On Dress

Taken in Paris, 2008

Not everyone is lucky enough to grow up living down the street from their grandma. If you are one of those people, it often isn’t until you’ve grown up that you understand how lucky you have been. Frances Grigsby – or Nonnie as she was known to my brother and me – was our neighbour. And though I didn’t realise this until much later, she also became my closest friend. Nonnie had an almost daily presence in my life for ten years, before I left for college. Her house was a three-minute walk up the blacktop. And even once I’d moved away completely she was there, at Christmas and on summer vacations. Initially my brother and I made that walk to scarf down Cheezits and Snickers minis from the fridge while watching hours of Nickelodeon, since our parents refused to pay for cable TV. But eventually we would descend from the upstairs den to look for Nonnie. We’d find her at the kitchen table, or on the front porch, and that’s when we began to find out things about her.

She was born in a small town, the fourth of eight children, met our grandfather, Papa, and married him. When he was on the road most nights of the week, it was Nonnie who raised their five children. And while Papa famously adored dogs, making their beloved Alaskan Malamute, Harry, a spokes-pooch for several commercials, it was Nonnie who looked after all 14 hounds during their marriage. Nonnie looked after me, too. My mom was a high-school art teacher, and when she had to finish out the school year after having me, Nonnie and I spent that spring together, walking in Loose Park, browsing fabric shops and weaving our way through department stores. Of course I have no recollection of these outings, but I have always believed that on those strolls Nonnie was sharing something with me.

She made broth when I was sick, butterscotch brownies when I was blue, and when there no other reason for it, she made a heaping plate of walnut fudge. She knew how comforting comfort food was to her audience, but she herself was more of a purist: Her afternoon snack was a fresh tomato or half a cantaloupe with salt and pepper, and her own favourite dessert was anything lemon: bar, tart or cake. To me, that affinity for all things citron made her infinitely more sophisticated than the rest of us. In truth, she was more sophisticated than the rest of us, and she made it seem effortless: she had travelled the world with our grandpa. Her favourite book was the Oxford English Dictionary, and it comes as no surprise that she taught me the meaning of ‘erudition’. She knew enough French to crack a joke, and gave me the tapes as a push to learn. She painted watercolours and held no qualms about the number of furs she owned. She would tisk me for saying it, but she looked utterly glamorous holding a cigarette. And everyday at 4.21pm she indulged in a martini, to mark the anniversary of her and Bill’s first date. If further evidence of her je ne sais quoi is required, I would direct you to a photograph from the 1960s, showing a woman who has just caught an enormous hammerhead shark off the side of a yacht. She is beaming and not a hair is out of place.

Nonnie was soft-spoken but never aloof; confident, but not arrogant; she enjoyed the company of others but she also, it seemed, took pleasure in that of her own. What has always made me admire and aspire towards Nonnie’s chicness is that it was never contrived. Her own sense of style was a direct expression of her strong sense of self.

And, it has to be said, that self believed in dressing well.

I felt most connected to Nonnie when we spoke about clothes, and I’ll never forget the first time she let me into her closet. I had just finished high school when she said she had some old things I might like. She opened the wardrobe door and we dove into layers of chiffon and pleats and gabardine and silk until we landed on a light-as-air, camel-coloured cashmere cardigan and its matching snapaway mink stole. It was glamorous without trying to be. The Seiden’s tag was still inside. That was the first of several treasures Nonnie bestowed on what I felt were my own undeserving shoulders. There was the modish jacquard mini-dress that I never fit into but insisted on keeping just in case my bone structure happened to change. And the silk wrap-skirt that made me feel like I was living my best life as the embodiment of the J Peterman catalogue.

Through that closet I learned what clothes could be. Nonnie had what Virginia Woolf called ‘frock consciousness’. She knew the joy of getting dressed, but her clothes were also a kind of aide-memoire, a register of that joy and of her remarkable life. Attached to every blouse or skirt or dress or coat was a clear recollection of where they had been together.

When Nonnie moved into Stonecrest, clothes became more important than ever, and I loved hearing her recount her shopping trips. Whether she was buying something or just browsing, simply being around clothes made life feel a little brighter. Evidently her sartorial affinities were not lost on her fellow residents, who recently voted her Best Dressed. I learned of this accolade just as I was pondering what to buy her for Christmas. The day before flying home to Kansas City I found myself weaving my way through a department store in London looking for a treasure that might mean something to the woman who, in giving so much of herself, had helped me determine my own sense of frock consciousness. Suddenly it felt as if she were there with me, guiding me past the polyester blends to something more sophisticated – glamorous without trying to be. When I came upon a pair of light-as-air, camel-coloured cashmere socks I knew I had my answer. If only they had come with a mink stole.