My New York State of Mind

Welcome back!

Thanks for writing, everybody – keep those emails coming! (Well, everybody who decided to write. Everybody else – start those emails coming, I guess!) I’m glad you’re having a good time here, and so far so good and all. It’s interesting to me that the most common comment is how lucky I am to live in New York City.

Don’t think I don’t know it! As you can see from my bio on the right, every morning I wake up with that thought in mind, and it really does zip around my brain at various times of the day: I get to live here! As with any relationship we’ve had our ups and downs, but I’m not exaggerating when I say New York City is probably greatest the love of my life.

I’m really grateful I made the leap to make this dream come true, and even when times got rough was able to stick it out. Not everyone can live here for various reasons (including the lack of apartments!), and not everyone wants to live here (hey - I get it), but most people want to visit. And evidently a lot of people wonder what it’s like to live here! Who knew? Reading someone’s plea for a recommendation for a place to order a New York bagel online – I feel for you! (I get to live here!)

I can’t speak for the entire 8,000,000+ other citizens who are my neighbors, of course, so you’ll have to write to each of them for their answer. As for me…it’s really pretty great.

I moved here determined to make the most of what the city has to offer, and I have kept that promise to myself.  With literally hundreds of museums to choose from, concerts, clubs, readings, and theaters in every nook and cranny – hey, I can watch television when I’m old. Or have the flu! So most nights you’ll find Mr. Smarty Pants and me out enjoying what our town has to offer; most often with friends that feel the same way.

One night a few years ago we went to see the Slovenian group Perpetuum Jazzile in concert, and before one of the songs one of the lead singers marveled that he had sung the song “On Broadway” for many years; earlier that day he was in the company’s bus, looked up at a street sign, and found he actually was on Broadway. As he tried to relay to his audience how much that meant to him, I couldn’t help thinking how so many of us still feel that same thrill.

(If you haven’t found this group yet, here’s a treat for you. Look for the guy in the front row, brown suit/yellow shirt – I’ll never forget him.)

 

Too many people who come to New York City think only of going to Broadway shows when they come here; that’s not only terribly expensive but terribly limiting. Here’s my calendar for the last couple weeks, and if you’re coming to the city take notes!  

We started out with a visit to The Minetta Lane Theatre, a small theater down in Greenwich Village. Right now the troupe in residence is Company XIV, which is presenting their version of Prokofiev’s Cinderella. It’s hard to sum up in just a few lines so I’ll direct you to their website, but I can tell you it’s a combination of the best of dance (ballet to tap), music (opera to country-western), gymnastics (think Cirque du Soleil and pole dancing)…you name it, it’s got it.

http://companyxiv.com/

This is breathtaking, avant-garde – but be forewarned that you must be over 21 to be in the audience. The costumes are exquisite, but, well, there’s not a lot of fabric to them.

This show is about to end and their version of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker (Nutcracker Rouge) is about to open. We can’t wait!

The next night I went to the Lincoln Center Theater to see this year’s Tony Award winning show for Best Revival of a Musical, The King and I, starring Kelly O’Hara. I’ve seen the movie countless times, and was thrilled to see Yul Brynner in his last run on Broadway doing his signature role in 1985, but I thought at the time after that I really didn’t need to see the show again; that was pretty much the pinnacle. Mr. Brynner knew what his audience had come for, and he gave us every bit of it. How do you top that? Well, I tell you how….

This production is a fresh look at an old favorite, and it’s stunning and unforgettable. While paying homage to what came before – Jerome Robbin’s classic choreography can be seen in The March of the Siamese Children (although somehow this time you know something about their mothers, too) and the timeless Small House of Uncle Thomas ballet, and I’d probably miss seeing some version of Irene Sharaff’s stunning lilac satin ball gown so Miss O’Hara’s dress in that famous scene was a gift to the eye – it brought a more serious tone to the political inner dialogs of the king and the struggles behind his decisions, making the show more relevant to the times we live in. I know the Rogers and Hammerstein songbook inside out but these actors presented them with new thoughts supporting them, and as I left the theater I couldn’t help wondering how those two men could understand the hearts of a flirtatious farm girl, a young novitiate, a widow and a doomed, lovelorn slave so well. I won’t be thinking of their shows just as beloved warhorses anymore; they've changed as I've changed and I want to see them all again.    

One of best parts of the evening wasn’t even on stage; it was in the Lincoln Center Theater Review (Spring 2015 Issue #65). This magazine, offered for a donation in the theater lobby, has a short history about King Mongkut's Siam (he's the real life king in the musical's title). At the end of the show Prince Chulalongkorn is seen taking his father’s place, and his reign marked a period of significant modernization; part of which was evidenced by his love of photography. The article is illustrated by photographs taken by some of King Mongkut's daughters-in-law, and they’re mesmerizing.

 

Suddenly it was Halloween, and to celebrate the season we saw a really special show, done by a company we’re particularly fond of: Radio Theatre. This talented group of actors takes old radio scripts and recreates them, complete with original orchestral scores and sound effects. We’ve seen some remarkable productions from this group – their King Kong was unforgettable – and that night we saw Fright Night!, a collection “of terror tales guaranteed to raise the hair on the back of your neck and chill the marrow in your bones!” It was presented by candlelight in the 160-years-old St. John's Sanctuary right in the heart of Greenwich Village… Hey – we’re all in for stuff like that.

http://www.radiotheatrenyc.com/ 

We also hit Broadway and squeezed in Something Rotten that week (that’s the show’s name, not a review), and Sylvia, with Matthew Broderick and Annaleigh Ashford. I think you’d like it even if you’re not a dog lover, but we really love dogs (REALLY), so we not only loved the play, we stayed past the end and watched the pictures of the company’s pets flash on the curtain as you’re supposed to exit the theater. I hope to see this one again, because I wasn’t ready to let go of that doggie.

(I guess you've figured out by now why this edition of my blog was late this week.)

The final show I’ll pitch is actually our favorite, and if you’re a musical theater junkie you shouldn’t miss this one: Tune In Time. It’s actually a gameshow involving three teams of songwriters (different each month) who have twenty minutes each to write a show tune based on words suggested by the audience, in a genre (Sondheim! Disco! Etc.!) selected by the spin of a wheel…well, you have to be there. (I’m not kidding – YOU HAVE TO BE THERE.) The team who holds this madness together is top notch, the judges are Broadway’s best (again, different each month), and each time we leave the theater we're simultaneously breathless from laughter and stunned by the incredible talent we’ve just witnessed. It’s only once a month; don’t miss your chance!

http://www.yorktheatre.org/tune-in-time.html

As long as I’m pitching Tune In Time, I really should pitch the company that gives them the space to hold the show: The York Theatre Company. The York’s been around for over forty years producing really big shows on a somewhat small stage. They're best known for developing new or rediscovering old musicals; my personal favorite that went from their stage to Broadway glory was Souvenir, but Sweeney Todd and Pacific Overtures benefited from their nurturing, too. We’ve seen some really memorable shows there, and their last two – Cagney, a new musical based on the life of actor James Cagney, and Rothschild & Sons, a re-imagined one act version of Harnick & Bock’s classic The Rothschilds – will probably have lives far beyond that small stage. Without The York, where would productions go to get first rate people to produce and present their work? It’s a company to keep an eye on and support.

http://www.yorktheatre.org/ 

By now you know me as a fashion maven and a theater hound. Another of my favorite pastimes is sewing, and I have been taking classes at “Mood U” for a while now. If you’re a Project Runway junkie Mood Fabrics should be very familiar to you; in fact Swatch, the pup that runs the place, should feel like your own dog by now. Their school, which offers all sorts of sewing and fashion classes, is run by Benjamin Mach (Project Runway Season 11, Project Runway All Stars Season 4), and there are Project Runway designers showing up all the time; either as teaching assistants, in person or online workshop teachers, or as guest mentors in open labs. (Last week: Helen Castillo, a personal favorite of mine from Season 11 and All Stars 4. This week: Sean Kelly, winner of Season 13.) The array of classes is amazing, the level of my work and confidence has soared, and our home décor has taken on a look somewhere between Mood Fabrics and a dusty home economics class. Mr. Smarty Pants and Tommy Ramone, our cat who fills in for Swatch here at home, are very understanding and forgiving. (If you live in New York City you should be taking advantage of this, and if you don’t live here you can do it online.)

http://www.moodfabrics.com/mood-u/new-york-in-store-classes.html

In and around all this there was a jazz brunch featuring a trio playing the music of Edith Piaf, and a dinner with live jazz. (Good food, good music, good friends – the best!)

Real Life with a job and chores poked its nose in there somewhere, but no one wants to read about that any more than we want to do it.

So there you go! Life in New York City! Granted, even by New York City standards our lifestyle is a bit off the beaten track. You might notice we’re up for just about anything. However, one of the things that first made me fall for Mr. Smarty Pants is that he’s not that into sports so I’m never stuck at a Super Bowl party pretending to have a good time; he really enjoys my sense of “Well, there’s a seat facing a stage…let’s go!” (Additionally, we don’t have kids, which as I understand it can really be a time and cash suck.)

Living here means we’re able to take advantage of a lot of ways to get discounts on tickets that aren’t available to Out of Towners (subscriptions, clubs, last minute lotteries, and volunteering for odd jobs in the smaller theaters in exchange for tickets, for example), and we have friends in the theater so we get seats to see them and/or their friends for the price of lots of applause from their entrance to their exits (sometimes I think we work harder than the cast does). So while this may look like we’re living large…well, we are, but not at the prices paid by the people in the seats next to us.

Again, I really appreciated your emails so keep them coming, and feel free to ask me any other questions about what it’s like to live here. One that was interesting was where do I grocery shop. I had asked that question myself before I moved here and was told Brooklyn, so for years I thought everyone had to go to Brooklyn for their groceries until I figured out, no, that woman just happened to live in Brooklyn. The City has neighborhoods just like every town; most tourists just see Midtown or the sports arenas. Most of us have grocery stores a few blocks in every direction from their home, and in between we have small stores called bodegas, which is Spanish for…I don’t know, but you can run in and get milk, a sandwich; whatever you need in a hurry. Every neighborhood here is like a small town, each with its own personality.

As the song goes, it’s a helluva town!

Real Housewives of the Garment District

 

Welcome back to those of you who were here last week, and a warm hello to the newbies! Blog Entry #2! Clearly I have a lot of stuff around our apartment that I don’t want to do.

Sadly, this entry also coincides with the week I am breaking up with Project Runway. (At least I hope I am.) Gone is the glory of the Bravo years; I need to skedaddle before they're making good use of an accessory wall courtesy of Pajama Jeans.  I’ve grown weary of manufactured drama and personalities created for auditions. I cannot allow myself to put aside an hour of my time, wait breathlessly to see what comes down the runway, and be rewarded with:

 

Life is too short, that is too fugly, and this would not be a smart(y) use of my time. I loved that show with all my heart, and this is what I get for it: a Valentine’s Day dress to wear to work under a street lamp. 

I had meant this entry to be a one-off about a fashion issue that’s been a thorn in my paw lately, but then I thought – why would anyone who doesn’t know me (and some of the people who think they do) – want to listen to me sound off on this? There are so many fools out there foaming at the mouth on every possible subject – why add to the noise?

With my hand on my heart, I promise never to sound off on topics without having the credentials to back up that opinion. There’s already plenty of hot air floating around out there. An opinion is just an opinion, but I (usually) shut up unless I can add something of  substance. So as for my background in fashion, it’s laid out right here:

I’ve worn clothes since shortly after I was born. 

Not enough for you?

In the early years my outfits were picked out for me, but as I grew older, like most kids, my personal taste began to assert itself, and – while restricted by access to a bank account, the choices a small town can offer, and limitations placed by parents whose tastes were more mainstream than mine (a lot more mainstream) – I began my personal fashion journey.

Time passed, it happened that one of my New York cousins was being bar mitzvahed, and I needed a dress. If you know the Miranda Priestly speech from The Devil Wears Prada about cerulean,* you understand when I say that the Yves Saint Laurent Mondrian influence had finally trickled down to my hometown, and I picked a kid’s version of that trend. (I cannot remember why; heaven knows I did NOT know YSL!)

While in Manhattan we visited the Museum of Modern Art and someone pointed out a Piet Mondrian. (“Look, your dress!”) I stood, I stared, and…something clicked. 

That moment, that painting, that dress – a whole new world opened up for me. From that time, dresses weren’t just pretty; I started gulping down books by and about fashion, fashion designers, art and artists.

Careening forward here like a drunk driver, one day I finally found myself living in New York City, filling out an application for a sales position at Saks Fifth Avenue. My thought was they must need Christmas sales help, and when your college major is essentially tap dancing that’s pretty much what you need to do. I mean why not, right?

Well, I will tell you why not. Saks employees have to look like they shop there. My outfits – including my interview outfit – looked like I marched into thrift shops and sang Hit Me With Your Best Shot (which was not far from the case). My name was called, I sat opposite an elegant woman at a desk and…silence. Finally, “Did those shoes come with that skirt?”

That day’s ensemble was a black turtleneck/long sleeved leotard with black tights (dance class that afternoon!), a black skirt featuring a large chevron rainbow, and wooden platform shoes that had elastic rainbows across the toes to hold them on my feet. It gives me a migraine just thinking about it, but I cannot apologize for all wardrobe choices made in the 70s.

                                          Yes, She Actually Hired Me Anyway

Back to the interview. No, these items weren’t even bought in the same state. The next thing I knew I had a job as a personal shopper at Saks, and – sit down – it came with clothes (and a lot of really great stories with really big movie stars, but you have to come back for those). Eventually I was part of the team that styled the store mannequins and windows, and some time down the line I left for another, less wonderful, job. (Nights when I pound my head against the wall screaming why why why, I have to remind myself how excited I was when Saks raised my salary to $11,500, which was really low in those days, too. Those jobs weren’t held in as high regard as they are now, and I wanted to be able to shop not only at Saks, but at grocery stores.)

Farther down my path I found myself working in the publishing industry; doing publicity for various books. (Again – more great stories! Big, big stars! You need to be here!) One was written by a really great guy named Axel Madsen, and while we went around to various media appointments we discussed his next project; a book he was writing about Coco Chanel. Hello – it’s still not often I get to discuss fashion history with someone who stays awake, so we really enjoyed the rest of his book tour. I happened to know some really obscure stories about Chanel – like Mamie Van Doren obscure (she designed the dresses for Mamie’s ‘Aqua Velva’ commercials!), was even able to cite source material, and am proud to report I made the acknowledgements section of a book on one of my idols (no, not Mamie, although that would have been extremely cool, too).

 

Oh, what the hell:

(I pop up in quite a few books over the years – both in the acknowledgements and in the editorial content – but that’s in blogs yet to come. So now you’ll either really want to subscribe or be really over me in a big way.) 

I worked hard, rose in the ranks, worked with major celebrities (yes, you guessed it, more great stories!), and eventually opened my own boutique PR firm. ('Boutique' - that's French for 'try and find me.') I wanted something…something…else though (by this time I really loathed big celebrities), so I decided to get a Masters degree so I could really explore my greatest passion: Information. Knowledge is, after all, power!

So much to everyone’s surprise – no one's more than mine – I was now doing research for international banking firms, which meant that I now could afford (well, almost) the fashion I had been wishing for all those years. After all that yearning, though, I found I was happier throwing my own ‘finds’ together rather than buying someone else’s predetermined looks. (I only wish I had also ‘found’ the secret to credit cards – there’s interest accruing! – at the same time.)

So years passed, my fashion style began to get more focused, I accumulated more pieces in my closet, accrued more interest (%) and interests, but life happened and fashion (and the rest of the world) had to chug along without me for a bit. (Some of those stories are only great in retrospect.) One night Project Runway popped up on my TV and renewed my love of sewing and design (and backbiting), and I got the push I needed to get back into the swim. 

Fun aside: One night, just when I was rejoining the world, my husband (yeah, there's a Mr. Smarty Pants) and I were at the theater, and as I was walking down a staircase – very Norma Desmond – I noticed a man who looked really familiar smiling up at me. I’m really bad at matching names to faces so I had to mentally scramble but by the time I hit the bottom step I realized who that smiling face was – Malan Breton, a former contestant on Project Runway, now one of the top luxury clothing designers in the world. I mean…maybe that was him. I really am bad at faces, so that guy could also have been someone I spilled something on at some long forgotten social disaster. I decided to circle around and see if this could possibly…well, the cut and the fabric of his suit was calling card enough for me, and sure enough Smiling Guy was Malan Breton, who – after I summoned up the nerve to introduce myself – told me he had smiled at me “because (I was) so chic.” 

Well. 

My husband tells me that after that I was walking into walls and traffic, but all I remember is a bunch of foolish stutters, staring at his business card, and the thought that remains with me to this day: This makes up for all those times my mother screamed at me, “You’re not leaving the house dressed like that!”

Fast forward to today, when I’m sewing at Mood Fabrics (I made that coat – even the leather parts!), meeting designers I rooted for on Project Runway, and just generally having more adventures.

 

Despite my personal cheering section, I don’t have any dreams of going on the show (I am way too old and waaaaaay too pokey), and I don’t harbor any dreams of starting my own design firm (way too broke and way too lazy). I just love the creative process, love having an idea and then - Poof! - the clothes, and most of all I love having a better understanding of what I’ve been reading about all these years: how a designer garment (as opposed to ready-to-wear) is constructed. (Couture being a highly overused word.) What makes a Chanel jacket a jacket by the House of Chanel, as opposed to a Chanel-style jacket? How close can I get to making a fairly decent one? And if I can make jokes about the clothes designers are producing…can I come up with better?

In addition to all this, I live in one of the fashion capitals of the world, and you better believe I take advantage of it in any way I possibly can. I see every fashion-related exhibition, documentary, lecture, and runway show I possibly can.   

I take classes, workshops, seminars, webinars – you name it. I’ve purchased an actual Project Runway garment so I could turn it inside out to see what actually happens when you’ve got the blink of an eye to design and construct something to send down a runway before a panel of industry heavyweights (or whomever the producers foist on viewers that week) as judges on an international television show.  I still read and collect all the books (even paper dolls!), rip pages out of the magazines with hopes of either purchasing, adapting for my closet, or railing about what a rip-off that particular garment/collection is (a topic for another day).  

Fashion is my passion, or at least one of them. I’m so incredibly lucky to be living in New York City, where so much of it either originates or comes to visit, and in the age of the internet, where I can dig out what I can’t get to personally. I’d love to share that luck with you.

“Life is a banquet, and most poor bastards are starving to death,” taught Mame Dennis. 

Grab a plate, and meet me at the dessert cart.

 

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