A offering from Wreaths of Maine, left. Kinsman Garden wreath, right.
MY DEAR FRIEND Margot passed away last month. She was taken while gardening, they say, by a mosquito bearing West Nile virus. This was just shy of her 97th birthday, mere days before her annual trip home to Germany, where she was booked into her usual draconian spa where she would fast for two weeks and stomp through the mountains and take saunas, always returning looking 10 years younger.
She was strong as a bull, and anyone who knew her expected her to celebrate her 110th, probably by shoveling snow, or planting a few hundred tulips with a spoon.
I should have known something was very wrong when Margot, my hydrangea, died this summer. Margot, my friend, gave it to me 15 years or so ago, and it tossed off gorgeous pink blossoms and grew wilder and more glorious each season. And then it stopped. Just. Stopped. Gone, pfft.
The point being, there will be no wreath from my friend Margot this year. She always ordered one from Wreaths of Maine, a big bushy thing with a few pine cones, a fake red velvet bow, which I would rip off and replace with a purple bow to match the ones in the window boxes, and dreadful red plastic apples, which I would toss out and replace with sprigs of baby’s breath, which dried nicely and gave the impression of snow.
My Baby thought I needed a replacement idea. She sent me a clipping from the October issue of Southern Living of a wreath from kinsmangarden.com that’s made from a wire-and-jute form filled with potting soil, into which you plug pansies and cabbages and mums and sprigs of rosemary and mustard and such—along with their roots.
Once the wreath is assembled, you lay it down on the ground and water it. Give it a day to drain, or as many hours as you have patience for, and hang it. Every once in a while, or when it appears near death, take it down, lay it flat and water it. Given some care, it’s supposed to last through spring.
In my case, this is highly unlikely, watering not being my strong suit. But perhaps you’d like to try: It’s quite lovely.
Less complicated is a wreath featured in the November/December issue of always-enchanting Flower Magazine. Atlanta-based floral designer Erin McClendis, of E. Vincent Floral Design, took a wreath form and covered it with tidy bundles of Douglas fir, then added carnations and roses inserted into floral water tubes, along with juniper berries and shiny bits of fake stuffs. You will need to remember to add water to the tubes every once in a while, but it too should last through the winter.
Even simpler: Get a premade fir wreath and just jab it with flowers and tie on a big bow.
As for me. Several years ago my brilliant designer friend Alice Wilson gave me a brass wreath covered with articulated brass flowers and leaves, which can be displayed as is, or bent about to hold flowers and feathers and bows and vines . . . which she does on her own, to brilliant effect, varying it throughout the year for the seasons and holidays and such.
I’ll stick mine up just for the holidays, decorate it with flowers that dry, and hang it on our front door suspended by a big purple bow. It will look swell with no care at all.
Unless it gets stolen, in which case I’ll just hack a bough of fir from the bottom of the Hanukkah bush, suspend it from the door, and call it done.
A wreath by Erin McClendis, left. Alice Wilson’s wreath, right, based on articulated brass flowers and leaves. / Photos courtesy Stephanie Cavanaugh.
Even for an elephant ear this seems big. The Prince took the photo, so that must be LittleBird Stephanie’s hand.
By Stephanie Cavanaugh
THE GREAT ANNUAL schlep is about to begin.
With temperatures at last dipping to a near frost, the tropicals are getting their last gasp of the garden for the year.
The fine folks at Colorblends say my bulb shipment is on the way: 400 tulips and hyacinths in shades of pink and white and lavender, mixed beauties in creamy white with orange centers. Let the digging commence!
Actually, that last has become the least arduous task, as the back garden has been dug and redug and improved and dug again for coming on 40 years, leaving a garden that can nearly be planted with no tools at all.
But first, the jasmines and citrus and other tender plants, most of which are in pots, need to be examined for blights, repotted (perhaps) and dragged up two flights of stairs to the greenhouse off my office, a space they share with Cooper, Buddy and The Boss, our feral parakeets, who deign to dine in their cage, but otherwise wing it.
Though they have male names, I think they’re all female, since they keep producing eggs*—which go nowhere, much like the Bird of Paradise and the kiwi (not to mention the wisteria), which do absolutely zip year after year, though I nurse and feed them with much tenderness. Maybe I should make tiny omelets. That was all an aside.
Anyway, the timing of the move turns out to be excellent, with Baby and her baby Wesley and her Personal Prince Pete arriving today—many hands make light work, as they say, for once correctly. Perhaps I’ll just direct.
As always, we have more plants than we know what to do with. The greenhouse is growing perilously weighty, cantilevered as it is above the back porch—and hanging there for more than 100 years. My Prince says he wants to lighten the load.
Do I really need pots and pots of geraniums, even if they’re so cheerful? They generate so easily from cuttings. Just a bit of a stem will do. Forget the tying-up and hanging upside-down in the basement or garage over the winter: A snip and dip in rooting hormone, and one has a grove. I haven’t bought one in years.
Much as I love to see the elephant ears—and clip their leaves for arrangements all winter—they are huge, and weigh a ton, so might need to be stored naked . . . and so cold. Oh my.
The wise folks at the Facebook group Florida Plumeria Growers say I can also lift the plumeria—which (after three years) is finally branching from a single stalk, and therefore should flower next summer—dust off the roots and just leave it in a cool, dark place to be replanted come spring. This is a frightening suggestion. I’ve been trying to grow this damn plant forever and here I am at the doorstep of delicious scent and color and . . . risk it all? Hear me thinking.
I do think that the parlor palms and scheffleras, of which—how did we get so many?—will do fine in the living-room window and on the dining-room floor. I hope.
The jasmines and citrus, though, have to come upstairs to the direct sun to survive. As does the white Bird of Paradise, all 8 feet of it, and its three orange cousins. After all. Someday they just might flower.
*The birds all have brown nostrils, or whatever you call the tops of their beaks, which means they should all be female. Maybe.
The University of Virginia’s Fralin Museum of Art is celebrating the skyscraper, the Gothic-inspired version in particular, in its exhibit, “Skyscraper Gothic,” open through December 31, 2021.
By Nancy McKeon
I WAS DRIVING into Lower Manhattan a few weeks ago and suddenly felt sick to my stomach about the Brooklyn Bridge. An odd reaction, but stay with me.
Approached from the Brooklyn side, the bridge, which dates from 1883, loomed majestically overhead, its Gothic arches soaring above me. But once I was in the scrum of the Manhattan building-scape, I could glimpse it only through gaps between the tall buildings of downtown, which seemed to miniaturize the bridge and put it in its (diminished) place.
A trick of perspective? Of course. And nothing new (except, that day, to me): The towers of Lower Manhattan began rising shortly after the bridge connected the City of New York and the City of Brooklyn and never stopped. But sic transit and all that. Even the colossal skyscrapers that dwarf the bridge have long been overtaken.
On my bookshelf there’s a monograph, published in 1916, that lauds the Woolworth Building, then known as “The Cathedral of Commerce.” That it was, thanks to five-and-dime magnate F.W. Woolworth, who willed the project, and Cass Gilbert, the architect who designed it in all its Gothic tracery. It was the tallest building in the world until 1929. Today, the top 30 floors are stunningly ordinary condos, which can be yours starting, at the moment, at $3.2 million for a one-bedroom (to get Woolworth-worthy architecture you have to fork over $23.3 million, at least according to current listings).
The New York skyscraper of today is a much simpler affair, pencil-thin saltine boxes rising along Billionaires’ Row in midtown, lifting a middle-finger salute to Central Park, and to all the little people (you know, New Yorkers) below. I suppose the same thing may have been said of the Chrysler and Empire State buildings, built at the dawn of the Great Depression, but their decorative elements shared their majesty with us passersby. (Also, they were built as commercial buildings, not as aerie-level personal residences.)
Among the riches of “Skyscraper Gothic,” the exhibit at the University of Virginia’s Fralin Museum of Art, are some of architect Cass Gilbert’s working drawings for the iconic Woolworth Building, the tallest building in the world from 1913 to 1929. / Fralin Museum of Art, University of Virginia.
It’s fitting, I guess, that the skyline I think of as somehow defining New York and Chicago is the subject of a museum exhibit and all the past-tense that suggests. The newly reopened Fralin Museum at the University of Virginia has put together artifacts and images that show just how iconic the icons of the cityscape almost immediately became. The show concentrates, naturally, on how the Gothic grace of the early-20th-century buildings captured the public’s imagination and how their very audacity sparked conversation and emulation.
The old Shaw-Walker office-furniture manufacturer saw nothing strange in saying that its four-drawer file cabinet was “Built Like a Skyscraper” and, in a carved logo in the exhibit (see below), shows the image of a tall building behind a file cabinet—with a businessman jumping on the open bottom drawer. In other Shaw-Walker promotional material, the “Jumping Man” is doing pull-ups on the open top drawer (Warning: Do NOT try this at home).
Another example of skyscrapers in the public imagination is the “Skyscraper Game,” a 1937 offering from Parker Brothers (the more famous Parker Brothers board game “Monopoly” preceded it by two years and clearly had more staying power, with many iterations, including my current favorite, “Monopoly: Cheaters Edition”).
The scholarship behind the Fralin exhibit makes the point in its accompanying book, Skyscraper Gothic: Medieval Style and Modernist Buildings, edited by Kevin D. Murphy and Lisa Reilly, that as much as skyscrapers are, or were, seen as modern, many of their outstanding exemplars in fact took inspiration from a more-than-500-year-old architectural vocabulary.
(An interesting point made by architectural history professor Michael J. Lewis in his review of the exhibit for the Wall Street Journal: The “chiseled forms” that skyscrapers began to assume came after New York City passed its Zoning Resolution of 1916, requiring physical “setbacks” as buildings rose in height. The point was to keep the streets below from becoming sunless canyons [it’s debatable how effective that was] and resulted in many a Christmas tree or ziggurat effect.)
For now, I choose to dismiss the notion that early- and mid-20th-century skyscrapers are objects of nostalgia. They’re simply part of the built environment in which we live. While the occasional soaring glass box can be experienced as a kind of “chaser” after all those carved niches and curves and brooding Art Deco eagles (looking at you, Chrysler Building!), a world of glass boxes wouldn’t offer as much to look at and linger over, even outside of an art exhibit.
Skyscraper Gothic, through December 31, 2021, The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia, 155 Rugby Road (on the grounds of the university), Charlottesville, Virginia. uvafralinartmuseum.virginia.edu.
LEFT: “Jumping Man,” 1930-1940, Shaw-Walker Furniture Company Inc., American, 1890-1990. / Courtesy of the Grand Rapids Public Museum, Grand Rapids, Michigan. RIGHT: Two years after introducing “Monopoly,” Parker Brothers brought out the “Skyscraper Game” (1937). / Parker Brothers Inc., American, mid-20th century “Skyscraper Game” (board game: box lid), 1937. Private collection. Images courtesy Fralin Museum of Art, University of Virginia.
The man who wasn’t there could be . . . anywhere, right? / iStock photo.
By Stephanie Cavanaugh
As I was walking up the stair
I met a man who wasn’t there;
He wasn’t there again today.
I wish, I wish he’d stay away.
—The Little Man,
by Hughes Mearns (1875-1965)
BABY MET such an apparition several times as a child, in the upstairs hallway and (ugh) bathroom of our hundred-year-old Capitol Hill rowhouse.
She was infinitely more terrified by the dentist.
The apparition disappeared to who-knows-where for years, and then Baby’s husband, and Personal Prince, Pete had an encounter.
Baby and Pete were visiting, comfortably ensconced under the beamed ceiling of the Garden Suite,* our ode to the South of France (where neither of us has been), when he woke one morning in the full of dark and saw someone on the back porch steps with a cigarette.
While this might have been me, it was not. I was still tucked up tight, snuffled in down.
He was as sanguine as she about the appearance. It was reported, as one might report a mouse strolling across the dining room whilst eating one’s Cheerios. No more than a curious disturbance.
He: Were you on the porch this morning?
Me: Nope, I just got up.
He: I think I saw a ghost.
Me: Oh? What was he doing?
He: Just standing there, smoking.
Me: What did you do?
He: I went back to bed.
Me. Mmmm.
And off Pete went to walk the dog.
If this had been me, I would have screamed. I do not scream at the mice: They’re such cheerful creatures, if a bit skittish.I have never seen our ghost, but who might he be?
This house is fairly old, 1914 or so, though we haven’t researched it. We were told it was the model home for this row of houses, built for white-collar workers with government jobs. Not the fancy sort of worker, the members of Congress and other poobahs, though the fancy sort now dominate the community. How those original owners would howl at the price of real estate.
The house has certain details, embellishments, that are missing from others on the block. Most prominently, the fine set of glass-paned chestnut doors that divide the hallway from the living room and that frame the room, like a shadowbox.
We were the third owners, so the ghost must be from the first batch, since we bought it from the second, a single guy who was still very much alive at the time, I believe. I sometimes wonder about those original occupants, though I’m ashamed to say not enough to drag myself downtown to the library where the records are kept.
It lends itself well to being haunted, this house. Chestnut woodwork frames the windows, the doors. The floors are old pine. There’s a remarkable lack of light. As one Realtor said when we were considering buying the place: “It looks like a funeral parlor.” We used another agent.
We don’t like to mess with it much: There are so few houses left with as much original . . . character, you might say. What changes we’ve made are fairly seamless, so the ghost still feels at home.
Not too long ago there were many houses like this on Capitol Hill, some decaying more elegantly than others. I’m thinking of Jack, who would be 110 by now, I suppose, if he’s still alive. A Poe-ish character with limply ruffled and yellowed cravats and stringy black hair, surely dyed. He was an actor, he frequently proclaimed, basso profundo, though we never saw him perform. There were large parties for artsy types in his crumbling, cobwebby home, and always a vase of dead red roses on the piano, which he would play as we all drunkenly sang. We were too afraid to eat.
If Jack’s was always at the ready for Halloween, it doesn’t take much to ghoul this place up for the holiday. I dust the gargoyle in the front hallway. Maybe stick a candelabrum on the newel post. Turn on the spotlight in the back garden, the one that makes it seem underwater, the light hypnotically shifting and puddling around the desiccated heads of hydrangea.
Another light goes out front, greenish dots that flicker across the ivy, sparkling down onto the sidewalk, where little monsters strolling by giggle and stomp on them.
Trick or treat! May your ghosts be as mild-mannered as ours.
*The Garden Suite is what some might call the English Basement. I have it on the authority of an actual Brit, my buddy Maggie, that basement apartments there are called Garden Suites, so that is what we call our downstairs guest quarters.Sounds lovely, doesn’t it?
Melissa Brizer, the greenhouse gardener of Dumbarton Oaks museum and gardens in Washington DC. If Beatrix Jones Ferrand, the landscape architect who planned the gardens back in the 1920s, came back today, Brizer says, she would recognize the space. / MyLittleBird photo.
Melissa Brizer, in the Dumbarton Oaks greenhouse. Brizer trained in horticultural school. But, she says, “some of the men I work with grew up on farms in El Salvador, and their skills are incredible. They can read the soil and read the weather.” / MyLittleBird photo.
Greenhouse gardener Melissa Brizer says she had vowed to top out her career by working at the fabled Dumbarton Oaks museum and gardens in Washington DC. “And it just worked out that way.” / MyLittleBird photo.
By Lauren Boston
INSIDE THE orangery at Dumbarton Oaks museum and gardens grows a 150-year-old ficus pumila, a climbing fig, the oldest living house plant in North America. Melissa Brizer’s job is to keep it alive.
No pressure.
The ficus is just one of the plants under Brizer’s care. She first came to Dumbarton Oaks as an art-history student at the now-defunct Mount Vernon College, interning in the archivist office in 1983. The experience left a lasting impression.
“I vowed then that I would end my career at Dumbarton Oaks, and it just worked out that way. If you’ve ever been here, it really gets under your skin. The space is so beautiful, so tranquil, and the garden design is spectacular. It just stuck with me.”
After working as a paralegal for several years, Brizer went to horticulture school and received a general education in everything from trees to shrubs, grass, and propagation—returning to Dumbarton Oaks in 2003 to intern in the garden.
Three years later, while she was working as head gardener at the Embassy of Denmark, Dumbarton Oaks called. They’d just gutted and rebuilt their greenhouse with a state-of-the-art, computerized system, and invited Brizer to return full-time to run the program. She answered with an emphatic yes.
“I’m the grower. I grow the annuals, the vegetables, the chrysanthemums for the fall display. I work in the orangery, which was built in 1811 and is the oldest part of the property. And I arrange all the flowers for the events.”
Much of Brizer’s work is rooted in the legacy of Dumbarton Oaks’s original gardener, Beatrix Jones Farrand. The only female founding member of the American Society of Landscape Architects, Farrand began designing the garden in 1921 with Mildred Barnes Bliss, who had purchased the property with her husband the year prior.
Farrand stepped away from Dumbarton Oaks in the late 1940s, shortly after the grounds were donated to Harvard University, yet Brizer says her influence is still felt in the garden.
“We try to stick to her original plan. We can’t always in this day in age. We have to adapt, and plant a different tree that will grow better in DC’s hot and humid summers, but we do our best. If Beatrix came back today, she would recognize the space.”
Caring for a historic property comes with its share of stressors, and Melissa says the work is as much an art as a science.
“It’s 50-50. You learn the science in school, and trial and error is very scientific. But some of the men I work with grew up on farms in El Salvador, and their skills are incredible. They can read the soil and read the weather, and things I just don’t have running through my veins.”
Technically, every day is a matter of life and death in the greenhouse. Still, Brizer says she’d take that responsibility over any desk job.
“Every job has deadlines and stress, but I have a lot less stress than other friends. I’m outside, I don’t have to wear makeup or heels. I thrive on being outside. In the winter, when everyone else is hiding inside by the fire and drinking a hot toddy, I’m shoveling feet of snow. It speaks to me.”
Brizer finds inspiration year-round, drawn to whatever is blooming at the time. Spring and fall are spectacular, she says—but there’s something particularly spellbinding about the winter, “when there’s nothing to look at but the layout, and the bones of the trees and the walls.”
She’s connected to the greenhouse in a visceral way, made all the more apparent when a recent surgery kept her out of the garden for seven weeks.
“I missed the plants. I missed my orchids. I missed the space.”
When she’s not tending to the plants, Melissa is meeting visitors in the garden, who always have a long list of questions and an infectious passion for the grounds. One of her favorite memories was meeting “everyone’s garden guru,” Martha Stewart.
Many of Brizer’s friends and family see her in a similar light.
“I tease my husband that I don’t want to tell anyone what I do, because at every dinner party I get, ‘I have this plant at home. It has green leaves. Do you know what it is? Can you help me?’ All the time!”
Her husband teases, in turn, that the cobbler’s son has no shoes. Brizer’s home garden is as effortless and low-maintenance as possible—whatever energy she has, already expended at Dumbarton Oaks.
In the “muck and the mud,” with mosquitoes in her eyes, Brizer’s job isn’t always roses. And yet, it’s exactly where she always wanted to be.
This piece appeared originally in By George, a blog by the Georgetown (DC) Business Improvement District.
The Asian Collection at the National Arboretum in Washington DC seems slightly overgrown these days, but not enough to crowd out the area’s charming pagoda. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
By Stephanie Cavanaugh
WHY WOULD ANYONE want an Elmer Fudd tattoo? It’s not a good look.
Elmer was joined by other cartoon characters running up the calves and down the biceps of a, shall we say, plenitudinous young lady, who was meandering about the National Arboretum with her beau, who was similarly inked, though more advanced. His characters ran up his neck and into his buzzed cut. Their dog, a specimen of no particular breed, or perhaps many breeds, had no visible adornments.
Wasn’t half the point of my nature stroll to relax, de-stress, breathe? Not get caught up in mean-spirited nose wrinkling?
Right. They seemed content. Smiling, nodding at us politely, as if he wore a top hat and she a parasol, swishing the taffeta skirt of her day dress. Nice people, lovely, just wandering the Asian Collection, like My Prince and I, on a brilliantly sunny weekday afternoon.
As determined as I am to be positive, the Arboretum is looking a little . . . disheveled. A not unpleasant wildness has taken over. The plant tags are faded or missing, leaving one (meaning me) to wonder if Nature is impinging on design, or if this is deliberate neglect. One (me again) wonders how many years and nimble fingers it will take to put it to rights.
The website is also sadly out of date—as though the caretakers have gone to seed. There should be no excuse for this, as a website can be managed in pajamas, at the kitchen table. But far be it from me to carp.
Anyway, the missing tags excite a hasty fumble to download Picture This, a plant finder that my friend Chris Alvear mentioned a few weeks ago and which I’d been meaning to try. A click of the phone’s camera and any plant is identified, along with care and diseases. It does prove a blessing today. There’s a free trial week, and at $29 for the year, I think I’ll keep it.
It’s also a handy program at home, for identifying that plant over there that you felt absolutely certain you would remember and therefore tossed the tag. There are too many of these in my garden, like the kiwi I thought might be a kiwi, but as it hasn’t done anything in the fruit department in the last decade I thought I might be wrong. I was not. It’s a kiwi that just happens to be obstinately fruitless. That’s an aside.
Back at the Arboretum, I spy (I’m told) a Japanese persimmon heavy with fruit, clumps of kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate, Tartarian asters, pokeweed and hirsute raspberries—none tagged. Isn’t hirsute raspberry a delicious name? The Picture This program calls it a “scrambler bramble . . . with lovely flowers and tasty fruits.” It is also “ . . . super easy to take care of, with resistance to almost all pests and diseases. It is a perfect option for gardeners with brown thumbs.” What’s not to like?
Most of what’s in flower is purple, patches here and there that add a layer of moodiness to a stroll, perfect for the dying season. The last roses of summer malinger.
Particularly interesting is the variety of groundcovers and low-growing perennials such as Nippon lily and lilyturf (or liriope) that line paths and form sweet nests for stepping-stones. There are swaths of fern, drifts of pachysandr, and a sprawl of Chinese plum yew, a wealth of lawn ideas beyond grass.
I now have a list.
We haven’t been here in more than a year. The place was Covid-closed for a lengthy spell, and then stuff got in the way of a visit. But I seem to recall this area being tamed, in that Asian fashion, with views more structured, plantings more designed, pruned into shape.
This is more the forest reclaiming its own than a garden, but it’s still a fine autumn ramble.
The Prince tips his hat to the cartooned duo, I twirl my parasol, and on we go.
At the National Arboretum in Washington DC, groundcover forms “nests” for the stepping-stones that lead through the Asian Collection. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
Democratic senator from Arizona Kyrsten Sinema leaves the Capitol on May 11, 2020. / Photo by Michael Reynolds/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock.
By Nancy McKeon
WE KNOW about virtue signaling, all those little tells that are supposed to convince people of our superior moral character.
What I want to know is, Is Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s bizarre toilette supposed to be “maverick signaling” or just “me-me-me signaling”?
We get it: The Arizona Democrat dresses the way no other person, male or female, in the US Senate or House of Representatives does. Green wigs, pink wigs, halter dresses in July, bandage dresses, silvery glitter dresses in the morning, hot pink mixed with orange (pretty cool, actually), every muscle and bulge on display (although I have to say, the result does not seem particularly sexual or sexually attractive).
Finally, Vanessa Friedman, the chief fashion critic of the New York Times, has focused her sights on La Sinema. The results are not conclusive, but the story is definitely worth a read. Here ’tis:
Decoding Kyrsten Sinema’s Style
Sometimes a dress is just a dress. Sometimes it’s a strategy.
Senator Kyrsten Sinema may have been in Europe recently on a fund-raising trip and out of reach of the activists who have dogged her footsteps, frustrated with her obstruction of President Biden’s social spending bill. But despite the fact her office has been keeping her itinerary under wraps, were those protesters able to follow her overseas, there’s a good chance they would be able to find her.
Not just because of her political theater. Ever since she was sworn in to the Arizona House of Representatives in 2005, Ms. Sinema has always stood out in a crowd. And as Ms. Sinema’s legislative demands take center stage (along with those of Senator Joe Manchin, the other Biden Bill holdout) her history of idiosyncratic outfits has taken on a new cast.
As Tammy Haddad, former MSNBC political director and co-founder of the White House Correspondents Weekend Insider, said of the senator, “If the other members of Congress had paid any attention to her clothing at all they would have known she wasn’t going to just follow the party line.”
The senior senator from Arizona — the first woman to represent Arizona in the Senate, the first Democrat elected to that body from that state since 1995, and the first openly bisexual senator — has never hidden her identity as a maverick. In fact, she’s advertised it. Pretty much every day.
Indeed, it was back in 2013, when she was sworn in to the House of Representatives, that Elle crowned Ms. Sinema “America’s Most Colorful Congresswoman.” Since she joined the Senate, she has merely been further embracing that term. Often literally.
Notice was served at her swearing-in on Jan. 3, 2019, when Ms. Sinema seemed to be channeling Marilyn Monroe in platinum blond curls, a white sleeveless pearl-trimmed top, rose-print pencil skirt and stiletto heels: She was never going to revert to pantsuit-wearing banality.
Instead, she swept in as a white-cape-dressed crusader for Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, in January 2020. Modeled a variety of Easter-egg colored wigs — lavender, pink, green — to demonstrate, her spokeswoman Hannah Hurley told The Arizona Republic in May of last year, a commitment to “social distancing in accordance with best practices, including from salons.” (Ms. Hurley specified the wig cost $12.99.) Sported pompom earrings, a variety of animal prints, neoprene, and assorted thigh-high boots. And presided over the Senate on Feb. 23 of this year while wearing a hot pink sweater with the words “Dangerous Creature” on the front, prompting Mitt Romney to tell her she was “breaking the internet.”
Her reply: “Good.”
To dismiss that as a stunt rather than a foreshadowing is to give Ms. Sinema less credit than she is due. “She’s saying, ‘I can wear what I want and say what I think is important and I’m going to have a lot of impact doing it,’” Ms. Haddad said. “She is unencumbered by the norms of the institution.”
Lauren A. Rothman, an image and style accountability coach in Washington who has been working with members of Congress for 20 years, said it’s part of a growing realization among politicians that “you are communicating at all times, because a clip on social media can be even more meaningful than something on national TV.” And that means “thinking at all times about what story you are telling with your nonverbal tools, which means your style.”
As Washington has begun to realize. Conversation with various insiders and Congressologists offered theories on the wardrobe that suggested it was either: a sleight-of-hand, meant to distract from Ms. Sinema’s journey from progressive to moderate to possibly Republican-leaning; or meant to offer reassurance to her former progressive supporters that she wasn’t actually part of the conservative establishment.
Richard Ford, a professor at Stanford Law School and the author of “Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History,” said he thought her image was designed to telegraph: “I’m a freethinker, my own person, not going along with convention, so even though I’m a part of the Democratic Party I am representing your interests, not theirs.” (As it happens Ms. Sinema is featured in the book as an example of a woman “unapologetically” bringing a more feminine approach to dress to “the halls of power.”)
Whatever the interpretation, however, no one expressed any doubt that she knew exactly what she was doing. To pay attention is simply to acknowledge what Ms. Haddad called “a branding exercise” being done “at the highest level.” Either way, the senator’s office did not respond to emails on the subject.
Senator Sinema in non-traditional silver talking with Senator Thom Tillis in traditional dark suit in 2020. / Photo by J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press.
Senator Sinema in the US Capitol Building in 2020. / Photo by Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times.
Another of Senator Sinema’s wigs, which came in a variety of Easter egg shades. This one matches the large flower on her dress. / Pool photo by Tom Williams.
Senator Sinema stood out like a beacon in a bright red halter dress, blue beads, and an Apple watch during a news conference in July. / Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.
After all, said Hilary Rosen, the vice chair of the political consultancy SKDKickerbocker, who has known Ms. Sinema since 2011, the senator “used to dress more like the rest of us, in simple dresses” and the occasional suit jacket. But, Ms. Rosen said, “I’ve seen a real shift in the last few years, and I think they way she dresses now is a sign of her increasing confidence as a legislator. She’s not afraid to wear her personality on her sleeve, and that’s rare in a politician. They usually dress for ambiguity.”
There are few places, after all, more hidebound when it comes to personal style than Congress, which long had a dress code that included the caveat that congresswomen were not supposed to show their shoulders or arms in the building. The House changed its rules in 2017, but the Senate hewed to tradition until Ms. Sinema’s election; the rules were actually changed for her.
According to Jennifer Steinhauer’s book “The Firsts: the Inside Story of the Women Reshaping Congress,” Senator Amy Klobuchar, the senior member on the Senate Rules Committee, went to leadership before the last swearing-in to request the rules be reconsidered to reflect the modern world. She knew Ms. Sinema, a triathlete, had a penchant for showing her arms, and believed the new senator “needed to be allowed to wear what she wanted” in her new workplace. Some male senators grumbled, but acceded. (In the end, Ms. Sinema compromised by carrying a silver faux-fur stole to cover her shoulders.)
But for women, Capitol Hill is traditionally a land of Talbots and St. John’s; of dressing to camouflage yourself in the group so it is your words that stand out, not your clothes. As Mr. Ford said, “Women are always subject to heightened scrutiny and criticism,” and in Washington this is even more true.
A nice all-cotton stone-washed sweater from J.Jill arrived in a not-so-nice plastic outer bag and plastic inner bag, both of which I recycled as dog-poop bags.
IT STARTED to get a little nippy a few weeks ago, and the linen shirts hanging in my closet began to seem less appealing. So I thought I’d up my sweater count, from (believe it or not) two to maybe three or four (big grownup girls tend not to go for added bulk).
My favorite mid-level catalogues came cascading in and were happy to oblige. J.Jill offered a cable-stitch cotton sweater in stonewashed denim color (sorry, “ink heather”) or “smoky olive.” Madeleine, an aggressive-looking new (to me) large-format catalogue out of Germany, had a sweater in an interesting gray-and-black pattern with a funnel neck that looked easy to wear. And Faherty, a company I didn’t know, showed a “Legend” shirt-style Heathered Black Twill sweater. So I pulled the trigger, three times.
Then the packages started arriving. As we all no doubt know, UPS, Fedex and the US Post Office are doing handstands these days to deliver all the bits and pieces that Americans want/need and have learned are easier to get online, whether from traditional brick-and-mortar stores (when’s the last time you heard that term!?) or e-tailers. The elegant lobby of the Manhattan apartment building where I live has turned into a warehouse receiving department—and the doormen into receiving clerks, not a huge part of their previous job description.
Madeleine’s “sesame/multicolor” sweater arrived in a lovely (but process-heavy) white box, but the sweater itself was encased in a plastic bag, and the heavy-cardboard tag was attached with a string and a—why?—plastic fastener.
First to arrive was J.Jill, in its basic gray/beige plastic envelope. Inside, the sweater was in yet another plastic bag, this one clear. Not lovely, for sure. The sweater was too large, so it went back for a smaller size, and therefore another plastic envelope and another plastic bag.
Then came the Faherty shirt, a revelation: The outside envelope was a paper Earthpack envelope, made by a company with a fairly dysfunctional website “with 100% recycled material.” And inside, the shirt was in a recyclable bag that proclaimed it was “made of paper.”
Madeleine’s contribution to my front hallway arrived in a white cardboard box, clean-looking but a finish that requires more finish work than plain brown cardboard. Inside, another plastic bag. And this from a company in Germany, where the Greens have had a major success and retailers have in the past been required to take back all the excess packaging from purchases and recycle it.
But here’s the odd thing: The J.Jill sweater, in all its plastic packaging, was made of all cotton. The Faherty shirt, so supple and soft and packaged in eco-conscious recyclable paper? Not a natural fiber in sight! It’s made of polyester, viscose (a semi-synthetic fiber, I read) and spandex. And Madeleine’s sweater has a recipe worthy of a spice rub: 50% wool, 21% cotton, 18% nylon, 10% cashmere, 1% spandex.
The “Legend” sweater shirt from Faherty arrived in a paper Earthpack. Inside, the shirt was nestled in a paper envelope that resembled waxed paper. Its tag was cardboard and attached with regular string.
I’m not at all a purist. I have learned to love all those little polyesters and their synthetic friends. But I also love to open a box and see the goods held in place with crumpled Kraft paper instead of Sealed-Air “inflatable cushioning” or whatever they’re calling Bubble Wrap these days. And I like getting one giant box from Costco instead of seven separate deliveries from Amazon’s various vendors.
There’s too much waste in this new world of our making, and I’m a big part of it.
This corner of my tropical garden in Washington DC has, among other things, white and orange bird of paradise (not that they flower), clivia, elephant ears, ferns, palms and a kumquat. All are wintered over in a little greenhouse. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
I’M BACK FROM Florida again. A couple of days ago I was drinking my coffee and watching the ocean from sister Jeanie’s front terrace in Juno Beach. Now I’m eating candy corn and drinking a pleasant white zinfandel at my desk.
That was our third, maybe fourth trip south since early spring. The visits run together; it feels there’s scarcely a breath between them. Some people in the condo think we now live there. I look it. I’m baked a nice Corinthian leather brown. May I say, it’s remarkable how a tan covers a multitude of sins, though sadly, as one pales, those sins return to view with a vengeance.
Sister has been ailing from a list of non-Covid-related, though similarly hair-raising, ills. In and out of the hospital and dreadful rehab joints. Our trips have been missions of mercy, with a side of surf.
You could hardly pick a more gorgeous spot to be caretaking—or recovering. This condo is so prime that when she first went into the hospital she was sent a fawning letter by a unit owner with a lesser location and total lack of tact, essentially saying . . . now that you’re on your way out, maybe you’d be interested in selling it to us? “We would love your unit, would live in it until we were no longer able to, and then intend to relinquish it to our children to enjoy in perpetuity. . . . ”
Vulture. Buzz off.
From this perch on the eighth floor, it’s as if you’re on a cruise ship, the water is that close. At ground level, the gardens are covered with tropical plants that grow to vast size with no particular effort, unlike the puny specimens I coddle at home in a sorry attempt to replicate the tropics. Here, a white bird of paradise is the size of a 20-year-old oak, hibiscus smother branches. It’s like walking through a Gauguin.
How could anyone feel deprived in such a scene, and yet . . . I’ll try.
Just before we left I bought spring bulbs for my garden, and here I am again, staring at tall palms, squat palms, frilly palms and naked coconut palms, a sight I once swore I could never get tired of—the sight I usually daydream about when I’m sitting at my desk. I found myself longing for sweaters, a fire, my puffy down quilt, a hot bath after a walk in a nice cold drizzle. Pumpkins look so ridiculous here. Irish coffee? Just . . . no.
By the way, I was once told that around here the coconuts are removed from the trees so they don’t bash tender skulls passing beneath them on the curving walkway to the pool and the beach. That’s an aside.
I realize I’m just not cut out to be a jet-setter. (Do people still say that? Discuss.)
I don’t enjoy waking at 4am, needing to pee and having to recall where the bathroom is—though I’ve now stashed shampoos and creams in the guest bath, warm-weather clothes in the closet, and my email opens at a stroke on sister’s computer, expecting I’ll be back soon.
Like a bush-league Angelina, I can sling a bag over my shoulder and hit the airport.
There are . . . compensations. The beach is practically empty, even on weekends. The water is clear and warm and, at times, as still as a bath. When it’s too rough there’s the pool.
The food everywhere is fantastic. A neighborhood Italian restaurant that puts most in DC to shame with translucent pasta and divine sauces. A steak house in Palm Beach that, thankfully, had sidewalk seating; inside, the place was packed. It’s a prime spot for car-watching: Maseratis, Lamborghinis, Mercedes, Jags. The kid tasked with parking them was having a blast. We paid $70 for the cheapest bottle of wine on the menu (which Total Wine sells for $17—we checked the Internet). The steaks were great.
On the other hand, this being Florida, we were surrounded by nutcases in markets and restaurants and cabs. We caught an Uber to the airport; the unmasked driver smiled broadly and said, “You don’t need a mask in my car,” as if he were offering liberation. He said he has asthma and can’t wear one, which does not explain why he wants to breathe his passengers’ germs. I reported him to Uber.
At Jeanie’s place, a menagerie of help is now on hand. The fabulous Donna, a feisty Irish/Puerto Rican caregiver from New York, is the mainstay, fussing over sister four hours a day. There are nurses and physical therapists wandering through. Sister Bonnie, Jeanie’s primary aide, runs from work to home to here. Jeanie was sick of looking at all of us, whispering she wished we’d all go.
So, we do. Here’s hoping the next visit will be many months away: The tulips need planting and my own bed feels so damn good.
One of several extravagant displays at the “Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams” exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Such as multimedia extravaganza–twinkling lights, “birds” chirping overhead, trees “rustling”– required the full underwriting of LVMH, the luxury conglomerate that owns the House of Dior. / Photo courtesy Brooklyn Museum of Art.
By Nancy McKeon
I SAW THE DIOR fashion exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art recently and was dazzled. I also saw the new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute and was . . . baffled.
The two shows are almost polar opposites. The Dior show is extravagant and billows across airy rotundas, mounted on temporary walls to awe-inspiring heights, then channels visitors through narrower hallways only to explode again into open space. The Costume Institute show is severe and cramped, individual pieces of clothing trapped inside a grid of translucent boxes, each embodying a word that the garment is said to exemplify, hence the name of the show, In America: A Lexicon of Fashion. But be careful not to step back for a better look at something: You’re certain to tread on someone’s Jimmy Choos.
This was the 1947 silhouette, particularly the “Bar” suit in the middle, that announced the return of Paris to fashion primacy following the devastation of World War II. The “New Look,” so dubbed by Harper’s Bazaar editor Carmel Snow, took America by storm (even triggering picket lines of women protesting the lowered hem lengths, in a world that still followed fashion’s “dictates”). / MyLittleBird photo.
Greeting visitors to the Brooklyn Museum “Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams” exhibit is this photomontage of M. Dior, constructed of teeny-tiny images of Marilyn Monroe. / Photo courtesy Brooklyn Museum of Art.
Let me get one thing out of the way: The Dior show is a brilliant advertisement for the current-day brand, the design house founded by Christian Dior in 1946. The exhibit, which was mounted earlier in Paris, London and Shanghai, was underwritten principally by the company, now part of the luxury conglomerate LVMH, as was the lavish exhibit catalogue published by Rizzoli Electa, Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams.
So, in Brooklyn, we begin with press clippings of M. Dior in Paris after the war and, even more interesting, with the warm embrace he received from Neiman Marcus on his arrival in Dallas to promote the “New Look”—his strict “Bar” suit of 1947, with its high-armhole jacket and nipped-in waist with a peplum overlaying, in some versions, an explosion of gathered skirt, virtual acres of fabric that declared the end to wartime restrictions. (The New Look was such an event that there were even protesters posted outside Neiman’s whose placards declaring, “Mr. Dior, we abhor dresses to the floor.”)
LEFT: As severe as early Dior day dresses could seem, there was an extravagance implied by the lavish pleating and exaggerated cuffs and collar. / MyLittleBird photo. RIGHT: The Christian Dior exhibit includes the ways in which master photographers have celebrated the House of Dior’s styles. Here the famous 1955 “Dovima With Elephants” by the late Richard Avedon, featuring the model Dovima, is shown behind the actual “Soirée de Paris” dress from the Fall-Winter 1955 Haute Couture collection.
Garments from the Dior Heritage Collection on view include, on the right, the Haute Couture “Arizona” wool traveling coat from 1948 and the “Athena” long wrap evening dress in gold silk-satin from the Christian Dior – New York Fall-Winter 1951 collection.
There are lavish gowns shown, of course, but many of the early Dior day suits were a sober lot (you know, when ladies were ladies). Dior himself died suddenly of a heart attack in 1957, at the height of his fame, and subsequent vitrines show how his immediate successors—a very young Yves Saint Laurent, who had been his assistant, then Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré, John Galliano, Raf Simons and currently Maria Grazia Chiuri—changed the Dior look with the times, sometimes tweaking it, other times re-creating it from whole cloth.
Early Dior silhouettes hewed to the wasp waist and full skirt, the latter marking the end of wartime fabric restrictions. / Photo courtesy Brooklyn Museum of Art.
A young (21 years old) Yves Saint Laurent stepped into his master’s shoes immediately when Christian Dior died suddenly of a heart attack in 1957. Saint Laurent became known for injecting ethnic notes and a modern street sensibility into the House of Dior’s profile, but his contributions included a sure sense of tailoring and silhouette, as shown above. / Photo courtesy Brooklyn Museum of Art.
LEFT: The ethereal “Ateliers” section of the Brooklyn Museum Christian Dior exhibit. RIGHT: Christian Dior’s first perfume, “Miss Dior” (named for his sister), came out in 1947. This glass bottle from 1952 was modeled on M. Dior’s dog, Bobby. / MyLittleBird photos.
If the sheer extravagance of the exhibit didn’t tip you off, the inclusion of current D.I.O.R. handbag charms and perfumes in the final exhibit area should allow the penny to drop, as the Brits used to say. But the commercialism doesn’t interfere with the pure pleasure of the show. At least it didn’t trouble me.
When the “Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams” reaches the “Colorama” section, applauding the design house’s bold palette, it begins to expand into the very commercial present, larding the exhibits with shoes and purses and perfumes that are very much part of the brand’s current offerings.
The Costume Institute’s American exhibit, whose second half will be mounted in 2022, can generously be called Dior’s ascetic, somewhat cerebral cousin. Too cerebral, perhaps, or is it quasi-cerebral?
Gold paillettes evoke many feelings. In this portion of the Costume Insitute exhibit, the Norman Norell ensemble at left (camel wool skirt and jacket, the blouse and jacket lining covered in sequins; 1972-73) stands for Harmony. While Michael Kors’s 2021-22 ensemble in the center, the camel coat also lined with paillettes to mirror the gown, epitomizes Assurance. And the paillette-covered 2020 jersey dress by Marc Jacobs means Sureness. / Photo courtesy the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute.
The organizing principle of American fashion as a patchwork quilt sent the curators on a scouting trip through the thesaurus in order to layer a whole glossary of words onto the clothing; not for their physical attributes, mind you, but for their purported emotional content. The resulting divisions and subdivisions (Allure, Grace, Romance, Intimacy, Sensuality and more come under the heading of Desire; Strength, Wonder and Delight are some other headers) would send the New Yorker’s estimable Comma Queen to her dictionary, and possibly her red pencil.
The cashmere ruana of Gabriela Hearst in the background is a nice visual juxtaposition with the “Signature” quilt by Adeline Harris Sears, executed in the Tumbling Blocks pattern. Beginning in 1856, Sears sent small diamond-shaped pieces of white silk to notables around the world, asking them to autograph the fabric. The resulting quilt includes the signatures of eight US presidents (including Abraham Lincoln), Northern heroes of the Civil War, plus arts and science luminaries. / Photo courtesy the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute.
The overarching theme of the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute’s exhibit, “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion,” is America as a patchwork quilt, an idea that clearly goes way beyond clothing and in fact stems from Jesse Jackson’s characterization of the country. A 1982-83 quilt-inspired skirt by Ralph Lauren sets the tone near the entrance to the lower-level lineup of designs. The outfit is also supposed to denote Nostalgia, one of the emotional words in the show’s “lexicon.” / Photo courtesy the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute.
The blue silk organza confection by Rodarte (2019-20) stands in for Delight, while Christopher John Rogers’s plaid silk-taffeta ensemble from 2020-21 was dubbed Exuberance. Claire McCardell’s plaid cotton frock can be seen in the background. / Photo courtesy the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute.
LEFT: The curators of “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion” see this 1973 Bonnie Cashion coat (for Philip Sills & Co.) as evoking Unencumbrance. The wool tweed is edged with camel suede, and its suede belt incorporates purse/pockets that were a Cashin innovation and do indeed leave the wear unencumbered. RIGHT: Tory Burch’s 2018 cotton canvas coat recalls some of Cashin’s themes, incorporating pockets and leather belting, but her outfit is said to connote Ease. / MyLittleBird photos.
Designers have always played hide-and-seek with women’s bodies. LEFT: Narciso Rodriguez carves a slice from this 2001-02 black silk jersey dress, enhancing a woman’s Allure. RIGHT: Grace is the note struck by this black wool-Lycra dress from 1989-90 by the masterful Geoffrey Beene. The line of the hips is marked by nude tulle insets. / MyLittleBird photos.
Examples of American fashion in the Costume Institute show include, from left: Andre Walker used a Glacier National Park blanket from Pendleton Woolen Mills to make this 2018 coat denoting Comfort. This ensemble from Donna Karan’s 1983 “Seven Easy Pieces” debut collection stands for Conviction. Honesty dress of plaid cotton weave by Claire McCardell in 1943 for Townley Frocks. Joy is the dress embellished with Patrick Kelly’s signature buttons; 1986-87. / Photos courtesy the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute.
At risk of being branded a Philistine, I say ignore the words—they’ll just stymie you unnecessarily—and enjoy a stroll (well, more like a stutter step) through decades of American ready-to-wear: the ease of Claire McCardell and Bonnie Cashin, the sublime tailoring of Norman Norell and Charles James, the playfulness of Patrick Kelly, right up into the here-and-now of Michael Kors and Anna Sui and Marc Jacobs and Andre Walker and Virgil Abloh and Proenza Schouler and Libertine and The Row, and into the future.
Ideas about the future of American clothing are glimpsed in the final allée of garments—garments made with sustainability in mind (from recycled T-shirts, “deadstock” fabric), tailoring applied to street-tough silhouettes, pieces that attempt to redefine which sex should wear which piece of clothing (the non-binary designs of threeASFOUR).
Many of these ideas will not endure the way the denim of Levi Straus, also represented in this lineup, has. But there’s no need to worry about American fashion straying too far off the reservation: We’ve seen (some of ) the future, and it still promises sequins!
Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams, Brooklyn Museum of Art, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY; www.brooklynmuseum.org. Through February 20, 2022. Timed tickets required.
In America: A Lexicon of Fashion, Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY; metmuseum.org. Through September 5, 2022. Timed tickets required.
Random clippings found by the curb aren’t so random when arranged in a vessel and given a new life inside the house. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
By Stephanie Cavanaugh
YOU KNOW what’s tragic? All of the clippings I see on the sidewalk, the glad-handed prunings of magnolia, pyracantha and various berries. The lengths of ivy and vinca and branches of red-leaf maple and crape myrtle. Ruffles of fern. They pile on the lawns, are swept to the curbs, stuffed into trash bags.
And O! the butchery of hydrangeas that takes place each autumn. Have you seen the price of a few stems of such at the markets? Keep your eye to the curb and a hundred bucks’ worth might well be yours—lovely when fresh, long-lasting when allowed to dry.
And then. The owners of said detritus march off to the florist or Trader Joe’s or wherever and spend many dollars on a puny bunch of mums or lilies or roses for a display, and then extra for some greens to fill it all out.
What? You have to spend money for it to be . . . good?
Stop. Look at what you’ve chopped. Trim away the bottom stems so they don’t wallow in water and decay. Which stinks. Take a nicely shaped branch of something and stick it in a tall vase. This is key, that nicely shaped branch, with several crooks, offshoots, and a vase that doesn’t allow for much sprawl. Between the two, you won’t require wires or netting or a frog, that pokey item that holds stems erect: The branch stems will provide all the support you need.
Now plonk a bit of something else alongside, add a little of this and that in and, poof! you have a splendid display, for nothing.
If you want to be extravagant, buy a stem or three—remember three, always three—of something gorgeous. A particularly divine rose, perhaps. Or maybe an out-of-season peony or a rare tulip. The greens will form a lush backdrop, and that fancy specimen will stand out against it.
The arrangement in the photograph is one such gathering of someone’s clippings. A stroll produced a fine branch of magnolia, another leafy thing, a branch of some sort of holly, plus a couple of caladium leaves from my actual garden for color.
“Of course, take them,” the silly gardener said, grinning as if she were getting away with something.
IN CASE YOU didn’t get the memo, over the past decade or so Halloween has become a very adult occasion. Maybe we Grownup Girls don’t go out trick-or-treating, but we have our ways. Grownup ways. Ways that don’t necessarily focus on plastic witch’s legs sticking up out of a flower pot on the porch (though I have to admit I laughed the first time I saw that; the 40th time not so much).
Here then are some Grownup ways to address the Eve of All Hallows. Beware!
The late fashion designer Alexander McQueen obviously didn’t invent skulls but he certainly made them into fashion motifs. LEFT: A set of four Jeweled Skull Napkin Rings is $62.99 at Z Gallerie. They’re made of silver-color pewter alloy. RIGHT: When your host asks, What’s yer poison? watch out! This Doomed Skull Shot Glass is $14.95 at Z Gallerie.
LEFT: From the Vermont Country Store comes the papier-mâché pumpkin of my youth. I doubt it cost $40 or the equivalent back then, but $39.95 is what the Jack-O’-Lantern Halloween Bucket costs now. RIGHT: From the “Peanuts” gang come these Peanuts Great Pumpkin bed linens made of cotton percale in Portugal. A twin set (one flat, one fitted, one pillowcase) is $109.95. Or, you can limit the festivities to the head of the bed: Pillowcases are $32.95 each. At the Vermont Country Store.
Inspired not by Halloween but by the “cabinets of curiosities” of old, these mouth-blown crystal glasses from Artel are made in the Czech Republic and depict some of nature’s wonders and oddities. Order the artisan-crafted pieces—the skull, the beetle, the bat—and have them in hand this coming winter. Each double old-fashioned glass is $210, at Gump’s San Francisco.
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Count on Bed Bath & Beyond for some affordable style you may not want to tuck out of sight after The Eve. The two Bee & Willow glass pumpkins are illuminated with battery-operated LED lights inside. The green textured-glass pumpkin is 9½ inches tall and $16. Its clear golden gourd cousin is 16 inches tall and $32.
Tempaper, which makes easily strippable wallpaper, offers this 11-piece set of reusable glow-in-the-dark Full Moon and Flying Bats vinyl decals (the bats have glowing eyes). The set is $34.99 at the Tempaper site.
The Poe Bowl features the always-foreboding but this time hand-engraved Raven of Poe’s classic poem. By Artel, the bowl is hand blown in the Czech Republic. It’s 9¾ inches in diameter and 6½ inches tall; $1,110.
LEFT: Owls can denote wisdom. They can also be spooky as all get out. This Owl Cuff can also be a potent style piece. It’s carved from bronze and sterling silver and made using the lost-wax method. The cuff is $138 at The Good Collective. RIGHT: Jeweler Anthony Lent finds (well crafted) whimsy in the natural world. These petite (9mm x 18mm) Bat Stud Earrings are 18-karat yellow gold and $690 at Anthony Lent.
LEFT: These Petite Pumpkin Candles (available only in the red-tone glass container, at rear) boast a pumpkin patchouli scent, ready for the fall holidays. Each is 3¼ inches tall, and a pair is $26 at Anthropologie. RIGHT: Also from Anthropologie, this glazed stoneware Pumpkin-Shaped Mug is back-ordered until the end of November because of supply-chain difficulties, but orders are being taken. Each mug is $14. (Mmmm, I’m foreseeing wintry nights and cream soups served in these mugs.)
LEFT: Just like one of those self-propelling vacuum robots, this Animated Floating Candelabra changes direction when it bumps into something. Unlike those useful appliances, though, this does nothing except perhaps freak out the occasional guest. It’s voice-activated, with fake candles and stands over 5 feet tall. It’s $99.50 at Grandin Road. RIGHT: Okay, you need at least one skeleton this year. How about this Gunmetal Tabletop Skeleton from Grandin Road? (The company, by the way, has a complete freestanding Halloween decor catalogue.) He (I’m assuming) is made of pewter-finished plastic and is fully hinged (as opposed to unhinged, I guess?). He’s 2 feet tall and $24.50. (I’m tempted—and would leave him out all year. Full disclosure: I just bought Grandin Road’s Gold Snake.)
I call it a Ouija board, but the Grandin Road catalogue calls it a Black Spirit Board Hooked Door Mat, ready to “welcome” those who cross your threshold. It’s made of polypropylene (so, good indoors and out), is 4 feet wide and $99.50 from Grandin Road.
No compilation of the odd and often eerie would be complete without something from John Derian, whose hand-découpaged glass plates are legend. The “Skeleton, Front View,” composed of five slightly curved plates, is about 4 feet tall. A rear view of the skeleton is also available. Either way, the assemblage is $880 at John Derian.
CLICK on the link below the image and watch the fancifully, florally dressed señorita come alive. Don’t know where the little movie originated, and we found only this 26-second snippet, but it’s a gem.
Seen from the deck, a path meanders from the home of Chris Alvear and Ward Orem down to a seating area in the back garden. On the front: The property, seen from Chris Alvear’s office window, lies in Southwest Washington DC, along Washington Channel, which fills the gap between the Potomac and Anacostia rivers. / Photos by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
By Stephanie Cavanaugh
‘NEVER WEAR flip-flops in the garden,” says Chris Alvear, who skidded on a wet patch one day last year and broke his knee and his leg moving a this or that to there. Whoops.
Chris tends not just any garden. The spread in Southwest Washington DC that he shares with partner Ward Orem and their pup Gigi merges into a park that drifts down toward the Washington Channel, which bridges the gap between the Anacostia and Potomac rivers. To the right is the hurly-burly of DC’s renovated Southwest Wharf. Winding off to the left is the Washington Nationals Stadium, which curves into Yards Park, with its more neighborhood air. Straight ahead, the view from the Alvear-Orem deck is extraordinary.
A simple low fence separating the backyard from the sidewalk allows passersby to share the view of the garden, and sometimes Gigi, as they walk their own pups to the waterside park. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
The backyard was laid out by the late landscape architect Charles Turner, who lived there and was for many years affiliated with Oehme, van Sweden, the landscape architecture firm internationally known for naturalistic gardenscapes. Along the winding path are beds of grasses, hydrangeas and ferns. There’s an Oregon grape tree, witch hazel, a cherry and a fig. In spring there’s a flood of tulips and daffodils poking up amid the loosestrife and peonies. “A plant for every season,” says Chris. At the end of the path is a table and chairs, a place to sit and gaze back at the garden.
“Charles was up every morning at 7:30 to work in the garden,” says Chris, who does the same. “I go out there like he did. It’s like a family member that needs care.”
Chris has added some personal flourishes. Antique birdcages hang from trees, flirting with masses of cerise and fuchsia coleus below. A Picassoesque sketch hangs on a dividing wall, a flamingo poses amid
The garden was laid out by landscape architect Charles Turner, associated with the renowned landscape firm Oehme, van Sweden. But Chris Alvear has added his own touches, hanging antique birdcages and affixing the occasional artwork to walls. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
a bed of liriope. None of this is surprising: Chris, an artist himself, once owned Alvear Studio on 8th Steet SE, a shop of quirky art and jewelry and whatnots—which now find fabulous expression in the manic kaleidoscope of mannequins, deer heads, artworks, Siamese fighting fish and indescribable baubles that fill the house. But that’s another story: Currently Chris is the front-of-house manager of the Kennedy Center’s Roof Terrace Restaurant, under executive chef Jaime Montes de Oca Jr. Now undergoing a million-dollar renovation, the bar and restaurant will reopen next month.
Chris didn’t know much about plants before he and Ward moved in eight years ago, but he’s now surrounded by books and constantly assisted by the online gardening site Picture This, “the best thing ever for identifying plants, diagnosing problems and diseases,” he says. “It’s $19.99 for a year, and like a course in gardening.”
Furniture on the dining level of the garden serves the need for lounging as well as dining. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
A glass wall divides the living room from the deck, crammed with flowers and plants and overstuffed furniture. Hovering above, a ledge holds massive pots of peppers and turnips, artichokes and tomatoes that he can pick from his office window. When the weather chills he’ll put up an 8-by-6-foot greenhouse with grow lights in the porte cochère, a place to winter over seedlings and more tender plants.
“Plants need you, and you need them. Sometimes I’m out here for five hours; you forget about where you are, you don’t think about what’s bugging you and you’re not on a treadmill.”
There’s a simple low fence around the garden, so passersby leading their pups to the park can see right in, and Chris and Ward can see past to that amazing river view. Few pass without remarking, and complimenting, which may be worth a broken leg or two.
Chris Alvear toasts the river. Cheers indeed to a leafy bower in the heart of the nation’s capital. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
The recherche du cafe perdu (with apologies to Proust) has led to a barrage of new equipment in the Geracimos kitchen. / Photo by Ann Geracimos. / Photo on front from iStock.
By Ann Geracimos
WHY OF LATE had the taste and smell of my laboriously executed morning cup of filter coffee not seemed the same? Where was that fully charged mouth-warming feel and heavenly aroma? Had my taste buds gone south, or had my memory soured?
This wasn’t Covid’s fault, as I was first aware of the change before the virus appeared to kidnap many people’s olfactory and gustatory sensations. What might science say by way of an explanation of my plight, I wondered?
A website called Aging Care had a story headlined “Why Seniors’ Tastes Change with Age”—not whether, just why. Perhaps they had a clue. “At birth, most people have between 2,000 and 10,000” taste buds, and the olfactory system is key to enjoying them, I learned. So too bad if you have a stuffy nose or allergies. “Typically taste bud cells are replaced every week or two, but after age 50, these cells begin to lose their sensitivity and ability to regenerate,” I read.*
No authority was named, though the site implied that age likely was involved in “a weakening” of crucial olfactory nerve endings as well.
I had been fussy about buying only fresh-roasted beans from “sustainable” sources. I ground my own and used the best brewing method recommended. Different beans, different methods: Chemex, Melitta, French press. I preferred a brown paper filter and the correct water temperature for the pour. If my respiratory system was down, temporarily or otherwise, I would have expected to notice improvement over time.
From Bill Bryson’s impressive 2019 book titled The Body, I learned some more about these important taste receptor cells, the most regenerative cells in the body. Taste plus smell accounts for “at least 70 percent of flavor or maybe more,” he wrote, without saying whether the age factor mattered. I dipped into Michael Pollan’s recent investigation into the power of caffeine, coffee’s dominant ingredient, which he describes as “the most widely used psychoactive drug in the world.” He called caffeine “insidious”—an addiction—and set out to cure himself of the habit.
Sigh. / Illustration by Ann Geracimos.
I warmed to a column in the New York Times by Personal Health writer Jane Brody that cited studies about the healthy advantages of consuming caffeine, while also stating that “positive effects of the beverage can be undermined by how you make it and take it.”
Fascinating material, but I was far astray from my personal challenge to recover what I perceived was the lost euphoria and stimulation that come of drinking my favorite wake-up juice each morning. What I also was noticing was how so many articles about popular consumer foods cite warnings directed at the aging or elderly populations. Aging itself seemed a disease.
Thinking I may have an undiagnosed minor respiratory condition, I dug deep into my closet to resurrect the humble Neti Pot that employs a saline solution to wash out nasal passages. The expiration date was long over on my model, but I persisted to no avail. I saw no significant improvement the next day.
I turned next to the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, which calls itself “the world’s only independent, non-profit scientific institute dedicated to interdisciplinary basic research on the senses of taste and smell.” If anybody could tell me what I needed to know, surely they could.
What might be the latest research into the relationship between aging and the senses that might help explain my none-too-dire predicament? Monell “Member Emerita” Beverly J. Cowart, PhD, answered me in an email.
She agreed that “in general, the olfactory system is much more vulnerable to all kinds of losses—including age-associated ones—than is the sense of taste” while admitting that such losses impact “flavor perception, which can be difficult to distinguish from a true taste loss.” It’s true, she said, a loss of “taste sensitivity” may vary with the person. Likewise, the smell factor is difficult to tackle with any certainty given the “hundreds of thousands of odors” out there. “Smell is more substantially affected in aging (on average) but its loss is also not a uniform effect. The environment you’ve lived and worked in, your general health and your body’s regenerative capacity, and the extent to which you use your sense of smell may all play a role. . . .”
Maybe my mind’s eye had been playing tricks on me after all? How was I to know for sure?
Frustrated, I abandoned my research and opted to buy the trendy hands-free electric Keurig machine that involves the use of pre-filled coffee cups called pods and—theoretically anyway—the perfect pre-set temperature for brewing. It was a blow to my conscience since the jury still is out on whether even the improved pods are bad for the environment. A “Strong” brew button on the top was encouraging but hardly reassuring that heavenly taste and aroma would result.
With my K-Mini Plus designed to deliver a great cup in record time, I knew I was settling for efficiency over higher aesthetics. Nor did I get much comfort from the additional purchase of a so-called universal pod cup that, in theory, would allow me to use my own coffee each time to prevent the waste of successive pods.
So just for kicks (maybe literally), I bought a box of Starbucks’s pre-filled pods, which boast of containing two times more caffeine.
Neither snobbery over brewing methods nor debate over caffeine’s influence on the body is on a par with present pandemic muddles. These are Uncertain Times in all quarters. Soulful drinking in any form might help us get through.
Of course: “All details are subject to change.”
*The most frequently replaced cells in the human body are the cells that line the stomach wall and intestine. They typically last about five days before regeneration. Skin cells are replaced every two to four weeks.
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There’s nothing like a frothy bunch of Queen Anne’s lace on a hot summer day. Other weeds? Not so much. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
By Stephanie Cavanaugh
MY PRINCE pulled a plant yesterday and tossed it in the compost bin.
It had been growing in a roomy pot in a sunny corner of the front porch all summer. I wasn’t sure what it was. It may have been a bird of paradise; the stroppy leaves were similar to those of the other three in pots scattered about. Or maybe it was a calla lily I transplanted last summer. Possibly it was a seed of something fabulous and exotic that I planted and completely forgot about, which is always possible. I was hoping for a wonderful surprise. Such hopes I had!
Anyway, it was coddled and tended throughout the summer. Well-fertilized and watered, thriving in that (rare) sunny patch, it grew and grew. We went away for a couple of weeks, and our wonderful neighbor Anouk nursed it while also tending the front and back yards and the window boxes and my trio of nasty parakeets—Cooper, Buddy and The Boss—who I half hoped would have finally chewed their way through the walls and escaped.
When we returned, the plant was over seven feet tall in its pot and as healthy as can be. It was growing like a weed, one might say.
“What is it?” My Prince wondered.
“Not sure yet,” said I.
Then it sprouted buds at the very top, and I recognized it, though I don’t know its name. This thing grows everywhere in total neglect.
“It’s a weed,” I said.
It’s not even a weed I covet, like Queen Anne’s Lace which is said to be invasive. How I’d love to have a frilly patch commandeer the curbside garden, or the alley fence line, so instead of foraging in the few remaining wild spaces in the neighborhood for stems. . . . There is nothing I like better in the heat of summer than a vaseful in the living room.
What are weeds, anyway? Just plants growing in the wrong place. Some are quite attractive. This particular weed was a nasty-looking piece of work, with an unpleasant crown of—you couldn’t even call those things flowers. Though I suppose, en masse, beside a country road perhaps, they might have a certain appeal, tall heads bobbling amid the thistles. Now there’s a handsome weed! Prickly but alluring. That’s all besides the point.
I developed inertia.
“Should I pull it?” he said, draping his lanky self in my office doorway, looking at me staring at a computer screen in my office, as I do.
“Yes,” said I.
“Maybe you want to take a photo of it?” He said.
I looked at him like he’s nuts and returned my eyes to the screen.
He wandered off and pulled the weed.
This morning he asked if I took that photo. He’s soft like that. Regretting the death of anything: fish, flowers, cars, dishwashers. Maybe he wanted to frame it. Our friend Robert takes pictures of lost gloves he finds in the street. We could have a photo wall of dead things.
“No, I didn’t,” I said.
“But you could have written about it,” he said, to which I said nothing for an extended period, as I do.
“Why?” said I.
“Because it’s interesting,” he said. “We were growing this plant all summer not knowing it was a weed.”
CAROLINE WILLIS walked into the apartment, greeted by sunlight streaming in from the expansive windows on two walls. She saw the bookshelf across the room and gasped.
Sunlight—the enemy of vampires and book appraisers.
A member of the latter group, Willis was there for an estate sale—hired by a man who wanted an appraisal for his deceased father’s collection of first-edition Charles Dickens.
“Before I could get a look at the bookcase I just thought, ‘Oh no!’ ” Willis says. “And then I turned around and I saw the thickest, blackest felt curtains in front of the books. His father hadn’t taken any chances.”
Location, location, location may be the rallying cry of real estate, but in the book world, it’s all about condition, condition, condition. A faded book cover may as well be a house next to a sewage treatment plant.
As the longest-standing volunteer at the Lantern Bookshop in DC’s Georgetown neighborhood, Willis knows a thing or two about the field. Her grandfather was a book collector, and she grew up around old and rare books.
“I didn’t get the collector gene. I meant to, and I thought I ought to. I started a collection of first- edition Louisa May Alcott because someone advised me you should collect something you love, and she was the first author whose biography I read as an 8-year-old. So I found a first-edition Little Women, then a first edition of Flower Fables.”
While her own collections never quite took off, Willis developed an interest in those of others. After graduating from Bryn Mawr College with a degree in city and campus planning, the Mississippi native moved to Boston in the early 1980s. But her skillset wasn’t in demand.
“No one wanted campus expansion planning, and I had a baby and didn’t have every day, all day to go somewhere. There was a Bryn Mawr bookshop in Cambridge, and I thought, Well, let me just volunteer.”
The used bookstore was part of a network—16 nationwide, at the program’s peak—all operated by alumnae volunteers, with proceeds supporting women’s education.
Under the tutelage of another volunteer who was also a rare-book dealer, Willis learned how to evaluate books.
“I discovered that what I liked best was the appraising part, not the selling part.”
A few years later, Willis moved to DC and started volunteering at Lantern Bookshop, founded in 1977 as part of the Bryn Mawr network.
In the ’90s she began attending a rare-book school at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, every summer, then discovered that the George Washington University in DC offered a certification of appraisers. Willis took the appraisal-studies course and became certified.
In addition to her own appraisal business, Willis currently volunteers every Wednesday at Lantern Bookshop. The building at 3241 P Street NW was purchased through a “call for angels”—alumnae donations pouring in to keep the store alive. The inventory is entirely donated, operating unlike the traditional used-bookstore model.
“This is a different atmosphere than a bookseller who has to be cut-throat and make all the money,” Willis says. “Every book has gotta earn its place, but we have some kittens that we don’t want to drown, so we keep them longer.”
But not all kittens can be saved. That whole “don’t judge a book by its cover” adage? Forget it.
“A book that’s ugly on the shelf, it’s just not gonna attract anyone. But I have some tricks and I can doll it up and it’ll look a lot better.”
Willis does her best to give each book the facelift it deserves, working in the backroom of the bookstore with her own library of polishes and Cellugel and beeswax. She says everyone has their own recipe for leather binding, which is treated with either a polish or stabilizer—the latter if the book is crumbling when you hold it.
“I don’t do what some sellers do, which is use shoe polish. If I do that and someone buys it, it’s not reversible. A person may want to have a real book conservator work on it, and they’ll hate me for what I did.”
Much of Willis’s work has been trial by error. Before she was certified, Willis appraised books for an estate sale company. One house had a complete Wizard of Oz set, but they were “whipped puppies.” She marked each volume at $10.
“A dealer came in—nice man—and he asked why I put that price on there. I said because they’re wrecked, and he nodded and bought them all. I found out that I very much undersold them. There’s a higher tolerance for antique children’s books to be kind of roughed up, and I learned that the hard way.”
For all that technology has taken away from bookstores, it has also made Willis’s job that much easier. Prior to the Internet, if someone wanted a book, they would take out an ad in an American Booksellers Association magazine.
“There would be lists of wants and offerings, and people would send postcards back and forth. It’s a wonder it worked, but it did, and we had a volunteer dedicated to doing that for us.”
Today, Lantern Bookshop lists its most coveted books on American Book Exchange. Willis does most of her research online, also drawing on auction records and reference books that break down the codes for every publisher—helpful in determining if a book is a reprint. Yet it’s not a perfect science.
“We got a book signed by [former Senator] Jesse Helms—some inscription like, ‘Ed, boy, you gotta read this.’ I did research on his signature, because at that time Helms was beating his chest real loud on Capitol Hill, and I thought someone could have done this humorously. Turns out there were a bunch of Helms signatures. It could have been secretarial, autopen, could have been him too hopped up on sweet tea to write clearly. I priced it as if it weren’t signed by him because I couldn’t verify it.”
A man—convinced it was authentic—bought it immediately.
The most sought-after books often depend on the time of year. Students frequent Lantern Bookshop to fulfill their school reading lists. Other readers look for the newest books, and chefs pore over the cookbooks.
Bibliophiles are a rare and unique breed, each with very specific bookshelves. One volunteer collected signed first-edition modern novels—intended as a legacy his nieces and nephews could one day sell. Another collector sought every illustrated edition of Shakespeare he could find. Another, explorer books.
Willis may not have inherited the collector gene from her grandfather, but she did inherit his glass bookcase. Her books are stored there, and in what she calls the “stacks,” a narrow passage in her house with bookshelves on either side.
There, where the sun can’t touch them.
This piece appeared originally in By George, a blog by the Georgetown (DC) Business Improvement District.
MOST OF US want to build a world more to our liking than the one we encounter every day. Some of us do it by stuffing our homes with things that broadcast ME! Others invent things that may actually improve the larger world (here’s not looking at you, Mark Zuckerberg).
And then there’s Tatsuya Tanaka, a Japanese artist, who for a little more than a decade has been constructing miniature worlds for all of us to share.
Tanaka gives the rest of us credit for seeing the kinds of things he sees: “Everyone must have had thoughts like these before: Broccoli and parsley may sometimes look like a forest of trees, and tree leaves floating on the surface of water may sometimes look like little boats. . . . ”
