From time to time it is a nice spot to sit alongside, drink a little wine and contemplate my Bird of Paradise, now in its second year and 12 feet tall. It’s supposed to have white flowers. It has no flowers at all. Why, I ask you?
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Yesterday my darling went to Petco or PetSmart—anyway, the place with pets—and bought another dozen feeder fish, which sell 10 for a buck. Used to be 12 for a buck . . . ah, inflation. Whatever they are, they’re cheap and toss off golden glints in the sun. We no longer dare to try koi.
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As this is the third collection of fish he’s introduced this summer, additional battlements have been engaged. The pond is completely covered by a baby gate, stretched open to full width, with a black plastic palette, I guess you’d call it, covering the remaining space. This construct is weighted down by a stone. The pond is no longer visible. It looks like a trash heap with a fountain.
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“I’ll take it down every day,” he promised. “It’s just for the nights.” Hah.
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Inside the house, My Prince has escalated the mouse wars. Added to the mouse “hotels” and postcard-sized glue traps are brand-new glue traps the size of placemats. These are scattered like a lethal game of Twister around the living and dining rooms. I’m tempted to set one on the seat of his chair.
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Meanwhile my little gray friend scampers about laughing at him, busy with mysterious evening errands that require crossing the dining room as we’re watching something on the tube. My Prince continues to pretend he doesn’t see.
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Go little mouse!
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” loves the little critters that frequent her garden (and house). Maybe not the raccoon.
a large-format Polaroid instant camera, 20 by 24 inches, making it quite unusual (Polaroid apparently made only five of these big cameras in the 1970s, and a few are still
