Cry Havoc

Last post, Pirate wrote about the importance of finding a set of pieces that work together for her as an outfit. And I responded by saying that despite my best intentions to the contrary, mostly, my style is a mish mash. What I wouldn't give to reign it in . . .

I don’t know whether it’s because I’m ADD, multiple personality disordered, or just incapable of making a decision, but more and more these days I seem to be playing an increasingly powerless Nurse Ratchet to a loony bin full of fashion icons all refusing to take their medication and clamoring to be let out into the light of day.

This one, she starts early, banging her fists loudly against the door and demanding, "WTF, dude? What do you mean someone drank all the tequila?"



While other days, she comes sidling up all fey-eyed to politely point out that why yes, of course, everything does go with diamonds, thank you very much.



Then there are the days when the twin Viking Warrior Princesses, wafting their particular mix of Dioressence and Amyl Nitrate, crash the party, break all the champagne glasses, insult the hostess, and then go screaming into the night with the college student waiter and his La Crosse playing roommate. It takes me days to wrangle them back home.



So what I'd like? Is for this girl to represent for me on a regular basis. Only not that young, that blond, or that coked up.



I have been trying to think lately where my affinity for this particular look comes from - this ever present, only slightly revolving variant on the jacket, sweater, jeans, boots, and scarf theme. Then it hit me. For some unknown reason, it screams to me of California. No, no, not the California of Haight-Ashbury with its deliberately unwashed vibe and tiresome floaty skirts, and most certainly not the California of today, with its parade of petulant Porno Fried starlets with their dismal French manicures and ass-grazing shorty shorts.

I mean more the California Before the Fall, the California with which I have always, for some reason, had a major preoccupation. The California that represents the sunlit possible, rather than the darkly decadent, already attained.

Maybe it's a California that only exists in my mind. Most things do. Then again, I DO have pop cultural evidence. Linda Ronstadt circa Heart Like a Wheel, for instance. The writer Joan Didion, assuaging waves of self doubt with a good scream down the PCH in a gleaming white Corvette Stingray, the contrails of a Pucci head scarf flickering in her wake.

It's the California of Donna Mills in Play Misty For Me, of Pam Greer in Foxy Brown, and Lily Tomlin in Moment By Moment. Of the ladies in Joni Mitchell’s canyon, the suite of Judy’s blue eyes, and the dreaming of Fleetwood Mac.

Most recently, I caught a glimpse of it in Frances McDormand's lusty, scenery chewing turn in the terrific Laurel Canyon.


It's also been oozing out of Natascha McElhone as Karen, the long suffering, long time partner of David Duchovny’s Hank Moody in Showtime’s gleefully over the top Californication. With her swath of sun streaked hair, butta soft leather car coats, roughened jeans, and ever present Frye boots, she’s the Ghost of 70’s Chic come back to luminous life.


Still, a girl cannot live on boots and jeans alone. That's what Diane von Furstenberg-esque wrap dresses are for. But I have to be careful. Because this one, give her an inch and she'll go Full On Caftan faster than my Famolare's will allow me to tackle her.

That right there? That's a Malibu beach party just waiting to go out of bounds.

So, what's your ideal fashion era and if you could spend the rest of your life in just one outfit, what would it be? I know, I know, it took me a looooonnnng ass time to get here to ask just this one simple question, but I really wanna know.