Showing posts with label Lucille Ball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lucille Ball. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

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)

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Pas de chat*

Guess which one I was today? Out & about all over Washington, knocking things over, upending a display at Utrecht Art Supplies. Turning around to catch something & knocking over whatever was on the other side . At the optometrist's I dropped all my bags & picked up my (big) purse the wrong way & dumped everything out onto the floor. In front of a lot of people. I did something at Macy's but I'm blocking it out. Stacks of pajamas or underthings involved. I left a wake of nonsense behind me & thought of Neil Young's Hurricane, & dancing ballerina-hippos.

I did laugh though...trouble is, I don't think anyone could tell I was thinking of a dancing hippo. I just realized it's good I didn't mention it; maybe they would think I claimed to see a dancing hippo. I just might as well go back to my coppery curls.

I shall spend the rest of the evening gracefully balancing a book on my head & channeling Sylvie Guillem. (I would include her link but it's crashed. Ha, her website fell over.) *'step of the cat' - a jump - there's a famous dance of four cygnets in Swan Lake, sixteen pas de chat...show-offs.

ciao


[Lucy at the barre, LIFE archives; lovely ballerina & her swain,
Tamara Toumanova & Serge Lifar, Swan Lake, Sydney, 1939-1940 / photographed by Max Dupain/State Library of New South Wales collection which I adore.]

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

A case of the vapors...


...oof. Trying to stay upright to watch President Obama tonight. If I feel this under-the-weather (it's not swine flu--don't even think it!)...I'd like look as glamorous as Lucille Ball does here. (LB, 1940s, myvintagevogue). Right now, I look more like Looooocy. (Lucy-as-Chaplin, LIFE archives, Ralph Crane, 1962). buona notte, amici!