‘Thoughts on my pandemic “Quardrobe”‘
The absolutely most glamorous person I have ever clapped eyes on is a fabulous FOC (Friend of Child) I will call Glam Girl.
Yes, Glam Girl is a young person — younger than thirty, even — but with a sense of style in all things — food, friends, and yes, of course, fashion — that ordinarily would take decades of sophisticated living to acquire. (See reference to peacock-blue-lizard-Maud-Frizon-wearing boss in “Take a Letter, Miss Henry.”
Why, even when GG was in high school, which is where I first got to know her — I drove her and The Child to Stuyvesant every day during a transit strike — she had a certain je ne sais quois.
Not sure if GG (right) and Child (left) were in high school, but they sure were looking glammer than their years
I was thinking about Glam Girl while doing laundry today because she recently posted a picture on Instagram celebrating her new catsuit. (Yes, GG wears catsuits; and she’s not even in a movie — at least not that I know of, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if she were.)
GG glams up even a baseball game
I’ll share it with you (she said it was okay.) Not only is it a gorgeous photo, but in it GG coins a gorgeous new word: “Quardrobe.” As in “The quardrobe has finally ceased.” (I told you this girl went to Stuyvesant; her vocabulary is as sophisticated as her wardrobe.)
Glam Girl, scorning the Quardrobe for a catsuit
Suffice it to say that there were no catsuits in my laundry today, either clean or dirty. These days, alas, it seems as though I have succumbed to the lure of the Quardrobe: seriously comfortable clothes suitable for quarantine.
And no, I’m not talking about jeans. Remember when jeans were the comfortable, dress-down option? (See the photo at the top of this post to see my mom and me oh-so-relaxed in denim.) Jeans were so, well, casual that it was considered scandalous to wear them to a serious event — like that time Mayor de Blasio’s wife wore jeans to a firefighter’s funeral. Ouch.
Nope, this was a tangle of stretchy, spandex-y stuff: tights and leggings and track pants. All black, all pretty much the same, and pretty much all I wear these days.
Me, wearing black stretchy pants while laundering more black stretchy pants
Oh, sometimes I dress up my top half. Like today I had a Zoom meeting. (Yes, even retirees have Zoom meetings, which I hate but sometimes can’t be helped.) I threw on a sweater over my tee shirt, added a strand of beads — et voila. Afterward I switched sweater for sweatshirt and ditched the beads. Aaaah.
All dressed up for Dude’s and my QuaranChristmas dinner. Those are popovers I’m holding, and track pants I’m wearing
Last week I wrote about going to a Black-Tie Do and getting to dress up and wear lipstick and perfume and real shoes and even (gasp) a bra. But the minute I got home? Back to the stretchy black duds.
Me, wearing black pants at a long-ago Christmas. The pants were velvet — and other people were there to actually see them
I wonder how we will all dress when we finally emerge from our corona cocoons? Will denim then be the sartorial equivalent of say, taffeta?
Stay tuned. Right now I have to go get the spandex out of the dryer before my entire Quardrobe turns into stretch socks.
Amagansett, New York. March 2021
I WISH jeans were my normal comfortable clothes but unfortunately they can usually be found, at least since I reached adulthood many moons ago, in the fashionable (at least for a minute) clothes I could fit in for maybe five minutes..(Yeah, I hold on to my old clothes, especially if they really ARE comfortable for the other 23 hours and 55 minutes of my life.)
I recently was surprised and gratified to learn my BFF of the last 25 years has, like most real people I know, a wardrobe that comes in three sizes. Here I had thought all this time that her size and shape were always the same, at least in the time I have known her.
On the upside of my pending divorce and habit of hoarding comfortable old clothes, I have finally dug down into the box of stuff from my old oversized closet that falls into that forever for me category. Whoda thunk those clothes would someday be new again? Since I will now be closet space limited, I guess I will have an excuse/reason to throw out all those formerly fashionable duds that I was only able to wear for five minutes anyway!
Hey thanks, hbsuefred! If it makes you feel any better, I know LOTS of women with multiply-sized wardrobes. One of my besties has a zillion pairs of black pants, all in slightly different cuts — and sizes. I’m sad about your divorce, but glad that you have discovered a box of “new” clothes in your closet. A similar thing happened to me when we downsized to the Ken & Barbie House. I drastically edited; my goal was to make it so that I could reach into my closet blindfolded and come out with something that not only fit — but that I loved!
I have tried to remember to wear my jeans, this year, even though they’re not my most comfy pants–or else I’ll grow out of my Quardrobe and everything else!
Good thinking! Putting on jeans is a total Reality Check! Though it can make one so depressed that one turns to ice cream.
Very true!
Quadrobe! Brilliant. You’re in the media business — steal it!
I stole a couch once, so why not a word?!