Yak Glovelettes

Shopping for clothes these days is complicated.  It used to be that all I had to worry about was finding something that looked and felt good on me, but now when I buy so much as a t-shirt I worry that on its way from the farthest corners of the globe it has consumed its weight in fossil fuels and left polluted rivers and impoverished villages in its wake.

So I am grateful when designers demonstrate awareness of ethical and environmental matters.  Gudrun Sjoden offers "Swedish design with a green soul."  Eileen Fisher's site showcases a collection of progressive corporate practices, encompassing employee health and happiness, environmental responsibility, and efforts to empower women in developing countries.

Why then did I snort with derision at a certain item in Eileen Fisher's latest flyer?  The model is wearing a jacket of boiled wool and made-in-the-USA organic cotton jeans, and her hands are warmed by fingerless "glovelettes."  The glovelettes are "encrusted with crystals...[and] knit with yak herded by nomads."

Yak indeed.  And not, God forbid, feed-lot yak, or yak herded by people who go back to their village every night, but yak herded by nomads.  Remember the three wise men crossing the desert on camels with their cargo of gifts?  It used to be you had to be the Son of God to rate such exotic goods, but now all you have to do is point and click.

I mean, really.  It's just a pair of gloves.

And yet, I know that nomadism as a way of life is disappearing from the planet, and soon highways and suburbs and slums will obliterate the high pastures where the nomads wandered with their herds.  So maybe buying gloves knit from nomad-herded yak is not just silly, but an act of kindness to the nomad and his yaks and the grasslands with their earthworms and their bees.

Can it be that shopping these days has become a spiritual act?  I think it has, and that's o.k.  In this cold and soulless world, we have to take our spirituality wherever we can get it.

Dressing Up Blues

My mother will turn 92 this month. Because she cares a great deal about her looks, I went to one of the outlets in a nearby town that caters to weekend skiers and bought her a silk top by that designer for ladies of a certain age--you know who I mean: Eileen Fisher.

Now I don't care if Nora Ephron says, as reported in the Times, that once you start buying Eileen Fisher it's a sure sign that you've given up. I love Eileen Fisher, and have done so ever since I read in an interview that she got her inspiration from the habits of the nuns who had been her teachers. (We're talking pre-Vatican Council habits here, the long elegant ones derived from medieval peasant costumes.)

I realize that the fact that a designer's creations resemble nuns' habits may not recommend them to everyone. But I really like Eileen Fisher clothes--their long, fluid lines, their simplicity, their fabrics. They are a kind of blank slate, and they don't hog the conversation. And as I looked through the racks of sober but luscious (not a contradiction in terms!) tops and dresses, all drastically reduced and with an additional 10% off because it was Tuesday, I really really wanted to buy something for myself. A slinky dress, an all-enveloping cardigan, a scoop-necked top with long sleeves and flared bottom....something that would make me look and feel like a very together abbess--Hildegarde of Bingen, say.

But I didn't. Why? Because I live in Vermont, that's why. In the best of times, in this place, you can only dress up from the waist up. For most of the year, from the waist down your limbs will be encased in dark colored pants--so they won't show the mud marks from where your calves hit the car as you get in and out--and boots to protect you from the snow, ice, and mud.

This limitation has a damping effect on people's enthusiasm for dressing up, so that in 98% of occasions dressing up is optional. Vermonters being a freedom-loving people, they won't laugh at you if you show up at the game supper wearing heels, but you will be the only one not tromping around in sensible footwear. Paradoxically, this is one of the things I love about this state--the genuineness, the lack of pretense, and all the endless meanings you can read into a populations' near-universal preference for bluejeans.

Time was when I used to dress up every day, to go to work. It was a challenge--I didn't have much time for shopping, so my wardrobe was limited--and it was fun. I remember putting myself to sleep at night planning the next day's outfit. I worked in some pretty strait-laced academic environments, and getting dressed for work allowed me to start the day with a small creative act.

So, if in reading these pages you occasionally find yourself disgusted by my adoration of all things Vermont, know that when I pull on my mud-spattered jeans and my worn turtleneck (why buy a new one when only the chickens will see it?) for the umpteenth time, I long for the days of glitz and glamour, of pantyhose and heels, of tight skirts with long slits, and jackets and scarves and earrings, bracelets and lipstick, mascara, perfume, and that crowning touch, the eyelash curler.