4.28.2010

Change of A Dress

Saturday, April 17th at 10:00 am, I arrived at Dimitras Bridal with a half eaten granola bar from Starbucks shoved hastily into my clutch purse and too much coffee in my system. I also carried with me: a necklace fashioned from the sapphires and diamond in my great grandmother’s engagement ring and a Stuart Weitzman bag, and inside that a box and inside that a protective pouch and inside that a pair of pewter Chantelle pumps wrapped in tissue paper like exquisite candy.

My maid of honor, Colleen and I waited outside the shop for my mother and grandmother to arrive, glamorously rumpled in a yellow cab. In a matter of minutes, the cab rolled to a stop in front of us and my grandmother pulled herself up from the back seat, already misty eyed. My mother followed, and for no less than 30 minutes we hugged each other in varying patterns: mother - daughter, granddaughter - grandmother, mother - mother in law, grandmother - maid of honor, group hug . . . you get the idea. It is the Jewish way.

Now some of you may remember that in my post about Myron and Phil’s, I made a passing reference to my grandmother’s career as a lounge singer. If you don’t remember, here’s the background: my grandmother’s career as a lounge singer in mostly Chicago but also Vegas blossomed only in her 40’s when she had launched all three of her children out of their family home. The origin of this shift in her life is still unclear to me. Did she wake up one morning with an empty nest and a husband married to his job and think to herself: Today I am going to start singing professionally? I really can’t even imagine how the idea occurred to her.

In any case, she ended up nurturing a nice little name for herself and has retained the most gregarious of personalities. In terms of wide-eyed gasps of joy and uncontrolled sobbing, I knew she wouldn’t disappoint.

So we all piled into the rickety elevator at 1011 North Rush Street and swayed our way to the 3rd floor where my wedding gown and copious boxes of tissue awaited us. The seamstress met us at the door and ushered us to the North facing side of the small shop where they house the evening wear, away from the hustle and (cue rim shot) bustle of the first time bridal appointments. She pulled me into a dressing room, strapped a medieval looking white bustier on me and then zipped me into my Enzoani gown with a fitted bodice and a beautiful lace bolero.

And then came my absolute favorite part of the very few bridal appointments at which I have been guest of honor. The seamstress reached down to pick up my Stuart Weitzman pewter Chantelle pumps which I had extracted from bag, box, protective pouch and tissue paper. I bent forward slightly, picking up the heavy layers of my dress to expose one ridiculously small—and now red from so much standing—foot. This is when she, poised on the ground in front of me, slipped my foot into the shoe and then motioned her hand for the other foot. I placed it in her care and received my other shoe. How could any women, even the ones who didn’t dream of their wedding as a little girl (like me . . . surprised?), not love this moment? The bodice of your wedding gown grasps your waist and your shoulders curve over gently as you pick up your skirt, and your perfect wedding shoe pops onto your foot—aided by the seamstress. Are you not - in this moment if never again - Cinderella awaiting the prince’s ball, stomach aflutter? There is just something magical about wearing a gown so fantastic, so full of heavy silk and crinoline that you can’t even put on your own shoes.

The seamstress stood up and blessedly, like a pro, looked at me like she had never seen a woman in a wedding gown before. She beamed and exclaimed, clucked her tongue and repeated over and over again that I looked so beautiful. And I thought, who cares if they train the employees at Dimitras to moon over every bride like this? I’m going with it!

We walked out of the dressing room together and my grandmother, never one to disappoint any audience, nearly fainted.

As I stood up on the platform so that the seamstress could pin my gown to fit my statuesque 5’3” stature, my grandmother made a series of throaty noises and clutched her hands in front of her chest excitedly. She then said: “What are you, deformed? You look like you had liposuction!” (I must clarify; I am absolutely sure this was intended as a compliment). Colleen stood behind her, holding her cell phone in front of her face - as if to take pictures of me - in order to hide her shaking shoulders and hysterical laughter.

Then my 82 year old grandmother said, in a bridal salon at 10:30 in the morning: “You look like I did when I was a singer. They used to say to me: ‘If you had tits, you’d be dangerous!’ and I told them ‘Honey, I might not have tits but I am dangerous!’” And if I hadn’t been stuck on that platform with pins littering the floor in front of me, I would have walked over and squeezed her. Because who, really, gets to hear their grandmother say things like that?

And hats off to Colleen, who – if she couldn’t hold it together – at least had the poise to hide her face.

4.26.2010

In The Trenches

This Saturday I will be attending my bachelorette party. My fiancé will be holed up in a log cabin for the weekend, planning to rip his groomsmen to shreds with a paintball gun.

I thought I might work with my Maid of Honor to plan something a little more civilized. Something that wouldn’t necessarily require the use of a tarp. So, we reserved a table for the 8:30 show at The Baton - which is rumored to employ the best female impersonators in Chicago.

With the inevitable scrutiny involved in spending my bachelorette evening with sharp witted drag queens, I of course began planning my outfit early. It was necessary for my emotional safety.

I began with a beautifully simple Leifsdottir bandage knit black mini dress that I convinced myself to buy on sale. This dress has been hanging in my closet since I purchased it, waiting for the perfect occasion to be woken from dormancy and paraded out for, let’s say, a bridal party and the very particular female impersonators of The Baton.

And I know it will work because the stretch knit fabric feels just so delicious against my skin, like a tee shirt really. And the allover rouching makes this very tight mini dress actually wearable. As most of you ladies already know, rouching forgives the body like almost no other dressmaker detail. The neckline is a wide v-neck that is just the tiniest bit asymmetrical, and the shoulders of the dress have about a half inch of extra gathered fabric, creating a wonderful touch of volume. The dress is, in a word, bitchy. And I love it. Not to mention - paired with bronze platform cutout booties – the dress makes my legs look like the Meryl Streep of legs. In that everyone loves them, they have received many accolades, but have only ever been recognized for their supporting roles and have never won the Oscar they really deserve.

So I had the dress and the shoes all figured out, but I needed the perfect completer piece. I hit Nordstrom Rack in search of some kind of outwear that would look great with the black dress and the bronze heels. I tried on many cropped moto jackets, which are very in right now, but nothing really worked. And then I found, tucked into an overcrowded rack of Trina Turk clothing, a trench coat bolero from Pink Tartan’s ’09 spring / summer line.

The bolero was made in that beautiful tan color of a traditional trench and had all the great details of a traditional trench: the belted sleeves, flaps at the bust, and shiny pewter buttons. But, it was cropped to the perfect length. The jacket hit right above the natural waist, and while the front was boxy in a pleasant way, the back was vented so it opened like a swing coat. The thing I loved most about the jacket is that it was perfectly in line with the cropped outerwear trend, but it carried enough classic detailing to look chic rather than trendy and disposable.

So I agonized over whether or not to purchase the jacket. While it was only a quarter of its original cost, it was still more of an investment than the moto jackets I had tried on. I visited The Rack a number of times over the following week, each time pulling out the bolero to look at it again, trying it on, and then hiding it on some rack where it didn’t belong – mixed in with mom jeans and August Silk.

I even once - on my way to see my makeup artist - popped into the store to visit my bolero, walked back out and then spent five minutes bouncing from the entrance of the store to the corner of State and Washington like a crazed pinball, convincing myself alternately to just purchase the damn thing and that I really didn’t need to be spending the money anyway.

In the end, it was mine.

I walked through the doors of Nordstrom Rack at the tail end of a Wednesday lunch hour and made a bee-line for the last rack on which I had hidden my bolero. It. Wasn’t. There.

In a frantic last ditch effort, I looked through the rack where I had originally found the jacket and, buried between hangers and hangers of inferior trench coats, there it was. I ripped it off the hanger, and with only the faintest blush of guilt, carried it victoriously to the register.

And now it hangs in my closet, waiting patiently for its big debut.

And it ain’t a tarp, but at least it’s water resistant.

4.13.2010

Let Them Eat Cake . . . And Chopped Liver Too

With the wedding date getting closer, I almost forgot that I have a birthday in April. April 12th to be exact.

I hadn’t really thought much about how I would like to celebrate said birthday, as my primary focus has been trained on things like minute variations of color in different species of rose, or chargers for our reception place settings. So when the time came to really figure something out, I initially thought I would request dinner at 160 Blue, a fantastic restaurant in Chicago at which many of my birthdays have been celebrated. But then 160 Blue just didn’t seem right, so I called my fiancé maybe 20 times suggesting different restaurants and finally begging him for help (he is particularly adept at choosing restaurants with the most delicious fare).

And then it dawned on me. Myron and Phil’s.

For those of you who are either Northsiders at heart, or grew up Jewish in the Chicagoland Area at any time during the last . . . let’s say . . . three or four decades, your mouth is probably already watering. The images of dim lighting and dark wood walls are already flooding your brain. You can recall dining chairs upholstered in chocolate brown leather with grommets running along the top and the incredibly tacky signed photographs of B and C List stars that have dined in this Chicago institution.

For those of you who are not Northsiders and didn’t grow up Jewish in the Chicagoland Area within the last three or four decades, Myron and Phil’s is an old Chicago steak house located on Devon where it intersects Crawford Avenue. At Myron and Phil’s they serve steak, seafood, steak, potatoes, steak, creamed spinach, steak, and chopped chicken livers with bits of hardboiled egg and raw onion. And THAT’S IT. If you aren’t satisfied by the menu at Myron and Phil’s, you are either a vegetarian or dead.

In any case, as soon as I thought of Myron and Phil’s, the phantom smell of skirt steak with burnt onions filled my nostrils. I called everyone involved. They were amenable to the suggestion.

My fiancé and I were the last to arrive at the restaurant, even after my maid of honor had taken some extra time to get lost and retrace her steps (I am beginning to suspect that this is actually her primary method of memorization when it comes to Chicago’s roadways). Everyone seemed to be in good spirits.

We had just barely gotten ourselves seated at our table when the waitress dropped off menus with a bowl of new pickles and pickled tomatillos, a bread basket filled with fresh challah rolls and two heaping scoops of chopped liver. My fiancé tore into the chopped liver like a wild animal, and as I watched the horrible carnage, I imagined him doing the exact same thing in 50 years. The strength of his affinity for chopped liver is outdone only by the oldest, most curmudgeonly Zayde (that’s Grandpa in Yiddish).

I perused the menu half-heartedly, already trying to decide between fried perch and one of the obscenely large broiled lobster tails I had only ever gazed upon longingly. I went with the perch. Don’t ask me why. Alright, because it’s a guilty pleasure. I love the crispy breading surrounding the flaky fish that just sort of melts away. And that tartar sauce with bits of gherkin mixed in? Gets me every time! On this particular night, the perch fillets were the size of butternut squash and deep fried to perfection.

If you are curious, my mother ordered whitefish, my maid of honor the fried perch, my fiancé a filet mignon, and my father ordered beef ribs that—we would all soon discover—were not really beef ribs at all but, instead, had clearly been ripped straight out of a wooly mammoth.

And while we waited for our food, my parents proceeded to tell the stories of my birth. And amidst tales of how my mother’s best friend--across town in a class--intuited the moment my mother started having contractions, and what a tiny and beautifully formed infant I was, my mother said—of the labor itself and my refusal to be born without a fight: everything was coming out of me but you!

It was magical. In my embellished fantasy of this moment, there was a record playing—something my grandmother would have sung in her lounge singing days—and it slammed to a screeching halt, leaving the dining room silent with my mother’s words ringing in the diners’ ears.

I fully expected my fiance to put down the chopped liver. He didn’t.

And while he and my father mused over whether my refusal to be born easily was an early sign of stubbornness or tenacity, our food finally arrived. And it was good. I felt like the long bike ride I had taken in our workout room earlier in the evening entitled me to really slather on the tartar sauce. So I did. And throughout the meal, I began to notice that everyone’s leftovers seemed to appear, all wrapped up in little doggie bags, in front of my fiance. When the waitress came by to drop off the obligatory free-of-charge mediocre chocolate desert with a pink candle shoved in its scoop of vanilla ice cream, she looked at my fiancé, laughed, and asked if she had fed him sufficiently.

That was when the mariachis appeared.

The sound of their blaring trumpets reverberated through Myron and Phil’s small dining room. I stared at my still lit birthday candle wide-eyed, fearing I had failed to eliminate the incriminating evidence in time. My head sank down into my neck as I watched the mariachis, in their gigantic sombreros and black pants with silver embroidery down the sides, cart their instruments toward our table. With each step they took in our direction, my heart beat louder and faster.

Imagine my relief when they passed right by our table and kept walking into the restaurant’s private party room.

Apparently, the mariachis had been hired to honor one of Myron and Phil’s kitchen staff who had just retired. We all smiled and clapped when the manager announced this, staring at each other from across the table with looks that clearly intimated: this can’t last all night, can it? For a 45 minute stretch, whenever anyone would utter a word, the mariachi music that had previously died down would suddenly start up again, the trumpets wailing so aggressively that they drowned out any other noise.

“So, how is work . . . WWWWAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH”

“It’s alright, the other day . . . WWWWAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH”

“So these two guys go to this costume party where you have to dress up as an emotion . . . WWWAAAAHHHHH”

But in the end, if you’re heading home with a stretched out belly and an entire carload of leftover beef ribs and chopped chicken livers, who cares what you were trying to say anyway?

4.08.2010

Tie-ing the Knot

It all began with my father’s idea to have a suit custom made for the wedding. He scheduled an appointment on a weeknight at 5:15 so I could accompany him to the custom clothier down the street from my office. I distinctly remember my heels tapping against pavement as I walked north up LaSalle Street to Balani Custom.

After being swallowed up by the massive lobby at 10 South LaSalle, the intimately sized Balani Custom was a welcome surprise. I was greeted by a comfortable seating area with plump leather couches, a beautiful granite counter at which the surprisingly young clothier conducts his business, and—in the center of all of this--a big round table boasting rows and rows of ties.

If you know me very well at all (which most of you probably do at this point, as I gather my readership hasn’t reached very far beyond my inner circle…yet), you know that when I was a girl, my father let me select his ties before he left for work in the big city. He would lay out three or four choices on my parents’ bed and I would hold them up against his suit, meticulously selecting the best match.

I carried something of this experience with me into adult life, and I am now and forever desperately in love with ties. I love the patterns and the infinite variations of color and texture. I pride myself on being able to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to ties, and on being able to select the perfect tie for any outfit.

But I’m biased. And I digress.

You see, the big round table won me over with its rows and rows of ties lined up like spokes in a bicycle wheel. I mentally added Balani Custom to my list of happy places (which includes, but is not limited to: Whole Foods, Nordstrom Rack, The Zodiac Room and Myron and Phil’s).

My father and I sat at the counter with Joe (the clothier), poring over his books of fabric swatches. We picked out a gorgeous midnight navy fabric with a subtle ivory stripe. The end result was fantastic. Needless to say, my fiancé and I were walking back through the door a few weeks later.

I think the best part about bringing my fiancé to Balani for his wedding suit is the fact that he actually loved the experience. You see, he’s the kind of guy that knows quality clothing when he sees it, but is perfectly content to sit back and allow someone else to select said clothing for him. This is, of course, an arrangement I find perfectly gratifying. So when I saw my beloved actively flipping through fabric swatches with me, and yucking it up with Joe, I couldn’t have been caught more off guard. I had figured I would have to put up with the requisite signals--you know the ones--a sudden widening of the eyes when the salesperson turns his back, followed by a gentle coaxing nudge in the direction of the exit as if to say “We can run now, right now! While he’s looking away!”

In the end, my fiancé found a fabric that he really loves. A deep dark charcoal sharkskin weave that absolutely sings against his light brown hair and the monogrammed ivory French-cuff shirt we had made to match my wedding dress. When I finally had the chance to see him in his perfectly fitted custom suit and dress shirt, I couldn’t have felt more impressed. My fiancé? He’s one tall drink of water, and he looks damn fine in his deep dark charcoal wedding suit.

I saw him standing there, in front of the big mirror at Balani, with Joe fretting over tiny alterations. And it was easy to imagine him waiting at the end of an aisle. It was easy to see him weaving through tables topped with gorgeous silk linens and explosive floral arrangements with his arm around my waist. So I just looked, and allowed myself to enjoy looking. And I thought: lucky me.

Soon we will drive up North to visit a shop that--my father claims--carries the best ties you can find. And I am sure I will walk around the shop with a hawk eye, picking up a tie here and there and holding it up to my fiance’s neck. And I will cock my head to one side, examining the pattern meticulously, and remember being a girl.