Title : I Blame Francine! -- Of Shoes and Memories and an OOTD
link : I Blame Francine! -- Of Shoes and Memories and an OOTD
I Blame Francine! -- Of Shoes and Memories and an OOTD
And last Thursday when I packed my paints, palette, and paper to hang out with fellow creative dabblers, there were a few showers, but the temperature was comfortable enough to wear my favourite linen dress. After all, I only had to run a hundred metres from parking lot to door -- the weekly class is one of the very few reasons I have to drive anymore; I could get there by public transit, but I'd be shoe-horning an extra hour to the day, and I think it's a good idea to maintain my driving-in-the-city skills.
Still, it was too cool for bare legs. I'm not quite ready to haul my tights out of their storage box, but I'd just seen Alyson Walsh's post on combining shirt-dresses with jeans to extend their shelf-life beyond summer, and I thought that idea might work for a non-shirt-dress as well.
So why did I choose, instead, to wear those silver Fluevog loafers (which this post -- coincidentally also on transitional fall dressing -- testifies are at least six years old)? Whose metallic surface is now scuffed a scuff or two beyond "fashionably distressed"? Whose rubber soles, with their dance-step graphic and the words "let the dance begin" are probably on their last hundred kilometres?
I blame the "Francine factor" . . . Francine (not Frances!) was a young woman who worked in the same office as I did, in '75 or '76. She'd left her family behind in Montréal, taken the train across the country to try her luck on the West Coast. Raven-haired, vivacious, her striking figure attracted attention in the office, one of those vast open landscapes carved up with those portable dividers still modern and appealing, perhaps even sexy, in mid-70s Vancouver, in those golds and oranges that quickly became ubiquitous.
There was a boyfriend who worked at the heritage CN hotel in town. Ambitious, upwardly mobile perhaps, but still of modest income, he quickly bumped into some more moneyed competition, and we were all eager, each Monday morning, to hear of the weekend's romantic adventures, the restaurants she'd been treated to, the offers that had been proposed to her -- all told in her heavily accented English, punctuated regularly by her ever-so-cute "How you say?" "What is theees word?
As much as her romantic adventures interested us, we were even more fascinated by her style, which confirmed every rumour we'd ever heard about les Montréalaises. If I had to sum it up across the blurry distance of the decades, I'd probably rely on that cliché, "Classic with a Twist," although I hadn't heard that expression at the time. She already had the beige trenchcoat, and her French accent transformed a plain white shirt with a black pencil skirt and simple cardigan. Somehow, her pieces and the way she combined them always looked fresh and confident, despite there rarely being a single standout garment.
One of us, in particular, studied Francine's style, trying to see how she might emulate it. Marion was bright and funny but prone to depression which she tried to stave off by shopping. The office we worked in occupied the entire 7th floor of a bank tower, one of the tallest buildings in the city then; (dwarfed, now, of course, by five decades of subsequent construction). Far below us, an underground mall was gradually extending its reach in a retail configuration that was only a few years old, still relatively new--and exciting--to Vancouver. Our lunch hours -- sometimes even our coffee breaks -- often included a quick foray past the tempting windows.
Marion's forays, in fact, would often head past the windows, make a sharp turn, and somehow end up inside a store, flipping through dresses or blouses or skirts on hangers or unfolding sweaters piled on counters. She'd come back after lunch and gleefully show us some cute little blouse or a pair of dreamy new platform shoes, maybe a suede bag with a swishy fringe. And by the next day, whatever she'd bought would be featured in her outfit. The new purchase would be in rotation for the next few weeks, but we could see it losing its shine, and by the end of a month, it would be replaced by a new favourite.
Marion's retail excursions relied heavily on a credit card. She and her husband, she confided ro me once, had racked up a six-thousand dollar debt (on a combined income of perhaps 30K). So she was understandably mesmerised by our Québecoise co-worker. Francine shopped as well, no question, but she did so much more deliberately. She window-shopped as much as the rest of us, but generally, she wasn't shopping to buy unless she'd clearly identified a gap in her wardrobe. She had a very realistic sense of her budget, as a single woman on a modest salary, but she also knew the price of quality and was willing to save, in order to pay it -- or to wait for a sale!
But even Francine experienced the occasional coup de foudre. A few times, that summer and fall she worked with us, she would come back to the office after lunch and regale us, not with a tale of the older suitor who'd offered to fly her to San Francisco for the weekend, but with the description of an exquisitely fitting skirt. Plaid, in a fine wool, and then she might giggle a bit describing how well it showed off her, well, her ass-ets. . . We'd egg her on, tell her she had to buy it, tell her she should pop back down to the mall on her afternoon coffee break and buy it before it was gone in her size -- but she'd wait a day or two, double-check her bank account, look carefully in her closet to see if it would really work. Finally, she'd treat herself to the new piece -- and we'd look forward to seeing her model it.
Here's the whole point I've been building to, though: Francine wouldn't wear the new plaid pencil skirt or the black patent pumps or the ruffle-sleeved blouse to work the next day, the way Marion always did. Sometimes Francine wouldn't even wear her new purchase the whole next week. Sometimes it would be several weeks before we'd see it as part of an outfit, and it would take us a while to recognise that it was, indeed, a new garment. Somehow, she'd simply blended it into her own inimitable style -- she absolutely wore the garment or accessory, rather than it wearing her.
Yes, of course I've come across this approach numerous times over the decades since, but I'm not sure I've ever seen it practiced with such a combination of restraint and flair on such a careful budget. Thinking back, I calculate that Francine was no more than 21 at the time; she'd already mastered lessons many style-bloggers are preaching today, forty-some years later.
And last Thursday, although I hadn't thought of Francine for ages, she was suddenly with me, shaking her head and raising an eyebrow as I slid my toes into my new pink Oxfords, shoehorn against my heel. In my imagination, she cocked her head in the direction of my old silver loafers, which I still love, and I conceded. After all, if I've chosen carefully, I'll have many years of loving and wearing those Oxfords. . .
I'm curious: Have you been a Marion or a Francine in your shopping habits? and has your pattern changed over the years?) Or have you known a Marion or Francine? Or known another type of shopper, either a cautionary example or an inspiring one? And does the simple act of getting dressed ever make connections across the decades for you? Who or what does that mirror sometimes reflect from the past? Not necessarily about shopping, but just ways in which whatever you're wearing pulls the past forward or sends you backwards in reverie. . .
It's another Monday, obviously, and I haven't written a list yet. I probably should, as this week already has the potential to get away from me. Time for a quick workout now, and then I'm meeting a GF for coffee. . . Hope your week's begun well. Happy Monday!
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