Whenever I've tried to buy new clothes, it's never worked out. I'd spend what seemed like an enormous sum and come away with something that always felt wrong on me, that I never wore.
I have always known exactly what I like, without ever thinking about it.
I needed Roosevelt-era stuff: big wool overcoats; split-toe Oxfords the color of flan caramel; narrow, shiny brown belts; kitten-soft tartan plaid scarves; heavy old wristwatches than lose 30 minutes a day; and, my God, fedoras.
How my mother would laugh at my hats! I simply couldn't be myself without a fedora—Hemingway without a typewriter. I needed a gray felt crown.
The language of my body began when I discovered thrift shops in the early 1980s in Kensington, underneath the Market-Frankford el. I still have the tweed coat I bought with Bob there. I took it to my mother's apartment in King of Prussia and she sewed the full-length tear in the back and restored to it buttons.
That was the closest we ever got—when I was crashing and burning at 24. Job after job and never any money.
But I looked fabulous.
