Table of Contents
Praise for Target Underwear and a Vera Wang Gown:
Reading Adenas story made me want to throw open the doors of my closet and hear the stories my own clothes have to tellfrom my first Galliano gown, to a pair of Earth shoes that I wore in eighth grade with a pair of Calvin Klein jeans. This book reassures the girl in each of us that shes not alone in her search for the perfect outfit and the confidence that, we hope and pray, comes along with it.Cindy Crawford
Youll fall in love with Adena, her mother, her family, and her friends. I did. Though she cant control her life or lovelife (who can?), she can control her closet and her spirit shines through that closet.Ilene Beckerman, author of Love, Loss and What I Wore and Makeovers at the Beauty Counter of Happiness
A witty and lighthearted memoir.Pages
[Adenas] heartbreaking, hilarious, and sometimes humiliating tales will have you reaching in your closet for your worn Z. Cavariccis and puffy-sleeved prom dress to revel in your own fabric nostalgia.Marie Claire
Adena Halpern wrote a popular series of essays entitled The Haute Life for the back page of Marie Claire magazine, which reaches 3.1 million readers monthly. She is a contributing writer for Daily Variety and has written for The New York Times. Adena earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in dramatic writing from New York University and a Master of Fine Arts degree in screen-writing from The American Film Institute. A proud Philadelphia native, she resides in Los Angeles with her overflowing closet.
Although some names and identifying characteristics of the people in this memoir have been changed to protect their privacy, all references to clothing remain unchanged no matter how humiliating it looked.
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Published by Gotham Books, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First trade paperback printing, June 2007
Copyright 2006 by Adena Halpern
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Halpern, Adena.
Target underwear and a Vera Wang gown : notes from a single girls closet / by Adena Halpern.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-07787-0
1. Womens clothingpsychological aspects. 2. Clothing and dressPsychological aspects.
3 FashionPsychological aspects. I. Title.
GT1720.H35 2006
391.2dc22 2005044792
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For my mom and dad
Introduction: If I Had a Closet
ometimes I wish that rather than photo albums or scrap-books, I had a closet full of every piece of clothing that meant anything in my life.
Looking from the left of the closet, Id find my grandmothers mink coat, a broken strand of faux pearls in the pocket that shed smashed when she and my grandfather had gotten too wild in their salsa dancing. Next to the mink would be a perfectly preserved gray flannel suit of my grandfathers with a perfectly folded handkerchief in the pocket. Next to their section, Id have the steel blue, circa-1970s Oscar de la Renta gown of my mothers, a Louis Vuitton bucket bag, and a cream-colored tailored suitthose classic styles that always make her look timeless. Id have my dads white doctors coat, a stethoscope hanging out of the right pocket, and Id think about how important and serious he looked when I visited him at the hospital. Next to the doctors coat would be his well-worn blue sweatsuit, the one with the permanent pizza stains on the jacket that hed put on the second he got home. That sweatsuit always meant playtime. Id have my brother Davids varsity wrestling jacket and brother Michaels varsity cross-country jacket to remember the feeling of being the awkward little sister who thought her older brothers were the coolest, strongest, and most popular boys in high school, but would never let them know.
Id take out my college sweethearts eighties 8-ball jacket and lay my old Madonna wannabe bustier and leggings next to it and reminisce about that feeling of first-time true love. Id even have my Girbaud orange-neon-colored parachute pants next to a pair of split Dolphin shorts, those major fashion faux pas that at the time seemed the height of fabulous and only now follow the words I cant believe I ever wore that!
My friend Susan is always amazed when I can immediately tell her what anyone was wearing at significant moments. Susan, for example, was wearing a pink Betsey Johnson Lycra flowered dress with a ruffled collar when I first met her, an outfit that I later borrowed. Heidi was wearing a pair of blue-and-white-striped drawstring pants and a white T-shirt. Rachel wore a three-quarter-length black suit jacket on her first day at her big new job. Amy wore a pair of white leggings and a long white T-shirt hiked up on the right side with a banana clip the day we graduated from high school. Serena was wearing a pair of red-and-black wool ticked pants and a black sweater the night her husband proposed to her.
The plaids, the velvets, the minks, the leathers, cottons, silks, and denims. If clothes make the man (or woman), then for me, certainly, its the clothes that make the memory.