Much written yesterday as this was announced of Didion being the original 'cool girl'. I always liked her journalism - in particular her list of items that she packed for the road.
Re her love of clothes - was reading this morning Blue Nights the memoir written after her daughter's death (a Christmas present).
She recalls a Chanel suit worn by one of the guests at her daughter's christening. Love the detail of the cyclamen pink lining - lining can have many meanings.
'Connie Wald, wearing one of the several Chanel suits in evidence that afternoon, in her case one of blue-and-cream tweed lined in cyclamen-pink silk.'
Earlier she mentions a 'black wool challis dress' bought at Bendel's on West Fifth-seventh Street. Clothes as totems.
"When I bought that black wool challis dress Bendel's was still on West Fifty-seventh Street. It was that long ago. Bendel's became after Geraldine Stutz stopped running it just another store, but when it was still on West Fifty-seventh Street and I bought that dress it was special, it was everything I wanted either one of us to wear, it was all Holly's Harp Chiffon and lettuce edges and sizes zero and two."
Have had to google Holly's Harp Chiffon. Love the idea of the dress - especially 'everything I wanted either of us to wear'.
Holly Harp was a evening dress designer who really took off in the 60s in the US. She blended old and new and called herself a 'junk-shop-aholic'.
