For Florence

A memorial to my late grandmother. 

One of my earliest and most vivid memories is sitting at a JoAnn’s Fabrics after leaving Crozer Medical Center. I would go with my grandmother after she had her various doctor visits, spending full afternoons leafing through McCalls and Vogue pattern books, looking for something to make for a future Sunday church service.  Late in her life, my grandmother had numerous health issues, and I was often her buddy at these appointments, providing a buffer for occasionally hard news about her slowly declining health.

I often talk about my grandma in comedic or abstract ways: taking her damning, sardonic phraseology as my own, or imparting her wisdom regarding life and love, applying it to the modern situations my friends are working through. But around this time each year, as I switch my closet from winter to summer and am forced to think about what I wear on a physical and emotional level, I cannot help but think about the way she shaped my interest in fashion. The way I think about clothes. The way I think about presentation and propriety. And ultimately, the ways I am completely indebted to the woman who, despite coming from less than even modest means, never left the house looking less than perfect.

It’s impossible to talk about my grandma without talking about her background, at least in minimal detail. Light-skinned with “good hair” and a sharp tongue, she was born in rural Virginia to an occasionally abusive father and god-fearing mother that tried her best to create a loving home for her children. I remember numerous tales of her and her siblings walking miles to school, being called nigger by poor whites, or chastised by blacks for being light-skinned. She’d leave school to come home and work, taking care of home with her siblings, lugging water home from a distant well.

Her story is not entirely different from a number of women her age growing up in the segregated South, in a community deeply surrounded by religion both physically and ideologically. But in thinking about her history as I knew it and experienced it alongside her, she knew the power of her privilege, small as it was, to exist and obtain power in space. Her hair, skin, and vocal tone gave her the ability to disarm people and occasionally dodge some pieces of racial baggage. But she was also acutely aware of how she clothed and packaged those assets.

Again, my grandmother never had much money, but somehow found a way to develop untouchable taste. I would imagine, though I never had the chance to ask, that it was why she often made her own clothes. She, and women like her in the church, were the originators of “fake it ‘til you make it.” I can’t count the number of times she used the phrase, “that looks cheap,” whether we were looking at fabrics or patterns, or browsing through the drapes section at J.C. Penney. Whenever we went to appointments, she made sure I was as coiffed as she was - no scuffed shoes, no mismatched outfits. I started picking out my own outfits very early because of the templates she and my mother set - no-nonsense, clean lines, fresh kicks, and hair flawlessly brushed.

This was especially true for Sundays. The idea that you would enter a house of God in anything less than your best was blasphemous. As such, my grandmother, even at her worst physiologically, would muster the energy to throw on a suit and a pillbox hat, ready to worship. As most older women of the church would say, God knew her heart. In so many ways, the act of getting dressed became something of a religious act, a way of showing devotion, respect and adoration when she was at her weakest. Her Sunday outfits were a sign of her strength, God’s strength, an armor toward that which caused her pain. It was also a point of celebration - pulling out your best suit and hat to toast a baptism or a holiday.

My own relationship to religion has been complicated, but her use of wardrobe, the devotional or spiritual aspect of dress, was never lost on me. To dress up for someone or an event was a sign of admiration. When I’ve been at my lowest, a great outfit has restored my faith in myself or the world around me. Given me power to take on challenges or speak up at moments when my voice has been threatened with silence, in ways subtle or overt. I’ve always discussed the power of clothes to change your attitude or perspective, but only recently did I think about where that came from. Watching her find the strength to create her own clothes, and look as best she could regardless of the situation, was an integral part of who I’ve become.

My grandmother would have celebrated her 82nd birthday on Tuesday. I often think about her when getting dressed on May 24th, because I have this feeling, both eerie and comforting, that she might be watching me sift through an overstuffed closet, trying to determine how I’d choose to represent myself to a world that could give the first or last damn about whether I wore chinos or jeans to a Philly Ad Club event.

This Tuesday, I chose a camel merino sweater, olive chinos from J. Crew, and a pair of sand colored sneakers by Common Projects. She would have probably said my pants were too tight for work, would have chastised me for what I paid for the sneakers, but likely praised the simplicity of the outfit itself.

I miss her. More than a decade after she’s passed, I find myself some mornings shuffling through looks because I think she might disapprove or think I look too disheveled. Whether she’s watching me power walk down Walnut Street or peering over my ridiculous credit card statements, I hold out hope that she finds pride in the way I choose to continue the rich, intoxicating legacy of honor, respectful ostentation, and dignity that she instilled within me. I dress and shop with her on my mind, on my shoulder. Today, I feel pride for myself and for her.

Tomorrow, I will do the same.