What My Mother Gave Me (6 page)

My Mother's Armor

MARGO JEFFERSON

“Look back, Mama. What were your favorite clothes?” I asked her this year. She's ninety-five, and we had come back from a luncheon with her birthday club. She had worn wine-colored wool pants, a gray sweater with a touch of sparkle, pearls, and a black cape. She'd finally decided on wine instead of gray—“I don't want monotony”—and I'd fussed a bit because our ride was waiting while she chose her handkerchief. “Are you ready?” I asked, when she'd slipped a white lace-trimmed one into her purse. “Have you put on cologne?” she answered. I had not and so I did.
Th
en we were both ready.

And now we were home again, lounging in the living room.

“What were your favorite clothes?” I asked.

“My evening dresses,” was her answer.
Th
is surprised me a bit. She'd loved hats: I'd anticipated total recall of millinery triumphs in sisal or felt. (I'd been in awe of a cream-colored Tastee Freez swirl of a hat with a black veil.)

“Short or long evening dresses?”

“Both.”

“What was the difference?”

“
Th
e short ones were flip and flirty.”

“And the long ones?”

She laughed and put one hand to her forehead, fingers arranged in a classic heroine-about-to-swoon pose. “Beware my foolish heart,” she drawled.

Th
e night is like a lovely tune,

Beware my foolish heart . . .

Th
at ballad appeared in 1949, when my mother was thirty-three and I was three; I like to imagine my parents moving onto the dance floor as the orchestra took a sumptuous lyric plunge into its opening notes.

“My Foolish Heart,” “Lush Life,” “Stardust,” “Misty,” “Sophisticated Lady.”
I heard these songs over and over on our record player.
Th
e flip and flirty numbers, too, deft syncopations of wit, lust, and romance. “
Th
at Old Black Magic,” “Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me,” “Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You?” And of course that urbane salty blues which hailed our city:

Goin' to Chicago,

Sorry but I can't take you.

Th
ose proud Chicago department stores we shopped in! Marshall Field and Chas. A. Stevens, designed by the firm of D. H. Burnham, the architect who'd ruled the World's Fair. Carson, Pirie, Scott, designed by Louis B. Sullivan, master builder of the skyscraper. Mighty structures of granite and terra-cotta; arrogantly eclectic with their escalators and Tiffany lamps, their modernist lines and Renaissance flourishes.
Th
ey sat in the city's commercial center, the downtown Loop, flanked by hotels, theaters, and office buildings. Proclaiming the union of exclusivity and accessibility.

Today's common wisdom says we're inundated with sensory data, bombarded by images. But it started long ago—these late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century department stores were the first to make sensory bombardment a stately art.
Th
ey were the self-contained ancestors of the mall. Counter after counter of lipsticks, powders, perfumes; cases filled with gloves (wrist-length, mid-arm, lined, unlined, cotton, suede kid, white, cream, black, tan); leather goods; candies—and we haven't even reached the escalators. We're still on the ground floor, which stretches across two city blocks.

For girls like my sister and me, bourgeois girls of the 1950s and early '60s, shopping was an intricately plotted expedition. Our mother was the leader and guide. She showed us what to look for as our eyes wandered and wondered. She showed us what to pass by.
She
directed the gaze.

Marshall Field, where Mother took us to sit on Santa's knee at Christmas in a maze of giant wreaths, candy canes, and glazed whirling ornaments.

Marshall Field, where Mother took us to lunch at the Walnut Room.

Marshall Field's 28 Shop, where Mother told her mother, “You really shouldn't smoke here,” and her mother answered, “As much as I pay for these clothes, I'll do what I want.”

Marshall Field, where my father's aunt Nancy passed for white to work as a saleswoman in the 1920s.

AT SAKS AND
Bonwit Teller the exclusivity-accessibility balance shifted.
Th
ey were smaller, more discreet stores.
Th
ey were on the posh Near North Side, not in the “come hither all ye consumers” Loop.
Th
e rhythm of buying and selling was more decorous, the conversation quieter. And you knew when you entered that fewer people felt they could take the liberty—claim the right—to simply walk through as tourists. Mother didn't take us there before 1960. As Negroes we had to secure our place downtown before we ventured North.

EVERY MONTH A
coffee-table-sized
Vogue
arrived at our house. Every month I devoured it.
Th
e models were starting to be known by name. My favorite was red-haired Suzy Parker: tall and lissome, her face a perfect assemblage of curves (the lips, the eyebrows) and lines (the nose, the cheekbones).
Th
e models wore the grand European designs of Dior, Givenchy, Balenciaga, and Madame Gr
è
s.
Th
ey showed off the clothes of Americans with rhythmically deft, alliterative names: Norman Norell, Bill Blass, Geoffrey Beene.
Th
ey were muses and fetish objects, sumptuous offerings on the altar of feminine glamour.

And I worshipped offerings to feminine glamour, in magazines, movies, and in life.
Th
e clothes; the lingerie; the array of handkerchiefs, some lace-trimmed, some initialed; pocketbooks of leather and alligator, bearing their own mirrors and coin purses; peau-de-soie clutch bags for evening or small beaded ones with handles that just slipped over your wrist.
Th
e perfume and cologne bottles on Mother's vanity table and dresser.
Th
e earrings, bracelets, necklaces arranged in the leather jewelry box with its Florentine design.

I learned to accept the verbotens, too. One summer day I came downstairs wearing a red blouse and a purple and white flowered skirt; I was sent right back upstairs to change. You don't wear certain colors together, especially loud colors. Denim is only for weekend play and summer camp. Little girls don't wear nail polish. Little girls wear
white
socks with their Mary Janes.

I accepted the verbotens because I longed to be a perfect girl, and if a girl lacked perfect prettiness—which I did—then this was a route to compensatory perfection. I accepted the verbotens because they came from my mother, whose appearance and manner I found both authoritative and deeply pleasing: her crisp Claudette Colbert hairdo; her five-foot-three-inch frame, trim and shapely, but not skinny; her smooth beige-brown skin. She was witty, lively, and chic. So were her friends. I loved how they looked in their suits and silk shirtwaists, their furs and smart hats. I loved how they carried themselves at luncheons and parties, or when they took us to plays or concerts. I loved the quick comments and judgments they flung out.
Th
ey were in full command.

And yet, they were almost entirely absent from the main stage of feminine glamour, from
Vogue,
from
Harper's Bazaar,
from
Life
and
Look,
from television, from movies. Race had decreed it so.

How did I register the fact that everyone who mattered in this vast beauty-and-fashion complex was white? Not until the 1960s did models of color start making their presence felt. Headline, 1962: Photographer Gordon Parks—a Negro himsel
f
!—photographs a
Life
spread on “exotic” clothes titled, “Swirl of Bright Hues: New Styles Shown by Negro Models—A Band of Beautiful Pioneers.” Headline, 1966: Donyale Luna becomes the first Negro model to make the cover of
Vogue.

Feminism has taught us how the beauty-and-fashion complex maims girls and women. It invents styles and standards that create impossible longings. If you're smitten, your cravings start early. You want something—some feature, some body part, some look or aura—you do not have and will not ever have.

Th
ose cheekbones, which make the thought of a skull erotic;

Th
ose rosebud lips, so sweetly small;

Th
ose tapering fingers which gloves clung to;

Th
at sleek neck, that long torso, those lean kinetic-sculpture legs;

Th
e delicate whimsy of Audrey Hepburn;

Th
e sultry lushness of Elizabeth Taylor;

Th
e country-club sangfroid of Grace Kelly.

Begin with those biological impossibilities.
Th
en add the racial one: No! you cannot ever be white like these idols of feminine perfection. Let that final impossibility reproach and taunt you.

Nevertheless, a separate world of colored/Negro/black/African-American beauty and glamour did exist. Every month a coffee-table-sized
Ebony
arrived at our house. Every month I studied its cream, beige, tan, buff, brown, and sepia models. Every month I read its tales of people like us, who achieved against all odds and carried the race forward.

My favorite model was Dorothea Towles. She was just six years younger than Mother. Mother even knew her. She'd gone to college (as we were expected to do); she'd married a dentist (we were expected to marry professionals); she'd decided to follow her sister to Paris (a concert pianist, which we admired). And there she'd broken ranks to fulfill our wild secret fantasies of Josephine Baker crossed with Audrey Hepburn in
Funny Face:
she'd gone to the house of Dior, become a model, and gone from there to Schiaparelli and Balmain.

I admired her, I envied her, but I didn't worship her as I worshipped Suzy Parker. She was in
Ebony
not
Vogue.
Th
at meant she was not being universally looked up to. She was not being noticed.

When I look at pictures of her now, I realize just how adorable Dorothea was. She had the kinetic-sculpture legs, the tapering fingers, a sleek neck and shoulders. I say “adorable” because her face was piquant.
Th
e high cheekbones were there, but their shape was softly round (like Baker's).
Th
e full lower lip was there, the pouty lip that would be so desirable in the '60s and '70s. Her dark eyes had a playful, almost quizzical expression, as if she were amused to watch the world watch her. Her hair was dark, too—except when she chose to dye it blond.

Did she turn her back on her people? Certainly not! Did she return to bourgeois obscurity as a dentist's wife? Not that either. She did return to the United States in 1954, and she did leave her husband for good.
Th
en using her own numerous haute-couture clothes, she barnstormed the country, organizing all-black fashion shows for all-black sororities and charities.
Jet
loved to chronicle her flamboyant doings, enhanced by flamboyant photos: “Model Dorothea Towles created a sensation when she strolled into a white fur shop in Birmingham and asked to rent $10,000 worth of furs for the AKA's fashion show.
Th
e owner sent along three private cops to guard the furs.”
Th
is alongside a picture of pert, carefree Towles at the beach, perched on a rock in a two-piece strapless bathing suit, high-heeled ankle-strap sandals, and a wide, fringed straw hat.

Please note that Dorothea Towles returned to America the year the Supreme Court decreed segregation illegal in public schools. Separate but equal was being challenged on all fronts. And four years later, my mother's friend Eunice Johnson took up that challenge, expanding what Dorothea Towles had begun. Her husband, John H. Johnson, published
Ebony, Jet, Sepia,
and
Negro Digest
. She gave
Ebony
its bold, pre – Black Power name. She became the company's secretary-treasurer and aesthetic advisor. Now she launched the Ebony Fashion Fair, a touring fashion show on a grander scale. She didn't use her own clothes, as Towles had. She'd go to the top shows in Paris and Milan, sit in front-row seats beside white editors and buy clothes. She'd go to the top shows in New York, sit in front-row seats beside white editors and buy clothes. She'd go in search of young black designers and buy clothes. Beige, tan, buff, cream, sepia, brown, and (eventually) ebony models strode and sashayed down hotel runways in city after city, wearing these clothes for colored/Negro/black and African-American audiences. It was spectacular.

We were still separate, but under Eunice's direction we were equal and sufficient unto the day. No, we were not wholly equal—the white world was still dominant. It had made the rules that excluded us; when it saw fit, it altered those rules to include
some
of us. Politics was changing the culture; the aesthetics of fashion and glamour were changing, too. But we had been there all along. Before they noticed or acknowledged us, we were there.

I OFTEN LOOK
through the clothes my mother has seen fit to give me through the years. (I never cease to regret the ones she gave away.) I cherish the Pauline Trigère brushed wool, funnel-shaped coat, beige with thin stripes of pale mauve, lilac, blue, and white. Such quiet symmetry it could be wallpaper. I feel like a craft object when I close my body into this coat. And I feel vindicated, too, because Pauline Trigère was the first top American designer to use a black model regularly. We always knew these things;
Jet, Ebony,
or our mothers told us.

Brava Madame Trigère! Still, the piece I most love wearing is Mother's gold brocade cocktail dress with matching jacket. It was designed by Malcolm Starr, best known for bejeweled '60s evening wear.
Th
e dress is sleeveless, with wide straps, a nipped waist, and a wraparound-style skirt. Not a wide skirt, but wide enough for a feminist to walk in without mincing her steps.
Th
e waist-length jacket is trimmed in gold braid; so is the skirt's front panel.