A Plea for Eros

people in the world who come by ringlets naturally are babies. During that period every woman who could afford to be curled was— young, old, and in between. It was baby fashion, and to my mind it made every woman over twenty look ridiculous. Like the hourglass figure, the longing for infancy through garments or hairdos comes and goes. The short shifts of the sixties were a movement back to childhood, as were the big eyes and ringlets of the same period. Only a few years ago I read about the fashion among teenagers and young club-goers to drape pacifiers around their necks after they had squeezed themselves into baby clothes. Female Peter Pans.
    In other words, the idea is what matters. Clothes give us insight into culture and its wishes, and into individuals and their desires. More than who you are, clothes articulate what you want to be. Ringlets were hard for me, because I like to think of myself as a grown-up, because I strive for a certain dignity in my apparel, but that dignity is no more than a message I want to communicate, and who knows if it is successful? I love clothes and have often pined for them—the beautiful dress or coat in the window. My desire is for the transformation I imagine will take place, a kind of enchantment of my own body.
    Children are closer to fantastic transformations than adults, closer to the spell of costume and the change that comes from illusion, but we all are prone to it, and hiding behind the silk nightgown or the stockings or the pin-striped suit is a story we have heard and repeated to ourselves. These stories are often cliches, worn narratives we hold close to our hearts. I am changing into the silk nightgown, have brushed my hair and pinched my cheeks. I walk into the bedroom and there he is—the hero, Clark Gable or William Powell, depending on my mood. He turns, gasps, “You look …” Fill in the blank. Whatever the words are, it is never: “You look like yourself.”
    Any meaningful piece of clothing is part of a broader cultural story. Years ago I went to a Halloween party as a man. In a borrowed suit, my face wiped clean of all makeup, and my hair hidden under a hat, I looked at myself in a mirror and was unprepared for the change. Women flirt with men’s clothing all the time, but when you go all the way, the result is striking. I felt manly. My stride lengthened. My manner changed. It was easy to play at being a man, as easy as playing at being a woman. The suit unleashed a fantasy of maleness I heartily enjoyed. Another time, I was walking down a dark street in New York on my way to a large party. I was in my early twenties then and experimented occasionally with wild attire. In a red jumpsuit and heels, which added several inches to my already towering frame, I passed a man who began spewing insults at me. I kept walking. It took several seconds for me to digest what was happening. The man had mistaken me for a transvestite. The experience, both comic and sad, gave me sudden insight into the venom that appearances can produce, not to speak of the often hazy line between femininity and its parodic double.
    Every once in a while, a piece of clothing jumps out of one culture and into another. I spent three months in Thailand in 1975 as a student, and I vividly remember seeing a gang of motorcycle toughs roaring through the streets of Chiang Mai in the rain, wearing shower caps. Several of those caps were decorated with flowers and other beacons of feminine adornment. I was amazed, but nobody else was. My cultural associations didn’t apply. The shower cap had been born again somewhere else with a totally different signification.
    While it is true that certain individuals are fixed on an idea that rigidly determines them—whether it be “1 do not care about clothes at all” or “I am a sex goddess”—-most of us have or have had over time many different dreams. I own a black dress that reminds me of Audrey Hepburn. I do not suffer from the delusion that I look like Audrey Hepburn in that dress, but her exquisite form wrapped in Givenchy has bewitched it nevertheless, and her magic is part of my pleasure in wearing it. Movies and books are strong drugs to clothes lovers. Katharine Hepburn striding along in trousers, Lana Turner in a towel, Claudette Colbert in a man’s pajama top, Marilyn Monroe in anything. Tolstoy lavished his attention on the details of women’s clothes and bodies, on Natasha at her first ball and Ellen’s white shoulders above