When I was spending a lot of time at our house in Connecticut, I usually wore flannel shirts from Bean’s. They were all-cotton, but they were functionally wash-and-wear as well, at least for country purposes. When we gave up the house, I gave up the shirts, too; they didn’t seem right for town. That was nearly fifteen years ago.

Just before our first vacation on Fire Island, I bought a few seersucker shirts from Bean’s. They, too, were all-cotton wash-and-wear. This year, however, I continued wearing them back at home. If I were running an errand farther than Fairway or Duane Reade, I’d probably change into something a bit less rumply, just as I should replace shorts with trousers. But, just as on Fire Island, I tossed the shirts into the laundry and hung them up in the closet. I didn’t send them downstairs to be pressed and boxed, as I do with all my other shirts.

The other day, as the weather got chilly, I ordered three flannel shirts from Bean’s, to be worn and cared for according to the same rubric. Two of the plaids are new, but I had to have my old favorite, Black Watch.

There is a big picture here, even if the details aren’t very impressive.

What do you wear at home when nobody’s looking? A T-shirt, probably. But I’m too big for T-shirts, and, even if I weren’t, I come from a background in which T-shirts were, irredeemably, undergarments. I would no more walk around in boxers or briefs. For a long time, I wore polo shirts, but their superiority to T-shirts is more formal than real. And they’re usually monotone. No matter how appealing the color, there’s too much of it when I don the shirt. So I’m more comfortable in collared cotton plaid. When nobody’s looking, that is. When nobody’s looking, I’m still looking. And, besides, I want to be able to run downstairs for the mail or to pop over to Fairway without feeling like a slob. (A crazy person wearing shorts in January, maybe, but not a slob.)

The important thing is to be dressed for an errand to Fairway. Why Fairway? Because that’s the default food market now, and I try to buy no more than I need for the next meal or two. So the odds are that I’ll be going to Fairway at some point during the day. Fairway also sells sandwiches and salads that are sometimes just the thing that I’d like to have for lunch.

I learned the importance of being Fairway-ready after much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Here is what used to happen (until practically yesterday): I would drift from reading the Times to writing the blog entry. By the time I’d proofed the entry and stopped fiddling with the commas, it would be around noon, and I’d be starving. Starving. I’d be too hungry to think about what to do for lunch, and, on top of that, I’d still be wearing my sleeping outfit (write for details). If I didn’t want to fix lunch myself, or have something delivered, I’d have to get dressed and then go out — where? Too many decisions! So I learned to get dressed as soon as I’d made the bed, which I always do as soon as Kathleen leaves for work, if not before.

“Getting dressed” means taking a shower and putting on real clothes. It is the final, and for that reason the most difficult, stage of  getting out of bed. (Even if the bed has been made!) I learned that I must get dressed before writing. It really didn’t matter what I wore, just so long as I could wear it to Fairway or Duane Reade. If I later decided to go to a restaurant for lunch, I might change clothes, but that is not “getting dressed.” Getting dressed demands no more than clothing a clean body in presentable but comfortable togs. We each have our own idea of what that might be. The father of one of Kathleen’s oldest school friends continues to wear a suit-and-tie when at home. Every day. When nobody’s looking, he’s looking.

I ask myself: how can you be sixty-five years old, having worked at home for twenty-five of them, and yet just be working out the mechanics of your morning toilette? And where do you get the idea that anybody cares about your wardrobe problems?

***

When, instead, I ought to be writing about the grand textile show at the Museum. Or about two movies that I’ve just seen on DVD and that, because they’re both set in downtown Manhattan, I’ve mixed up in memory: perhaps What Maisie Knew and 2 Days in New York aren’t so different after all. One is very funny — sidesplitting, really, once it gets going (this would be the Julie Delpy) — while the other is so not. In What Maisie Knew, everything that would make you giggle or roll your eyes in 2 Days in New York makes you wince instead, and perhaps cry. I am going to add 2 Days in New York to my library; I don’t know yet about Maisie.

Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500-1800 is astonishingly alluring, but why? I can’t decide how to parse the question, much less figure out an answer. Is it astonishing that the show is alluring? Or is it astonishing that the allure is astonishing? After all, it’s just a collection of old pieces of fabric — generally very large pieces — with a few dresses thrown in. Is it art, even?

From the dark side comes a cynical suggestion: the exhibition galleries resemble an unimaginably posh department store — perhaps even a jewelry store. The first thing that hits you about these hangings is that they are priceless. Only a moron could fail to be dizzied by the intricately-detailed workmanship on display in vitrine after vitrine. Only someone utterly unfamiliar with luxury goods could fail to be staggered by the opulence gathered here. To make the emporium perfect, nothing is for sale. You needn’t worry whether you can afford to buy the things that you like, or about what you would do with them if you could take them home. The show is a perfect orgy of virtual consumption.

Less bleak, but no more artistic, is the observation that Interwoven Globe presents a brilliant chapter in the history of commerce. Indian textiles produced for the Thai market; Chinese goods produced for the European market; European goods designed to look as though they came from India or China. Palampores — bedspreads featuring a tree-of-life motif — purchased by Yankee merchants and preserved by generations of descendants in quiet attics. A picture of global trade quite different from the one with which we are familiar unfolds in room after room. Quite, but not entirely, different: we learn that red-backed palampores weren’t selling in London in the Seventeenth Century, so that the managers of the East India Company directed their agents to demand blankets with lighter backgrounds, and with the trees in the center, not around the border.

But one item, at least, stands out clearly as an artwork by any definition. It’s a palampore from Coromandel, made in the Eighteenth Century and currently in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It is simply too beautiful not to be a work of art. Unfortunately, it must be seen in the weave, as it were; and, even then, not much of it can be examined closely. It brings to my mind the magisterial theme-and-variations pieces that Bach, Beethoven and Brahms composed, with a glorious concluding fugue at the center. There is no real repetition from one leaf to the next, and the flowers bloom in an imaginative profusion worthy of paradise.

I’ve seen the show twice already, and I’ll be back for more.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 18th, 2013 at 12:17 pm.