The Rake's Progress. Or: How the Purge Goes

Several cubic feet of things chucked chock-a-block into boxes and into the back of my car. An old dog bed--which probably should be just thrown out--and camisole tops and shorts that are years too young for me, which probably also should be thrown out. I pitched some old ceramic top bottles that I was saving for heaven knows what--I think I thought we were going to marinate our own vinegars or some such crafty thing. Duplicate shoes. Ugly toys. And there are so many ugly toys for boys. I worry that the boys will have no toys after I throw out the ugly and annoying ones. You try to throw out your kids' art work and try to explain it to them when they find it in the garbage! How did that get in there???

I gauge my progress on my satisfaction of how I feel at the cubic footage I've freed up. I do a little mathematical equation using our monthly mortgage, our home's square footage, solving for how much per month we've been paying out to store stacks of Yoga Journal magazines and empty Weck jars. And some people think there's no practical use for high school algebra.

The result, I suppose, is nominal. My sons brought in the stacks of art they made at art camp last week. My husband brought in tables from his restaurant and he's refinishing them out on the porch. I'm going to the thrift stores to comb through for more Eileen Fisher and Lilly Pulitzer. Although pickings are getting slim in the midsummer lull, I'd hate to miss another $800.00 coat like the one I found last week for $3.49. It's like unraveling a giant sweater that someone keeps knitting, and knitting, and knitting, and knitting, and knitting, and knitting...

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The Lost Designer of the 80's

Claude Barthelemy seems to have been one of those if-you-needed-to-ask-you-didn't-need-to-know designers. In the '80's, he was listed as a young, hot couturier alongside go-the-distance blue chips like Karl Lagerfeld and Lanvin with his oversized sweaters, minis, leggings and fur-trimmed stoles. Exclusive stores carried his soft-edged jackets to shoppers in the know. And then what happened? His pleated skirts, intarsia sweaters, and naughty, zippered wool catsuits still fetch high prices in vintage world and any dealer with his elegantly simple, Gallic tag on her racks raises a flutter in second-hand seekers. He designed for Barbie, for heaven's sake! But the designer himself, who seems to have cut a meteoric swath across the runways and then...? So what's the story with this wasp-waisted pleated skirt? I wondered what else this woman could have dropped off on her Goodwill drive-by--a Chanel original? A couture Pucci? Surely someone this linked in wouldn't just ...

I Heart Shop-a-Holics

"No one needs $800 shoes." This is an admonishment from those brainy friends every time I say how I picked up a pair of Guiseppe Zanotti shoes or Manolo Blahnik boots at the Goodwill and cackle about how I will sell them on eBay. This is wisdom, I suppose, in an era that touts egalitarian economics as a virtue and from academics, artists and philosophical ascetics who really do believe it's what's inside that counts. (As long as what's inside is what they deem acceptable...but more on that later.) Apostolic WalkFit Fine. Technically, no one needs even $50.00--or $25.00--shoes--those Israelites certainly got around (though it took the power of the Almighty to keep their sandals from wearing out). I suppose history showed that the guys at Valley Forge came out okay with rags wrapped around their feet. So no one needs $800 shoes, just as no one needs a custom Bentley with a Vinotemp wine cabinet in the trunk or a $7,000 Hermes saddle...

Show Up, Shut Up, Wear Beige

Instructions to mothers of the groom. The reason why groomsmen all wear the same suit to a wedding--so if the groom doesn't show up, everyone can just take a step to the left. The people on that side of the church are just props, baby. Your role, as mother of the groom, is to provide a groom. And maybe a brother for a spare. The extent of your input is limited to saying how lovely everything is. The bride's strapless ballgown in the church? Why, it's lovely, of course. The mother of the bride's equally revealing gown to show off her boob job? Lovely. The new wife of the bride's father who describes herself as a "cougar" (in the latter part of her nine lives) (meow!)? Nope! Nope! She's so lovely. The "blending" ceremony in which all the members of the bridal party dance around and fill a vase with pink and blue vials of sand to symbolize the "blending" of two souls into one purple-ish vase of sand...or something? Lovely, lovely, love...

Second Hand, Second Thoughts

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