a signature for one "kick-ass grandma"

My husband hates Blue Fish. He is smart enough to deny it, because he truly  does love me. He tells me often how much he likes the way I look in Blue Fish, and about four times a year we go to Frenchtown, where he buys me six or seven lovely new pieces each visit.

My husband was born in 1920, and his taste in clothes, understandably, is conventional. I know he would prefer that I wear clothes from Talbot’s. Boring. Boojie. Not me. I did reconsider my preference of wearing one of my favorite dressier Blue Fish outfits in our wedding last December, and took only some of my pieces on our honeymoon cruise. But I wear Blue Fish nearly every day, as I have since 1990, and in time, my darling husband will stop pretending to love Blue Fish; I know it.

I have been stopped in Heathrow Airport and in Penn Station. “Where did you get your Blue Fish?”  At seminars and conferences, strangers tell me they love the way I dress. My artist friends all wear Blue Fish themselves or at least recognize and appreciate my outfits. A policeman who pulled me over me for speeding on Long Island recognized my outfit, told me his wife wears Blue Fish, and let me go with a warning.  And when I asked one of my grandsons why he refers to me as his “kick-ass grandma,” he informed me that I am different from most grandmothers, in part because of the way I dress.

In my years of college teaching, I felt confident and interesting in my Blue Fish. In my years in human services, I felt optimistic, and courageous in my Blue Fish. In my doctoral program in feminist social gerontology, which I completed at age 66, I felt intelligent and creative in my Blue Fish. Currently, in my work running a visionary small non-profit program addressing older adults’ substance abuse and problem gambling, I feel confident, interesting, optimistic, courageous, intelligent, and creative in my Blue Fish.

A year ago, I asked a friend with impeccable taste to help me update my wardrobe, to expand it to include some classic clothes. He gave me a funny look and turned me down. “Blue Fish is your signature,” he told me. “Don’t change.” 

As I write this, I am wearing a vintage adobe tunic with large floppy pockets and a fish on the front, and faded black pantaloons. It is a typical Sunday outfit, perfect for cleaning the refrigerator and walking the dog. Tonight my husband is taking me out for dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. I will wear some of the pieces he bought for me in Frenchtown yesterday: my new cacao linen urchin tunic with the licorice mixed media pants, or perhaps the fieldstone crosshatch voile muse dress with the licorice pants, or maybe the urchin tunic with the vintage cotton lycra capris, or the muse dress with the vintage pants. Following the exhortations on the tags, I will feel “beautiful, happy, free.” “Celebrate your life! there are no rules.” And “create & collect—balance and befriend.”

That is how I live my life, and Blue Fish is an integrated part of who I am, not just of how I dress.