The Mother of In(ter)vention

With Mother's Day around the corner, I wanted to tell you a little bit about my mom (well, a little bit more than you learned here).  You see, my mother helped to ignite my interest in fashion.

My mom has always been chic.  I'm not sure whether I realized this growing up.  Although I generally worshipped her and wanted to be like her in every way, when you look at photos of your parents rocking the trends of bygone eras, they can seem a little out of touch (I shudder to think of what my children will think of my hot self during the '80s, complete with perm, braces, knock-knees and hideous fashion sense, but I'm getting ahead of myself).

Anyway, my mom has always been glam.  I'm sure she learned it from her mother who, today at 93, won't leave the house without looking like a million bucks.  But she's always been so put together and foxy (even in the above picture, mere hours after my birth).

Look at her here.  Total babe, right?  (And that's me she's holding, looking surprised by her beauty.)  I think (other than today), this is one of my favorite eras of my mother's.  She's so tan (something I'm incapable of pulling off without some form of chemical additive on my skin) and chic, with her topknot, halter dress, and enormous sunglasses.  My mother wore the '70s well.  

But then came the '80s (one of the most hideous periods in recent fashion memory, though we may now be borrowing heavily from it and making it look cooler than it did back then) and my own fashion genesis, which my mother had a guiding hand in.  In fact, let's not beat around the bush, my first real foray into fashion (when I was able to make my own buying decisions) required an intervention.

When I was 11 or 12, we moved to a lovely home on a dirt road in New Hampshire.  Having grown up in upstate New York in a neighborhood full of kids, this was a real change of pace.  Though my mother graciously shopped for me in higher-end establishments, in an attempt to fit in, I started to frequent Zayle's (which was sort of like Walmart, only possibly less cool, if you catch my drift).  Eschewing the hot taste of the late '80s, I delved into the, shall we say, even less hot taste.  My favorite outfit at the time was a pair of stretchy black stirrup pants and a baby pink flannel shirt with pandas printed all over it.  (You want to go buy yourself one of these right now, don't you?)

Well, my mother had simply had more than she could take when she viewed me in this unforgivable get-up.  She signed me up as quickly as she could for a subscription to Seventeen.  I don't remember what I was thinking when I first paged through it, but I had to have noticed that no one was rocking outfits like my panda number.

Thus began my love affair with fashion.  And now my mother, who has always had impeccable taste herself, serves as one of the greatest sounding boards for this blog (and for my personal style generally).

Here's my mom today, foxy as ever.

Thanks, Mom, for this and so much more!  Happy (almost) Mother's Day!  May I be chic (and sweet, and kind, and brilliant) like you all the days of my life!