Cathleen McGuigan recommends Love, Loss, and What I Wore

Fashion Week is in full swing. Love, Loss and What I Wore is a lovely and very personal account of the complex emotions, memories, and expressions that ones clothing can inspire.

Love, Loss, and What I Wore
By Ilene Beckerman
1995

In the crowded bazaar of memoirs, I cherish a little book that came across my desk a dozen years ago called Love, Loss, and What I Wore. A fashion-conscious woman named Ilene Beckerman painted her life growing up in New York City in the 1940s, '50s, and beyond, in swift strokes-with charming color sketches of once-beloved outfits, accompanied by a few concise words about the memories they sparked. She didn't dwell on life's losses-the deaths, the divorces-but hers seemed especially poignant, planted like little bombs among the details of a sharkskin blouse or a favorite navy dress with a detachable cape collar. Like a gourmand remembering long-ago feasts, Beckerman recalled the delicious swishing sound made by a plaid taffeta birthday dress; the eternity it took to hem the yellow-striped circle skirt she sewed with her best friend in high school; and the expensive Chinese brocade dress she wore one New Year's Eve, when she found her first husband kissing the party's hostess at midnight. Maybe I love the book because I still have every party dress I ever owned (after my mother died, I found the childhood ones she packed in a trunk, wrapped carefully in tissue). I've often given this slim volume to friends (women only, of course). Its virtue lies in its understatement-and that, as its stylish author knew, is the key to true chic.

Cathleen McGuigan

Cathleen McGuigan is a contributor to Newsweek, where she writes about architecture, design, books, and other cultural subjects. Besides Newsweek, her articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, Harper's Bazaar, and Rolling Stone, among other publications. McGuigan was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University and is currently an adjunct professor at the Columbia School of Journalism.

 

Note: The play Love, Loss and What I Wore, was written by Nora and Delia Ephron, is based on Ilene Beckerman’s book. It opened in October to rave reviews and will be playing off-Broadway at the Westside Theater until March 28th.