Hair Help

Get the idea that I'm under pressure & it's all the worse because I can barely see? A hat always helps (see Lucy) & I have lots, but one must take it off at some point. These Italian beauties' hairdos would be a solution but with avoirdupois (temporary!), I'd look a frump. Also, one can take vintage just too far. Now that so many are buying (literally) into the 1960s Mad Men look, I have to put away my long-ago purchases For now.

My hair grows as fast as that Tressy doll from ancient times. (A cousin had one & I promptly gave it a haircut; apparently I was not technically adept even then; no rewinding the hair for me. Just cut it off -- it looked very Audrey H. Well, I thought so anyway.) Are you obsessed with hair & salons & so on, Susan? Why yes, why do you ask? Because you seem to be off to have something done to your hair quite often; yet, you look the same. That's consistency & avoiding fads, cappellistas. My mother taught me to be loyal to hairdressers who did a great job, not necessarily the most expensive or 'fashionable.' (Although hers was this totally cool guy.) This advice, unlike most of her advice (sorry, Mom), has served me well.

So off to Camille-the-Genius...creeping across town, once again knowing that I will run into people I know who are uncharitable gossips. When I leave, not a soul I know will cross my path. Except possibly other human rights advocates, one of whom told me recently at an evening meeting sort of thing...that he thought I was frivolous about hair & clothes. I was wearing brown trousers, a brown jersey top, brown boots, & my father's Levi jacket (from his youth on a farm). Oh, & some sort of tiny earrings that were certainly not diamonds, & a long skinny scarf from I have no idea where...& dark pink cotton crocheted gloves (sort of 80s) that I bought in France for about 5 FF (so really old). Apparently a Grazie magazine tumbling out of my bag tipped him off to my insensitivity to the multitudes. Meanie.

[photographs from LIFE archives by Yale Joel & Loomis Dean; my now-traditional bangs-in-crisis photograph via Italia Vogue scan, here)