VISIT Style Maniac at GLOSSING OVER IT today

Style Maniac has gone over to Susan Gloss' place today. Come over to read my guest post "Feels Like Home" and then stay for a bit to explore Susan's fabulous blog, Glossing Over It.  She writes about fashion, fiction, food and wine--yes, all the things a style maniac loves! Plus she's smart, fun and a fan of Trina Turk, vintage clothes and serious research in the form of candy/liquor pairings. If you don't know Susan already you're about to discover a great writer, a must-read blog and a stylish online friend.  Thank you, Susan, for the invite ... it's quite a delight.

Trina Turk's front hall image via Elle DecorSource URL: https://thesoap-box.blogspot.com/search/label/writing
Visit The Soap Box for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection

GUEST POST: Every Seam Has A Story by Susan Gloss

Fashion, fiction, food and wine: four of my favorite things--and Susan Gloss writes about them all.  Here Susan shares what she loves about vintage clothes, capturing beautifully how they are so much more than fabric and thread.

I can't identify an isolated instant when my obsession with fashion began. Maybe it started in childhood, when I visited my grandmother at the Florence Eisemann clothing factory, where she worked as a pattern maker. Maybe I caught fashion fever during my angsty teenage years, spent holed away in my bedroom with copies of Harper's Bazaar and Vogue pilfered from the waiting room of my dad's office. I don't know exactly where it started, but I do know that, somewhere along the line, I fell for fashion. Hard.

Loving clothes, though, comes with a price. There's the obvious one—the cost that cautions me from the tag or sticker, forcing me to ask myself, "Do I really need another black dress?" There's also the environmental cost—the strain that our consumer culture places on the environment as we constantly get rid of old things and buy newly-manufactured ones. My love of vintage fashion stems partly from these economical and ideological costs. Mostly, though, I just can't resist a good story.

As I writer, vintage clothing sparks my imagination. I see a sixties tent dress or a pair of purple pumps from the eighties and I think, "What occasion did the owner purchase this for? What was going on in her life?" I know there's a story behind every cocktail ring, every scarf, and even (and maybe especially) every t-shirt.

By wearing something old, I get to continue its story. Quality clothing is not meant to be worn a couple of times and then discarded. It is meant to last, to live. As Coco Chanel put it,

"Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening." 
 From my perspective, vintage clothes just have more life in them. 





Susan Gloss is a writer, lawyer, and blogger in Madison, Wisconsin. She recently completed her first novel, EXcelente, set in Chicago and Spain, and is hard at work on her second, Gently Used, which tells the story of a vintage clothing store, the women who work and shop there, and the garments that come through the door. When she's not working on novels, she can be found posting to her blog, Glossing Over It, or guest-blogging for Wisconsin Public Television's Engage Wisconsin series. Learn more at www.susangloss.com.


 For the story behind the stunning Velveteen Wiggle Dress and Bolero Jacket above, visit the 1950s section of  Dorothea's Closet Vintage. Photo by the store's owner, Angela Petraline.Source URL: https://thesoap-box.blogspot.com/search/label/writing
Visit The Soap Box for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection

PEN & PAPER

Despite technology--and sometimes because of technology--I still like to put my ideas down in ink on paper. In a pinch I'll take a scrap magazine subscription card and chewed up Bic ballpoint to jot down swirling thoughts in the middle of the night, but the process becomes that much more enjoyable when employing tactile tools such as the smooth silver Cross pen (only with the porous point refill) I was given as a gift when I left my first job many many years ago, or Elsa Peretti's sleek red lacquer pen for Tiffany (which I have gifted, with great response) and witty, well-designed journals, like these "I Had/Met And Liked" Archie Grand Notebooks from Jasper+Black.  Write on.

Image from House Beautiful magazine.
Source URL: https://thesoap-box.blogspot.com/search/label/writing
Visit The Soap Box for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection

FRENCH KISS

Above, one of the most romantic photographs ever, Robert Doisneau's Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville, Paris. Below, the tale of a very different kiss, written soon after my junior semester abroad in Nice, France

We had been at the nightclub several hours when X. sat down close beside me. Around us violet lights glowed eerily on stuffed white couches, the dance floor swarmed with writhing bodies. Though it was a student soiree, drinks, even Cokes, cost 100 francs—fifteen dollars—so I'd been sipping my one complimentary screwdriver all night. After awhile a slow song hummed and the lights dimmed to a softer blue. X. moved closer and whispered, "You must experience a French kiss."

I laughed and twirled my swizzle stick slowly through my drink. "You know, we have French kisses in America."

"You do?" He looked doubtful.

"Yes. And I have experienced them."

"Ah, but never from a French man."

"So they're different from American French kisses?"

He sneered. "Beh, oui! It comes from a French man."

I laughed again. "Okay, go ahead. Show me what a real French kiss is like." He leaned over and kissed me and it was the worst kiss I'd ever had. It was a long kiss and I started to feel like I was being strangled. By the time he let go of my tongue, my only thought was that I'd rather suck on my swizzle stick all night.

X. felt he'd had an altogether different affect. He leaned back, his dark eyes shining. "So you like, non?"

"Well," I said in all honesty, "it definitely was different."

Still, I let him kiss me again, in Cannes, at the top of a high hill just after we watched the pink and purple sky melt into the inky darkness of the Mediterranean. Earlier he had pulled me barefoot across the wintry beach in front of the Hôtel Carlton, filled my arms with peach roses and fed me tortellini and red wine at a sidewalk café where the waiter winked at us knowingly. ("Ah, there goes X. again," I imagined him thinking as he offered us fresh raspberries and more wine.) As for X. , all he said at the top of the hill was, "T'aime les vues, non?" Yes. Yes, I did love views. I had told him several weeks ago, and this particular view was spectacular, with a string of glowing lights now illuminating the meandering curves of the Côte d'Azur.

The kiss, though, was still bad.
Photo via www.robertdoisneau.com
Source URL: https://thesoap-box.blogspot.com/search/label/writing
Visit The Soap Box for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection

THE STORY OF CINDERELLA

Growing up, whenever my sister and I would ask our parents how they met, my father would respond with a version of my mother's favorite fairy tale. Here is my recounting of this family lore, which I wrote as a gift for my parents many years ago.  As to what of the story is truth and what is fiction ... well, perhaps that shall be revealed in the Comments section on Valentine's Day.  Enjoy, Mom & Dad.  Happy Anniversary.


~ The Story of Cinderella ~
Once upon a time in a land far, far away there lived a Prince. No one knew he was a Prince, and since his town was very Plain, with not much of a View, one would not think it much of a kingdom. But the Prince knew one day he would be a mighty King and so he contented himself with cleaning the town pool and working hard and studying hard and playing sports quite ruthlessly, and in all got through his days … but something was missing.

Now in the same town there lived a young woman who led a happy but harsh existence. Both her parents worked all day, so it was she who had to toil over a hot stove cooking the dinner, she who had to vacuum and wash and dust and scrub and care for her dog, Ginger. And on top of all that she had to study her schoolwork and practice her cheerleading and endure the indignity of a part-time job at the local dry cleaner. She did, however, have four sources of joy: dancing at teen club, painting her long nails a different color every day to match her dress, sun bathing at the town pool and flirting with boys.

At all of these things she was very good, but particularly the last; and dozens of boys would surround her when she sun bathed. (She never swam, maybe just a dip now and then, but nothing that would get her thick mane of—quite honestly mousy—brown hair wet.) In fact, so many boys surrounded her that she never even noticed the Prince.

And so the days passed and the nights ended and the weeks wore on, until one sticky summer night, the Prince was sweeping out the locker rooms and he came upon a sneaker. A single woman's sneaker, alone and somewhat soiled. He looked about for its mate. He looked in the lockers, above the lockers and below the lockers; he looked in the pool and around the pool; in the trash bins, under the picnic tables, even in the showers. All to no avail. So the Prince went to search the town and find the owner of the sneaker.

One would think that a Prince had better things to do with his time than wander around finding the owner of a dirty sneaker. But this Prince was quite methodical and liked everything to be organized. Most of all, he abhorred people who did not complete what they began.

So off he went, to every house in the Plain town with no View. Being a very handsome Prince, he was welcomed into the homes of every young girl; and being quite charming when he wanted to, every girl tried to fit the dingy sneaker. (Even though some secretly turned up their noses at something so ordinary and unjeweled. "Dahling, how could you put that schlock on your feet?" they asked each other when he left.)

After days and days of this the Prince finally came to a simple but tidy house with a lawn like a carpet and marvelous curtains. He knocked on the door, and who should answer but our sun-tanned, nail-painted beauty.

"My brother's upstairs," she said immediately to the Prince, thinking him one of her brother's buddies, "and I'm in a tither because I'm going dancing and I can't find my sneaker!"

Whereupon the Prince produced the sneaker, which fit the young woman perfectly, and the two fell instantly in love. She blew off her dancing date (with a boy who also happened to have been the Prince's good friend; oh well!) and married the Prince.

The two were very young, and some said very foolish, but the Prince was so Charming and the young woman fancied herself as living her favorite fairy tale, Cinderella (even, at one point, injudiciously dyeing her hair bright blonde), and after years of toil the Prince did indeed become a King (of Accounting) and Cinderella grew wonderful flowers and vines, and many riches came their way, including two wonderful daughters, two suave son-in-laws, two adorable granddaughters, and many good friends.

All in all, one could say they live happily ever after.
 Photo of my parents, John & Lorraine, at a high school dance from family archives.
Source URL: https://thesoap-box.blogspot.com/search/label/writing
Visit The Soap Box for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection

THANK YOU, DOMINO

Along with every other design girl out there, I could not believe it when I heard Domino Magazine was closing. It was such a fresh source of ideas, and it helped change my feelings about wallpaper entirely. So thanks for delighting me every month--and helping inspire me to stop thinking about creating this blog and just do it.Source URL: https://thesoap-box.blogspot.com/search/label/writing
Visit The Soap Box for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection