For me, it's costume time all the time

Surprisingly, I was never really into party or holiday costumes. Other people seem to enjoy them, especially for Halloween, but I love fashion and I can either be found in my painting rags (sometimes I even turn my clothes inside out for this messy endeavor and forget to turn them back), or I am dressed up with the same care as my idol, the artist Frida Kahlo, who wore indigenous Mexican costume every day. She would often choose starched petticoats, woven Tehuana shirts and heavy Mexican jewelry.

 

A few years ago, the News Journal, a predominantly New Castle County paper, published journalistic portraits of local fashionistas, be they women or men. They could be nominated by an admirer, or nominate themselves, which I shamelessly attempted. While not fitting your usual image of the conventionally dressed woman who might be someone's idea of a fashion model, I do somehow manage to get many compliments on my outfits, put together like my paintings. Thematic, seasonal and colorful, like my mother's classroom decorations and her blackboard chalk drawings, they draw attention.

 

The News Journal entertainment editor probably raised her eyebrows in astonishment at my request to be in the fashion column, but I persisted vigorously with my usual fearlessness and lack of conscience about being a pest. She finally gave in, and I met a photographer at UD's Blue and Gold Club for the session. I wore my coyote hat from a South Dakota prairie that I had forced my husband Jeff to order for me for Christmas, a turkey feather boa and a fur-trimmed Coach bag.

 

My article didn't appear as promised, and I guess she thought it was too wild. I called her and insisted I get the column as agreed. She told me I would have to be "ambushed" by another photographer because she did not like the first set of photos (the column was titled Fashion Ambush). I would not know when the new photographer would appear at my house. Would I be caught in one of my disheveled painting costumes or the nightgowns I do business in all day long? This was payback at its worst, but I agreed to this scheme, hungry for publicity.

 

One following afternoon, as I was flushed from stirring a huge, steaming cauldron of soup, the photographer appeared over the horizon of the hill we lived on. Through the kitchen window, I saw him approaching. At least I had rosy cheeks from the boiling soup. I quickly plopped on the coyote hat and my feather boa, which I had kept beside me in readiness for the moment, and the result was a fashion shoot like none other! It was printed in black and white instead of the usual color. Too gaudy, I guess.

 

So far I've lived through all the fashion fads since the early 1960s when I began to have a little control over my outfits, despite my controlling mother who wanted me to dress like Jane Pauley on the “Sunday Morning” show. I've been through Twiggy, Mary Quant, minis and maxis, granny dresses, the hippie era, the Earth Day 1970s, punk rock, the big hair and shoulder pads 1980s, grunge, rich hippie, the cold shoulder look of recent vintage – on and on, the run-on sentence of a lifetime, and I loved it all.

 

When I decided to be an artist, I colored my hair magenta. No one else had hair that color in those days. It had been a serendipitous accident of trying to figure out a kit of henna hair coloring; I decided to live with it and became The Purple Lady.  I've also been known as the Afghan Hound Lady in my time. Some people would shrink at those titles, but I don't care so much as others would. Just so I'm not boring!

 

My mother always told me to be pretty and dignified, and said girls should have reasonably long, soft hair, but not everyone has to be those things to get along in life! As Halloween approaches, I cannot hide behind the mask of conformity, as long as I am thinking of that theme in costume season. I'll sit back for once and let the others dress up for fun, since life has been one long costume ball for me. As Cyndi Lauper sang, "Girls just want to have fun!"