With Gloves On

One accessory that almost always gets pushed to the back of the closet in warmer weather is the glove. Sure, they hide your manicure and any rings you might be wearing, but they add a touch of classic elegance to any aspiring pin-up.

Once upon a mandate, gloves were a mandate of ladies etiquette. Take a look at the ladies in just about any Hitchcock movie (for example, Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief) and you'll probably find that each of them wear gloves at some point in the film--and not because it's cold. According to Barbara Leaming's biography of Marilyn Monroe, when announcing her divorce to Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn fretted over whether to hold her gloves in her hand or to wear them. Nowadays, many brides still wear gloves as part of their ensemble, and I need not mention that gloves are still a part of many burlesque acts.

I find gloves alluring because they cover a part of my body that almost anyone can touch. We come into contact with other people's hands so often that putting a barrier between them makes us sit up to take notice. Gloves communicate untouchability, modesty and innocence, which is part of what makes them so sexy. Even if the gloves in question are sheer or lacey, there's still a thin veil stretched over your hands, and that's enticing for exactly the same reason that sheer and lacey lingerie can be so hard to resist.

They aren't generally practical in the summer--although they can help dry up a sweaty palm and offer mild protection from germs--but that's not a good enough reason to take off the gloves. Like so many other elements of fashion, gloves aren't always about utility (though these are an exception). They're about adding style and beauty to the world.

And, another piece of good news is that gloves need not be a terribly expensive accessory. Those that are pricey are surely wonderful--such as these, which I received as a holiday gift from my sweetheart--but you can almost always find perfectly suitable gloves at your local thrift or vintage store, and I hope you don't require me to tell you about the bottomless well that is ebay. In short, you've got no excuse for going gloveless, so get out there and pretty your paws for your public.

Having an Audience

One thing that can be a little disconcerting about living as a pinup is all the attention one gets. I know what some would say to this--that they wish they got so many looks, or perhaps that this is conceit and vanity on my part--but I'm here to tell you that in any case, it's not easy having a constant audience.

I started modeling my everyday style after 1950s pinups about two or three years ago. At first when people were staring at me, it felt awkward. It feels like a cross between flattery and espionage, and often times I wondered if something hanging from my nose was the reason for the attention. By now, though, I've gotten fairly used to it. Little boys and little girls sometimes snicker at me on the subway, older women lean in and whisper together with their eyes locked on my face, and men's eyes travel me up and down. I imagine that some people like the look, some think it's exhibitionist, and at its worst maybe they think I'm a freak of some kind. Perhaps still others wonder if they're walking by a celebrity--after all, big sunglasses and hats are common props for disguise, and famous people are always so polished, right?

Here I am making guesses at what may be going through the
minds of the onlookers, because only a fraction of them actually say something. When they do, it's often to compliment the look as a whole or in pieces, and there have been some humorous ones too. I was standing on an escalator one day when a woman ran up it with great urgency to tell me that my seamed stockings were crooked. It was as though she thought I should stop right there, hitch up my skirt and adjust my garter among the other morning commuters. Another time, a woman asked me if I just came from one of the theaters, because do I know that I'm dressed entirely in vintage?

Unfortunately, yes, some of the comments are not welcome, but these are few and far between. I think this has to do with the fact that I dress like a lady, and my look commands that I be treated like one. No one has ever said anything so inappropriate to me that I started screaming at them on the street, no one has rubbed up against me or grabbed me. Generally I'm thanking someone who kindly told me that I look nice, or I'm spelling out the name of the website where I got my dress/stockings/makeup for someone scribbling on a piece of paper they dug out of their bag. Oddly enough, the reason I never pursued acting was because I didn't like being watched. Like I said, I'm better with it than I used to be, enjoy it sometimes and tire of it at other times. In the end, I hope that I'm one of many to inspire others to make classic beauty a part of their daily life. You only live once, and there's no reason not to look your best doing it.

How Not To Pay Homage

I wasn't going to write about this--so many others have--but now that the parodies are coming out, it must be done.

For those of you who may have been living under a rock, Lindsay Lohan recently recreated Marilyn Monroe's final photo shoot, known as The Last Sitting, for New York Magazine. She was photographed by Bert Stern, who did the original shoot with Monroe back in 1962, six weeks before she overdosed on barbiturates. The shoot has been gaining a lot of attention--some claiming that it encourages a kind of necrophilia, others wondering why Lohan would do a nude photo shoot just after her third stint in rehab, but for myself, I wonder: Why do it at all?

Let it be known that I am incredibly conservative when it comes to icons. When Natalie Portman wore Audrey Hepburn's dress on the cover of Bazaar, I cringed. Even if it was somehow an improvement on the original, I would never enjoy watching a remake of a classic like Casablanca or Gone With the Wind. In my opinion, there's a conceit in trying to recreate icons which compromises their impact on the pop culture of their time. If that's the point, fine, but I don't believe that Lindsay Lohan or Natalie Portman were trying to imply that Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn weren't all that important. I think they were trying to pay homage to two incredible women who inspired them, but copying an icon is not enough to constitute an homage.

In my opinion, you need to take it further. You need to show me something new about what this person, this ideal means to us decades after he/she/it peaked, and only then is the icon status affirmed. When I saw Anna Kournikova channel, but not precisely copy Marilyn Monroe over a grate in The Seven Year Itch, then I considered how our perceptions of sexuality have changed since my parents were my age, how images can be reappropriated to sell something, and personally I had to consider the fact that I recognized what was being recreated without having ever seen the original creation. For me, that made me imagine what it might have been like that day when Marilyn's skirt blew up around her waist over the Lexington Avenue subway line.

I think the Lindsay Lohan photos are beautiful, but still they irritate me. If she wanted to do a nude photo shoot, why couldn't she just do one of her own? Why did she have to hide behind the auspices 0f homage? And over forty years later, can't Bert Stern be a little more creative about contextualizing troubled tabloid actresses of the past and present? One can only blame Lindsay Lohan so much for jumping at the chance to play a personal hero. Really, it's the folks at New York Magazine and Bert Stern who need to dig a little deeper.