Silky

LA 4. 25.2020
An uneasy color combination. That’s always my response to this scarf that was made into a dress. I loved the way it draped, how perfectly the scarf lines suggested where the neckline fell, the silky feel when you put it on. But the colors were not mine. The dress was sort of like a bad boyfriend, a lot of qualities you loved, some that you hated…. Still you kept him anyway. This dress I still have lurking in my costume box.

This dress was one of many things from our Rag Sister phase. Stella and I sewed for consignment shops in Berkeley. Later we sewed for our Rags Book project. Were the scarf dresses our invention? I think so. Maybe a variation with on the poncho dress we created for sale in Seventeen Magazine. Stella, I think made this one. How we managed to piece together this flimsy fabric with tiny portable sewing machines is a mystery. But a credit to our hunting and gathering skills in the thrift stores and our ingenuity at “making a little something out of almost nothing.”


SA 4.23.2020
Take a large, square scarf and fold into a triangle. Place it over your head with the point toward your back. Tie the other two points under your chin and voila. You’re ready to go to mass or out on a windy day. Sometimes I wore them but I really didn’t like scarves when I was a kid. They became more interesting to me later.

This particular scarf is somber and silky, a perfect old lady accessory. It’s familiar but it’s not mine. I have a huge pile of old silk scarves which I collected from thrift stores, other people’s cast offs and pilfered from the university theater department’s costume shop. They often smelled of the original owner’s perfume. Once I patched together a dozen scarves to make a tunic, a seventies fantasy in silk which changed my whole attitude about scarves. I still don’t wear them but I love to look at them, each a small work of art.