Fashion Forward

Every May Chicago gets a few glorious days that are simply perfect.  And they are a reminder that it’s swim suit season once again.  But they are fleeting- traditionally leaving Memorial Day weekend cold and rainy.  (I never remember an opening day at our club pool that wasn’t spent draped in towels, shivering, turning blue and finally heading for home before noon.)

So I wanted to take advantage of the sunny ones we were just gifted, and to that end, I donned a bathing suit, grabbed my Kindle and my sunblock and headed for the great outdoors.

The bathing suit:  A nifty Claude Montana number.  Navy blue and white striped maillot with clear plastic straps that are adjustable.  You slide them up and down lucite buckles as needed.  The straps hang down the back.  Very Barbarella.

The Kindle:  Now playing- Rupert Everett’s Vanished Years.  Remember the fey, wasp-tongued, snarky BFF of Julia Roberts in My Best Friend’s Wedding? Not the would-be groom.  The other guy who flew in from New York and charmed the wedding party with his rendition of “I Say a Little Prayer?”

That’s him.  And he has written a new memoir that takes up where his last, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins, left off.  He is an entertaining summer companion- perfect around the pool or the cabana.  Indiscreet, nasty, sexy, eloquent and totally politically-incorrect.

His brilliant and outspoken takes on Hollywood icons- from Madonna to Harvey Weinstein- are worth the price of admission alone.  You have to be in the mood for his dish, but spending time with him is a like a visit from a punk Oscar Wilde.

The Sunblock:  Once upon a time it was considered very Non-U to have a suntan.  Strictly a peasants-only accessory.  Coco Chanel changed all that in the 1920’s.  She herself was très sportif, and she decided what was good for the duke was good for the duchess.  Hence she invented the jersey bathing suit and the idea that it was okay for wealthy women to get bronzed in the pursuit of la chasse and le golf and le jardin.

Especially if you did them all wearing pearls.

We Babyboomers were gung ho for this idea.  (Skin cancer and suntanning were not yet linked- as “dark ages” as that sounds now) and we went at the sun full blast.  Our 1960’s idea of sunblock was a white tee shirt- if you got too scorched the day before.

It was all about the Bain de Soleil.  An orange gel that positively reeked of the Riviera- thanks to a savvy group of Madmen.  We teenaged beach bunnies were wild about it.  We slathered it on and paid obeisance to the solar gods.

(I wasn’t as into tanning as some girls, though.  They would use reflectors made out of tin foil and baby oil laced with mercurochrome to amp up the process.  And I couldn’t bear to turn over.  I always hated laying on my front, and so while one side of summer me would be toasty chestnut, the b-side would be a whiter shade of pale.  I looked just like a Bel Air Chevy.)

Nowadays, I rely on lipcote and the SPF 100 black paint to prevent harmful UV rays- and the aging process. And I throw in a Cubs floppy hat for good measure.  (We’ve all seen the cautionary tales that some unfortunate women who unreservedly loved the sun have become.  They’re tan.  As in tanned leather by Hermes.)

But back to current day- where I started this post.

I had just settled comfortably frontside up into a chaise.  But my bathing suit wasn’t behaving.  Somehow my poitrine was peeking out a little and my derrière ditto.  I kept squirming around to make the fabric hide more areas of untanned flesh, and I kept adjusting the straps, pulling them down off my shoulders and making them longer in the hopes that the suit would cover more ground.

But it was no dice.

Okay, I had to admit it.  I hadn’t worn this little number in quite some time and things must have shifted a bit.  I just had to accept the sad fact that I couldn’t rock this particular suit in public any more.

But this day I was alone with Rupert and he didn’t mind that my bathing costume no longer fit like a sexy glove.  (I’m not quite his cuppa, darling.)  So I slathered on the industrial strength suntan lotion and enjoyed two blissful hours of seventy degrees, blue skies, a slight breeze and Maître Everett’s racy reminiscences.

I didn’t want to overdo and all too soon, I forced myself into a standing position, returned inside, bathed, rinsed out the suit and went about the rest of my day.

Somewhere around midnight it hit me.  Didn’t I say that I hadn’t worn this suit in a long time?  The straps were the key.  Their overhang didn’t go down the back.  It went in the front!  I had put the bathing suit on backwards.

I leaped out of bed, snapped on the lights, put it back on- this time with the straps hanging frontside- and voilà!  It looked great.  Just like it was supposed to.  I had worn it bass-ackwards all day.

My mind immediately raced back to Korshak’s, a stylish dress shop- sadly no longer with us- on Michigan Avenue.  Martha, my adorable salesgirl, had brought me a very unprepossessing-looking Giorgio St. Angelo little black dress.  Some kind of stretch panné velvet material with long, gauzy illusion sleeves and the same illusion gauzy chiffon in the front.  It hung limply on the hanger.  It had no pizaazz at all.

“Martha, this looks kind of sad,” I protested.  “You know me.  I want fashion genuflection when I buy a dress. I want people to fall down when they see me.”

“It’s just got no hanger appeal, Ellen.  But trust me.  Try it on.  I’ll be back in a minute.”  And she left me to it.

The dress was a pull-over.  It had no zippers or buttons.  Just a quick swish and a little shimmy and I was in.

I stepped out of the dressing room to see how I went over.  And then I looked down.

The translucent chiffon made me totally nude down the front.  All of me was of display on Michigan Avenue.

Martha arrived just in time to take me in hand.

“Ellen,” she tsked tsked sternly.  And then she made a twirling motion with her fingers.

“I can’t wear this!  I’m naked!  I don’t care how cool it is!” I protested as I turned around 360 to give her the full effect.

Again Martha and the twirling motion.

“Huh?”

“You’ve got it on backwards, Ellen,” she corrected me with a sigh.  “The illusion veiling goes in the back.”

I turned the dress around.  Killer!  I bought it.

(And I always wore it with my pearls running down my back, too.)

Coco would have been so proud.

But Rupert would have probably much preferred it the other way around.

Naughty boy.