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This spring, when American fashion designers unveiled their Fall 2008 collections, the mood was conservative and somber. The US is on the brink of a recession, embroiled in an unpopular and seemingly unending war; the price of gas and bread and living is rising daily. The fashion industry felt all of this, not with cuts to the prices of couture pieces, but with a return to conservative, minimalist silhouettes, like the sheath dress for day and evening.
Retro is back, and with it comes the re-release of designer Anne Fogarty's Wife Dressing, which was first published in the US in 1959. Subtitled The Fine Art of Being a Well-Dressed Wife, Fogarty's style manifesto rests on the premise that a woman's grown-up life began with her marriage, and that as a married woman, she had a responsibility to dress well, every day. This is a book that both clearly delineates an era, one we are pining for now, it seems, and transcends the moment in which it was written to offer timeless style advice. This new edition, from Glitterati Incorporated, is both slick and modern and thoroughly retro. It is a beautiful book.
It is also a book with a very specific premise, and one that takes itself very seriously. Fogarty is genuine in her assertions that women dress primarily for men, and that men deserve this courtesy. "When your husband's eyes light up as he comes in at night, you're in sad shape if it it's only because he smells dinner cooking." My husband only wishes that he came home to the smell of dinner cooking every night, honestly.
But I digress.
Despite her insistence that a woman can be anything she wants as long as she is a wife first and foremost, I fell completely in love with Anne Fogarty on the very first page, for several reasons; her voice is charming and engaging, and her advice is generally practical and useful. She has a good sense of her audience, who are women with husbands and careers and money and leisure, and she speaks to them in a no-nonsense manner about the very serious business of building and caring for a wardrobe. She also takes seriously the idea that a woman might work for the sheer joy of working, and never once suggests that being a wife should put an end to a woman's career or intellectula aspirations. For 1959, this was a fairly bold position to take, and Fogarty takes it without apologies.
She is also unapologetic about her style advice, insisting that women find ways to marry practicality and comfort and beauty, and never once doubting that this can be done. At the same time, though, she is very clearly a product of her time and its fashion trends. Her more mundane suggestions, about furs and gloves and petticoats, are specific to her era and offer a fascinating look at both the styles and the social structures of the 1950s. For example, Fogarty elaborates on her love of the tote bag by explaining exactly what she carries in hers:
On an average morning, I may start out in a shirtdress with a convertible collar, medium-heel shoes for the workroom, clean white shortie gloves, and my current favorite jangle bracelet on one wrist. Come noon, I want to look fresh for a lunch date with my husband and some business associates of his -- so out of the tote comes a pair of my highest heel patent pumps, a diamond pin to wear on the convertible neckline, a fresh pair of white gloves, and a small patent bag for the few things I need at lunch. (30)
I nearly always lug a tote bag with me during the day, but never once have I put a second pair of shoes in it; instead, it is full of USB cords and superhero action figures and post-it notes with grocery lists scribbled on them. How often do any of us change our shoes for lunch these days? But there is something truly charming about that kind of attention to detail -- the clean gloves, the extra jewelery -- that is incredibly appealing, at the very same time that it is just a little silly. I would like to have a life where I pulled out some pretty shoes to go to lunch; I would like to have that
