Target Underwear and a Vera Wang Gown Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Learning from the Masters

  The Devil Wore Treetorns

  The Shrinking Dolphin Shorts

  It Was His

  A Shorts Story

  Oh, How I Wannabe You

  The Impossible Dream

  The Beautiful Boy in the 8-Ball Jacket

  My Life in Six-Inch Heels

  Los Angeles-Just One Look

  It Just Doesn’t Go

  The Vera

  The Fake Prada

  The End of the Line

  The Five Women You Meet in Los Angeles

  A Change in Style

  The Knockoff

  Tale of the Underwear from Target

  A Democrat in Republican’s Clothing

  Shopright.com

  The Return

  Dries Van Noten Was a Man of All Men

  The Liar, the Witch, and Her Wardrobe

  Babe and Hun

  Final Sale

  Juicy Couture Black Linen Drawstring Pants (2001-2002)

  Chapter 24

  Please Excuse My Absence Today, As I Have Nothing to Wear

  Those Shoes Are Kind of High, Aren’t They?

  Send Me the Bill

  The Holy Land

  Girdles, Corsets, and Other Ways of Killing Yourself

  Who Are You Wearing?

  The Sixth Woman You Meet in Los Angeles

  Making Scents

  The Buy

  Relaxed Fit

  Tradition

  Thanks for Being There

  On the Surface

  The Makeover

  Acknowledgements

  Praise for Target Underwear and a Vera Wang Gown:

  “Reading Adena’s story made me want to throw open the doors of my closet and hear the stories my own clothes have to tell—from my first Galliano gown, to a pair of Earth shoes that I wore in eighth grade with a pair of Calvin Klein jeans. This book reassures the girl in each of us that she’s not alone in her search for the perfect outfit and the confidence that, we hope and pray, comes along with it.”—Cindy Crawford

  “You’ll fall in love with Adena, her mother, her family, and her friends. I did. Though she can’t control her life or lovelife (who can?), she can control her closet and her spirit shines through that closet.”—Ilene Beckerman, author of Love, Loss and What I Wore and Makeovers at the Beauty Counter of Happiness

  “A witty and lighthearted memoir.”—Pages

  “[Adena‘s] heartbreaking, hilarious, and sometimes humiliating tales will have you reaching in your closet for your worn Z. Cavariccis and puffy-sleeved prom dress to revel in your own fabric nostalgia.”—Marie Claire

  Adena Halpern wrote a popular series of essays entitled “The Haute Life” for the back page of Marie Claire magazine, which reaches 3.1 million readers monthly. She is a contributing writer for Daily Variety and has written for The New York Times. Adena earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in dramatic writing from New York University and a Master of Fine Arts degree in screen-writing from The American Film Institute. A proud Philadelphia native, she resides in Los Angeles with her overflowing closet.

  Although some names and identifying characteristics of the people in this memoir have been changed to protect their privacy, all references to clothing remain unchanged no matter how humiliating it looked.

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  Published by Gotham Books, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First trade paperback printing, June 2007

  Copyright © 2006 by Adena Halpern

  All rights reserved

  Gotham Books and the skyscraper logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Halpern, Adena.

  Target underwear and a Vera Wang gown : notes from a single girl’s closet / by Adena Halpern.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-07787-0

  1. Women’s clothing—psychological aspects. 2. Clothing and dress—Psychological aspects.

  3 Fashion—Psychological aspects. I. Title.

  GT1720.H35 2006

  391’.2—dc22 2005044792

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  For my mom and dad

  Introduction: If I Had a Closet

  ometimes I wish that rather than photo albums or scrap-books, I had a closet full of every piece of clothing that meant anything in my life.

  Looking from the left of the closet, I’d find my grandmother’s mink coat, a broken strand of faux pearls in the pocket that she’d smashed when she and my grandfather had gotten too wild in their salsa dancing. Next to the mink would be a perfectly preserved gray flannel suit of my grandfather’s with a perfectly folded handkerchief in the pocket. Next to their section, I’d have the steel blue, circa-1970s Oscar de la Renta gown of my mother‘s, a Louis Vuitton bucket bag, and a cream-colored tailored suit—those classic styles that always make her look timeless. I’d have my dad’s white doctors coat, a stethoscope hanging out of the right pocket, and I’d think about how important and serious he looked when I visited him at the hospital. Next to the doctor’s coat would be his well-worn blue sweatsuit, the one with the permanent pizza stains on the jacket that he’d put on the second he got home. That sweatsuit always meant playtime. I’d have my brother David’s varsity wrestling jacket and brother Michael’s varsity cross-country jacket to remember the feeling of being the awkward little sister who thought her older brothers were the coolest, strongest, and most popular boys in high school, but would never let them know.

  I’d take out my colle
ge sweetheart’s eighties 8-ball jacket and lay my old Madonna wannabe bustier and leggings next to it and reminisce about that feeling of first-time true love. I’d even have my Girbaud orange-neon-colored parachute pants next to a pair of split Dolphin shorts, those major fashion faux pas that at the time seemed the height of fabulous and only now follow the words “I can’t believe I ever wore that!”

  My friend Susan is always amazed when I can immediately tell her what anyone was wearing at significant moments. Susan, for example, was wearing a pink Betsey Johnson Lycra flowered dress with a ruffled collar when I first met her, an outfit that I later borrowed. Heidi was wearing a pair of blue-and-white-striped drawstring pants and a white T-shirt. Rachel wore a three-quarter-length black suit jacket on her first day at her big new job. Amy wore a pair of white leggings and a long white T-shirt hiked up on the right side with a banana clip the day we graduated from high school. Serena was wearing a pair of red-and-black wool ticked pants and a black sweater the night her husband proposed to her.

  The plaids, the velvets, the minks, the leathers, cottons, silks, and denims. If clothes make the man (or woman), then for me, certainly, it’s the clothes that make the memory.

  I’d love to write a book about all of my Gucci, Dior, and Givenchy outfits and the vintage dress of Princess Grace’s that Oleg Cassini gave me for my twenty-fifth birthday. I’d love to tell you the funny story about the time Mr. Valentino came over and we spent an entire rainy Saturday munching on pizza while making up crazy designs for dresses. Unfortunately, none of this has ever happened. Fashionista, I am not. Simply, I am every teenage girl who ever had to have the item that all the other girls had, whether it looked good on me or not. I’m the college coed who fell in love with a boy at first glance because his leather jacket made me swoon. I’m the best friend who borrows clothes and never gives them back and the woman who is forty-five minutes late to work because she has nothing to wear. I’m the lover of clothes and shopping whose passionate memories are always connected not only to the clothes that I wore, but what friends and family and boyfriends wore too.

  Since I don’t have that closet full of all the items that bring back times both magnificent and heartbreaking, these stories are for everyone who keeps an old piece of clothing in the back of the closet, wishing that one day those clothes would get up and start talking about the cherished moments they once shared together.

  Learning from the Masters

  grew up outside of Philadelphia, but when I look back on my early childhood, it feels to me that I really grew up in the dressing rooms of all the major department stores in and around the city. My earliest memories come from the Lord & Taylor on City Line Avenue. To this day, thinking about the scents of Tea Rose and Chloé perfumes that filled my nose as I walked in makes me wince to the point of nausea. The tiny electric shock I’d get if I touched one of the glass counter displays full of jewelry or handbags should have been a deterrent to turn me off shopping for life. Days at age five and six were spent squirming in a dressing room chair watching my mother, Arlene, and grandmother, Esther, duke it out over whether Esther was a size eight anymore. “It just hugs a little,” Esther would say as she blanketed the center buttons of the Geoffrey Beene lilac-colored silk blouse with her uniform gold chains. The eternally size-six Arlene would make a quick switch when Esther wasn’t looking and retrieve a size ten. Later that week, Esther would come over wearing the size eight blouse. We’d know it was the size eight, especially my brother Michael, who’d dive for cover when he realized he was in direct target range. God forbid Esther had opened her arms to hug him; the buttons would have popped out and blinded him.

  In those early years, Lord & Taylor outfitted every grand occasion, and I hated every minute of it. It wasn’t that I hated the clothes, because in truth, I felt instant adoration. The problem was that I never had a say in my wardrobe. When I was seven, my two shopping superiors ooohed and ahhhed over my first formal dress, a pale blue taffeta ruffley number for my brother David’s bar mitzvah. I was strongly against this classic little-girl look and tried to get my way the best way I knew how—by throwing my sixty-pound body to the floor and banging my legs and fists on the ground while shrieking the most deafening high-C shrill imaginable. Seven- and eight-year-old trendsetters in 1977, like myself, favored flowered granny dresses. The particular one I wanted was, in a word, magnificent. Covered in tiny chocolate-and-cream-colored daisies, the dress was fitted with an empire waist and short puffy sleeves. To me, this dress screamed up-to-the-minute, bohemian, “now.” The pathetic pale blue abhorrence bawled juvenile, dimestore, Shirley Temple.

  “Adena, get up off of that floor right now before I really give you something to scream about,” Esther threatened under her breath.

  “Come on, Deanie,” my mother said, trying to sympathize, “is it really worth all of this?”

  “I AM NOT WEARING THAT!” I screamed through my tears.

  The purchasing patronizers took a time-out huddle.

  “She wants to wear that one,” Arlene said, throwing her hands up. “I don’t really care anymore. She wins.”

  “She’s going to look ridiculous,” Esther countered.

  “If she wears that dress, do you really think she’s going to ruin the whole night?”

  “Yes, yes she will,” Esther said, bending down and grabbing one of my arms, as it was in mid-slam. “That’s enough with you,” she said, pulling me up to my feet.

  “Now, look,” Esther said, seething as she pinned my arms to my sides, “your mother and I are both wearing blue. You either look like the big ladies, or you look like a bum off the street. I’m going to give you ten seconds to decide.”

  “BUM OFF THE STREET!” I shouted back in her face.

  “WE’RE TAKING THE BLUE ONE!” Esther shouted back.

  The fight was over. I was defeated. Esther was bigger than me, stronger than me, her coral ring was digging into my elbow and, truth be told, the thought of wearing the same colors as the big ladies sounded like a really cute idea.

  Any lady who lunched always lunched in the Lord & Taylor restaurant, the Birdcage, which in my opinion did not provide an adequate children’s menu. Their peanut-butter-and-jelly left nothing to the imagination, except to wonder what cheap company made the runny preserves. I was forced to eat Saltine crackers and drink Shasta soda. Even the décor of the place was uninspiring. Sure, as one might expect, there were birdcages located all around the Birdcage Restaurant. From wire cages to bamboo to plastic, the cages lined the joint. My whole conundrum over the place was simple: Wouldn’t anyone in their right mind, especially a seven-year-old, expect there to be actual birds in cages at a place called the Birdcage? There didn’t even have to be real birds; they could have had fake birds. But no, the birdcages in the Birdcage held potted ferns.

  “It’s not about any of that,” Esther would explain. “Lunching is to see and be seen.” And there was plenty of that to keep the place jumping. The problem wasn’t getting a table at the Birdcage; the problem was getting the two seers and be-seeners to sit down. “Esther!” Aunt Molly Spain, a friend of my grandmother‘s, would shout out, waving her arm back and forth, and there went Esther. “Arlene, over here!” Aunt Gail Sernoff would call from across the room. Arlene and her Corrèze boots would scurry over to talk to her for at least five minutes, and after that, to Aunt Judy Savitt at the table next to that, and then to Aunt Sissie Lipton, and then Aunt Marjorie Margolies Mezvinsky, and so on ... and why did I have to call them “Aunt” if they weren’t related to us anyway?

  “Because they’re more than friends; they’re family that you got to pick,” my mother told me, “and you treat them so for that reason.”

  “How are you?” I’d watch my mother’s mouth as she spoke to the Aunts. “You lost weight,” Esther would say, complimenting Aunt Ruth Goldman and Aunt Evelyn Sidewater at the next table.

  Twenty minutes later, my scenester foremothers would finally take a seat. That’s when the news would come to th
em. There was a cackle of enjoyment watching Esther’s jaw drop in the same swift motion every time news came around concerning the latest “D,” which was Arlene and Esther’s catchphrase referring to the latest divorce, death, or indictment.

  “She turned around for two seconds to go to the refrigerator to get him some margarine and by the time she turned around again he was stone dead, slumped right over the table.”

  “No!” Arlene had gasped, clutching her chest.

  “Yes!” the woman with the lipstick bleeding onto her teeth reported. “Coronary, just like that.”

  “You have to savor every day,” Esther had concluded, bringing her jaw back to its normal position and pinching me under the table until I stopped laughing.

  There were, however, good and bad points in going to the Saks Fifth Avenue in Bala Cynwyd, where Arlene got her hair done on Saturday mornings. If you got to the beauty parlor early enough, they had a big plate of soft pretzels next to the coffee. The coiffed ladies would say, “I’ll just take a half of one,” and then I’d watch them go back for the other half and another half and another half. Some women scooped up a bunch and stuffed them into their purses; that’s why you had to get there early.

  Saks Fifth Avenue also had a grand staircase leading from the first floor to the second. If one’s mother, let’s say, was trying on lip liner and was too busy to notice, one might have been able to break away, climb the stairs, hoist oneself onto the broad pine lacquered banister, and slide down to one’s heart’s content. If, however, in mid-slide, in your eighth year of life, you suddenly realized you had developed a serious case of vertigo, the experience was nut as pleasing.

  “Just climb back over!” Arlene had imeusitively shouted as she went back to testing lip liners. I was, after all, her third and last child. By the time I came around, with two rambunctious older brothers ahead of me, nothing fazed her anymore.