Houtte Melissa - Alligators, old mink & new money: one womans adventures in vintage clothing

Mothers and Daughters

Finding Yourself

Out on My Own

But Does It Fit?

The Label Game

The Thrill of the Hunt

What Is Style Anyway?

Shopping Intimacies and Infidelities

What We Keep and What We Dont

The Art of Renewal

Vintage Shoppers Guide

Passing Down the Thrift Gene

B ack in the mid-nineties, while I was visiting my parents in Miami, I was desperate for something to wear to lunch at the newly opened Delano Hotel, the place to be seen on South Beach at that moment. I was meeting an old girlfriend from my modeling days, a woman who now moves with a crowd in Manhattan a few notches above my social circle. I wanted to look good, and I wanted to be cool, literally. It was a ninety-eight-degree day.

Tucked in a drawer in my mothers dresser, which was jammed to overflowing with odd remnants like a monogrammed linen handkerchief and a single babys shoe, I found an old navy blue slip whose fabric felt like rose petals in my hands. I knew that my mother had tucked away hundreds of such items throughout our housefrom her youth, from the childhoods of my four sisters and brother and mebut I didnt know that this had belonged to my grandmother, Moms mother, until I asked if I could borrow it.

Navy is not my best color, but I was in a bind, and I figured that if Madonna could wear a slip out in public, so could I. I put it on, and it fit beautifully, hitting just below the knee. It wasnt sheer, so nothing significant was exposedno nipples, no panties. I cinched the waist with an inexpensive black stretch belt and completed the outfit with sexy, strappy black sandals and a python-patchwork clutch.

As I prepared to leave the house, my father was baffled. Wheres your dress? he asked.

This is my dress, I told him, and because I am his youngest daughter, my dad has seen it all and knows when to stop asking questions. He shook his head and laughed.

As I walked onto the Delanos terracea seductive sea of overstuffed wicker sofas draped with tanned bodies sporting Dior sunglasses, perfectly pressed Italian linens and rhinestoned ManolosI was a bit nervous, though I knew I looked good and could hold my own with this crowd. My self-confidence kicked into high gear the minute I spotted my friend and her lightning-quick head-to-toe appraisal of my outfit confirmed my gamble. We exchanged an air kiss, and her first question was, Where did you get that dress? She was smiling the smile of a woman who always buys the bestor the most expensive, and equates that with bestand who also appreciates a great find. When I told her the source, she immediately responded, Is there another one in that drawer?

Lucky for me, my mother had style even when our family didnt have much money. Of course, when I was a little girl growing up in Miami, I didnt know this. My mother was simply an embarrassment to me and my siblings because of:

How she dressedRoman sandals and loud prints, sometimes going braless.

Where she shoppedGoodwill and church rummage sales.

Her choice of deodorant for herself and her familybaking soda.

And what she expected us to wearsecondhand clothes, usually with good labels.

None of our friends had a mother quite like oursMom was a strong-willed, hot-tempered feminist, though I never heard that word used in our house. She hatedand still avoidsany kind of housekeeping, yet she would spend time almost every week carefully ironing our organdy and cotton dresses so we would be presentable for church. She was, and still is, a woman whose life can be marked, at least in part, by the clothes she worenew and usedfor minor and major moments in her familys life.

M om got her sense of what was good from her own mother, Marie Neylon, a woman whose hair was always pulled into a bun, stray gray strands held in place by tortoiseshell combs, a woman whose old country (Bohemia-Hungary) way of doing things was an embarrassment to her only daughter, Jacqueline. Grandma cooked potato pancakes and beef stew with fluffy dumplings, boiled her bedsheets with bluing in copper pots after they came out of the wringer washer and braided her own rugs using upholstery fabric remnants. She was a woman who could sit in the basement for hours on end picking feathers, emerging with a halo of fluff on her head after separating the downthe softest, finest feathersfrom larger, sharper feathers, so she could make the best down-filled pillows.

None of this sat well with Mom, who will be the first to admit she was a spoiled, unappreciative child when she was growing up on the south side of Chicago. Mom wanted a modern mother, someone who went to the beauty salon, served American food and aspired to own wall-to-wall carpeting, rather than sneering at it.

But Grandma Neylon did embrace at least one pastime the two of them could share: She loved to shop, and she patronized only the nicest stores, even though there was very little extra spending money for a family of five living on a policemans salary. While my grandfather might be wearing a secondhand camel-hair coatmy mother remembers a man more interested in good books than clothes, as long as his uniform passed inspectionhis two sons were dressed in Belgian linen suits, and his daughter never wore a hand-me-down.

In the thirties, Grandma Neylons idea of a pleasant day away from her household duties was to take Mom to Marshall Field, which filled a twelve-story granite building covering a whole city block in downtown Chicago. Once inside this elegant store, Grandma would charge a half pound of fancy mixed nuts, freshly scooped into a box and still warm. Then, pecans and cashews in hand, she and my mother would munch their way from department to department, admiring all the nicest merchandise, lingering in the vast furniture department because that was my grandmothers favorite and shopping for clothes for my mother whenever she needed them. Invariably, at the end of the day, my grandfather would be circling the block in the family car, because they were always late getting back to their prearranged pickup spot.

Her tastes refined by all those hours of browsing, my grandmother scrimped and savedand, sometimes, lived beyond her meansso she could buy sterling flatware (one piece at a time), Dresden compotes, Oriental rugs, a nine-foot mahogany dining table and other good things, things that would last beyond her lifetime, things she and her husband could leave to their two sons and daughter.

Her eye for quality never wavered, even when she wasnt in Marshall Field or Carson, Pirie, Scott, another of her favorite stores.

My mother remembers visits to the homes of friends and acquaintances where Marie, out of the blue and much to her daughters dismay, would admire a piece of furniture and put a preemptive bid on the table. If you ever want to get rid of this, she would say, without skipping a beat in the conversation.

And she was confident enough about what her daughter would like that she once took it upon herself to buy my mothers dress for her senior prom, surprising Mom with a full-length white crepe gown and a cranberry red full-length velvet coat. It was beautiful, Mom says, sounding as pleased at eighty as she was at seventeen.

But, almost inevitably, the old-fashioned mother and her more modern daughter eventually did battle. If my mother said it was black, I said it was white, my mother says regretfully. The same went for all things old and new. As a single woman still living at home but determined to create her own life and her own look, Mom renounced any interest in inheriting the possessions Grandma Neylon had so carefully collected.