I recently read an interesting quote by The New York Times fashion critic Vanessa Friedman: “Everyone who gets dressed thinks about fashion.” And while I couldn’t find the quote in context, to me it brings up the idea that being concerned with one’s dress is not for the serious-minded among us. In other words, fashion is fluff.
The woman in today’s photo may or may nor be a fashionable person, but she is obviously concerned with her style of dress. Before you go out into the cold weather, throwing on anything that will keep you warm, think about this woman and how she styled herself for the cold.
She limited herself to two colors – pink and black – plus white. Since her jacket was pink, she chose a black with white snowflake sweater. Around her neck she tied a black and white scarf.
I suppose the obvious choice for gloves would have been black, but she went with a darker pink with white mittens.
But probably my favorite thing about this snow ensemble is the choice of socks. How wonderful are those pink socks!
The 1950s are often thought of as a time when everything had to match, but we forget that “matching” can happen in many different ways. She didn’t do for all pink accessories because the little touch of black at her neck created more contrast and is more interesting visually.
I do have one concern. For someone who is so stylishly yet appropriately dressed, where the heck is her cap?
The Vintage Traveler 
Her cap didn’t match (she had lost the matching one in the last snow storm), so she decided to take off the poor substitute for the photo. Well, it could have happened this way…
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It makes sense to me!
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Love the picture! I was a little too young to be aware of fashion in 1952, but by 1955 I was sixteen, and a fashion slave! I remember pink and gray. We all got carried away with that combination. Kitchen tables sets, couches, rugs, seems everything was pink and gray. I loved it, and remember some beautiful skirt and sweater sets featuring those colors.
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That is a great color combination. I wasn’t sure if the pants she is wear were black or charcoal, but due to the fading of the Kodacolor, I went with black.
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I think – she looks great! I remember the outfit! The stretch pants and cropped flat boot-my mother and her girlfriends all wore them-while I was only 4! It must have been so warm and sensible at last? The missing cap – She had her “new short haircut”?! May be the answer! Finally short hair-warm stretch pants -flat cropped boots? A picture is worth a thousand words! Could not agree more with you re: Vanessa-another one who takes herself/title way to seriously! They-Vanessa-Robin-and the rest of the great pretenders need to form a support group! I personally do not ever want to hear anything about it! Love the photo Lizzie- Happy Thanksgiving all1
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Well, the haircut is quite lovely, and I can see why she’d want to show it off.
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I’ve never met you, but does she look a little like The Vintage Traveler? And pink and black or pink and charcoal gray — there were even houses painted in those colors! I’m glad she’s not wearing a cap — I like her smile.
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I didn’t see the resemblance until you brought it up!
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I remind readers of that great speech in The Devil Wears Prada where Miranda Priestly says to her “I’m only here until I get a real job” assistant, who dares to imply that clothing is not important, “This stuff’? Oh, ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don’t know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis, it’s actually cerulean. You’re also blindly unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn’t it, who showed cerulean military jackets? And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic “casual corner” where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of “stuff.”
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So very true. It was a great moment in that movie.
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A similar quote stuck out for me this week: “Not everyone reads poetry or listens to music but every single person in the world gets up in the morning and puts on something, and whether you like it or not, that’s a statement about who you are” from a quote by AA Gill bout Isabella Blow in “Gods and Kings” by Dana Thomas (p.99). Which is turning out to be a very engrossing book about Alexander McQueen and John Galliano
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I’ve been meaning to get and read that one. I’m glad to hear that it is good.
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