Category Archives: History

Honoring and understanding your history

Gray matter

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Be comfortable in your own skin, and your style will come out.
– Ikram Goldman, Ikram boutique owner, Chicago

My parents show off their cake at their 25th wedding anniversary, May 1982.

My parents show off their cake at their 25th wedding anniversary, May 1982.

When my sisters and I were going through my mother’s photographs to put in a slideshow for her memorial last January, I came across ones of my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary party. My mother was a month shy of 31 when she got married to my father. So she was nearing 56 when we celebrated their anniversary at a restaurant with our family and all of our relatives. In December 1984, when my sister, Heidi, my mom, and I went to the Philippines – to commemorate the end of my college career and also to embrace my heritage after taking many Asian American Studies classes – my mom was 58 years old.

Me, my lola Salud, and my mother, Baguio City, the Philippines, December 1984. My mother shows just a little gray along the hairline.

Me, my lola Salud, and my mother, Baguio City, the Philippines, December 1984. My mother shows just a little gray along the hairline.

I marveled at how in the pictures from those two events, my mother looked incredibly young. No sign of gray hair. My middle sister Joyce recalled that she berated my mom for plucking her gray hairs, telling her she would go bald. It was around the early 1990s that Joyce introduced my mother to coloring her hair. So at the time of her 25th anniversary and our trip to the Philippines, my mother had plucked her grays – but clearly still had a healthy production of melanin.

No doubt, genetics played a major role in her youthful looks. But at some point, she did color her hair. I, too, plucked at the gray hairs, and when they multiplied to the point where potential baldness had to be considered as a real risk, I faced the decision of either coloring or leaving the gray strands alone. I had always thought I would be the kind of woman who would eschew coloring her hair. Just age gracefully, I argued in my head. But at the age of 44, when the gray hair began exposing themselves around my hairline and at the crown of my head, I succumbed to the practice.

Does she or doesn’t she?
In my neck of the woods – the Berkeley area – more women than not embrace their gray. Was it a defect on my part that I did not? My hairdresser, who has been cutting my hair since I was 29 and whom I have followed from salon to salon through the years, has been badgering me in the last few years to stop coloring my hair. He tells me that “modern women” can carry off gray hair. He also insisted that the owner of the beauty shop where he worked had developed leukemia from having undergone too many Japanese hair-straightening treatments. In all honesty, I don’t know anything about the pros and cons of the treatment and can’t comment on whether the chemicals contributed to her death. I do worry about the chemicals that are seeping into my scalp, which is one of the reasons why I don’t color that often and traded permanent color, which made my hair dry as straw, to semi-permanent color, which seems less harsh, relatively speaking, and fades in a more “natural” way.

My husband, David, whose hair is salt and pepper, keeps reminding me that there’s nothing wrong with gray hair and he’d prefer that I go au natural. Some people look distinguished with a head of gray hair, but I don’t put myself in that company just yet. One of my good friends from college feels that gray hair makes women look older than they are, which is true depending upon how the hair is styled, how the woman dresses herself, and the coloring of the gray. While dull gray is not a flattering color, white or silver can be stunning.

Comfortable with gray
While one can argue whether or not a woman looks better with colored hair, I’ve come to see it as a personal decision, which should be respected and even celebrated. My sister, Heidi, who turned 53 in mid-August and noticed the gray in her mid-30s, has never colored her hair, which is even more dramatic and pronounced given the longer length of her locks. She prefers low maintenance when it comes to grooming, which was especially critical when she was an elementary-school teacher (she has since retired this past year). She doesn’t blow dry her hair because she feels it’s a health hazard and has the same health concern about hair coloring. My sister grows her hair long so she can cut it every three years and donate it to such organizations as the American Cancer Society and Ulta, which require hair to be free of chemicals. She tells me that they don’t accept donations with too many gray hairs, so this may be her last contribution.

My sister, Heidi, and me at Rockefeller Center, New York, September 2012.

My sister, Heidi, and me at Rockefeller Center, New York, September 2012.

“There have been a dozen women who have told me that they are following my example and are not coloring their hair anymore,” Heidi wrote to me in an e-mail. “They just don’t like the look when transitioning from not coloring to going all gray. I think they are becoming more comfortable with the idea of having gray hair. I think they also got tired of coloring their hair and they’re doing it for themselves and not for appearance anymore.” (Although I feel compelled to note that you can color your hair and do it for yourself and not for others.)

A friend of mine, who has a lovely thick mane of silvery hair, decided to dispense with the many years of maintenance, time, and expense associated with hair coloring. “You’re finally comfortable with it, and you just grow into your gray hair,” she told me in an e-mail. Through the years, she had gotten close with her colorist, whom she considers an adopted daughter and also followed as her colorist changed salons. While my friend doesn’t get to see her former colorist on a regular basis anymore, when they do get together it’s “for coffee instead of coloring,” she wrote.

Hair as an ‘artistic medium’
One of my colleagues from my company, Diana Manos, 53, who is a senior editor with Healthcare IT News, said that turning 50 has liberated her to experiment with hair color. “I like hair as an artistic medium (involving color),” she wrote to me in an e-mail. Diana doesn’t believe that hair color should be age-related. She sported a big bright fuschia stripe, noting that getting the flash of color was something she has wanted to do her whole life. “I feel that being my current age finally freed me to do it,” she wrote, although she has since moved on from pink because it fades too easily.

My colleague Diana sporting her fuschia streak.

My colleague Diana sporting her fuschia streak.

“Color is color. If you don’t like the color gray – and I don’t – you don’t have to wear it, in our day and age,” she wrote. “I feel hair is a very distinctive aspect of our outer selves. If we want, we can use our hair to represent our inner selves. How you feel about your hair is very important to how you see yourself. No one at any age should accept hair they don’t want to wear.”

While Diana noted that she doesn’t like the color gray on her, she recognizes that some women can carry it off. “I am always fascinated by and on the lookout for women who wear it like they mean it,” she said. “Emmylou Harris is one famous example, but I see good examples around me all the time. If I had to one day wear gray hair, I would probably put some black stripes in it to spice it up.”

Celebrating silver - in my dress for now, Las Vegas, February 2012.

Celebrating silver – in my dress for now, Las Vegas, February 2012.

What feels right
As for me, I’ve made the tentative decision that I’ll go completely gray when my wrinkles become more pronounced. I’ll admit that I raise my eyebrows when I see an elderly Filipino man or woman with jet-black hair and wrinkles to rival an elephant because it seems like a disconnect between hair and body. I can’t imagine that I’ll do anything to my face, so when the wrinkles deepen, the gray will be let loose.

I’m always fascinated by other women’s opinions about and reasons for coloring or going gray, but the bottom line is: Respect other women’s decisions and do what feels right for you. Whatever you do, first and foremost, do it for yourself. Once you embrace that, the decisions come – of course – nice and easy.

The best way to accent silver and gray is with lots of beading, sequins, rhinestones, and shiny metallic.

The best way to accent silver and gray is with lots of beading, sequins, rhinestones, and shiny metallic.

Gray is the perfect backdrop or a lot of shine from different materials and accessories, both vintage (earrings, ring, and bracelet) and new (necklace, stack of rings, pumps, and skirt).

Gray is the perfect backdrop or a lot of shine from different materials and accessories, both vintage (earrings, ring, and bracelet) and new (necklace, stack of rings, pumps, and skirt).

A Tribute to my mother, one year later

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Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
– Ambrose Bierce, American journalist, from The Devil’s Dictionary

My mother in the Philippines, circa 1950s.

My mother in the Philippines, circa 1950s.

At the age of 85, surrounded by her three daughters, my mother took her last breath in the early morning of January 3rd, 2012. We are journeying to our hometown this weekend to celebrate her one-year anniversary with our relatives.When I think of my mother’s life, I think about the decisions she made and the decisions made for her through the years. After World War II, as a teacher in a mountain province, she fell in love with a Filipino soldier who was enlisted in the U.S. Army. He wanted to marry her, but her strict parents demanded that she choose between them or him. She chose her parents because, she explained, they loved her and she loved them. It was as simple as that, she told me when I was home from college on winter break, in a years-removed, matter-of-fact tone of voice. My mother, the oldest daughter, in a family of seven siblings (two others had died during the war as a result of malnutrition), continued to help support her younger brothers and sisters through school.

My parents' wedding in the Philippines, May 11, 1957.

My parents’ wedding in the Philippines, May 11, 1957.

By the time my father’s cousin – a co-teacher of my mother’s at the school where they both taught – matchmade my parents, she was nearly 32 years old. The local priest had to convince my grandfather, my lolo, who was a layman at his church, to let his daughter go. My father, who was 19 years older than my mother, had been in the States with his cousins since the 1920s. After a short courtship, which my mother described as an exchange of photos and letters, they got married in the Philippines and he returned to Los Angeles. She followed him months later on a ship. My parents lived in a house that my father and his brother bought in Los Angeles. My mother not only took care of her three daughters, born within four years, but also kept house for my father and her brother-in-law and his wife, who all three worked outside of the home. My mother did not want to raise us in an urban environment, especially during the time of civil unrest in Los Angeles, and longed for a home of her own. Some of my father’s relatives had settled in Terra Bella, which my father likened to a camp (New York was the city, Los Angeles was the country, my father reportedly told his cousins). Nevertheless, in 1965, we moved to the small Central Valley town, two-and-a-half hours away, and my parents bought a gray-brick house for $7,000, paying it in full. By 1968, my mother had a ranch-style house built next door on our lot, and paid that house off within five years.

A family outing in Long Beach, CA, summer 1962.

A family outing in Long Beach, CA, summer 1962.

My mother didn’t work while in Los Angeles. In Terra Bella, however, she eschewed becoming a teacher, unlike a couple of Filipino townmates who did go back to school and secured teaching positions at our local elementary school. My mother felt that she couldn’t take the time off to get her credentials. She needed to work right away. And so she spent three seasons at the packing house, which required her to be on her feet for 12 hours a day, sizing or packing oranges and other citrus fruit. In the wintertime, at the height of the season, she would be at work at 6 in the morning, come home for dinner, and then return to the packing house. In the summers, she picked table grapes in the nearby farms. I remember how she would wake us up early in the mornings to ensure that we had a good breakfast, and then leave the house while it was still dark outside. I remember watching one of our relatives rub tiger balm on her swollen fingers and the long steaming baths she took when she came home in the summertime, leaving a pile of dusty clothes that smelled of dirt and sweat outside the bathroom. I don’t recall when she retired. But she packed oranges and picked grapes somewhere in the range of 30 years.

Graduation day at UC Davis, June 1985.

Graduation day at UC Davis, June 1985.

School was very important to both my parents. My father only had a second-grade education. Of course, only A’s were acceptable grades. We would attend and graduate from college and our degrees would provide us with solid careers. When I was a senior in high school, my mother helped me fill out financial-aid documents. She had to disclose her yearly salary in one of the forms, and when I looked at what she’d written I was stunned. Wasn’t she missing another digit, I asked. I still remember how she leaned towards me, her eyeglasses perched at the edge of her nose, her hands anchored on the kitchen table. “No,” she said, smiling. She had made sure that we were never for want of anything. Not food or shelter, clothes or non-necessities.It made me think of the time I was into sewing – back in the day when girls took home economics in elementary school. It was summertime. I had waited for my mother to come home from work because I wanted to go into town and buy some fabric to make a blouse. She came home too tired to eat lunch and in want of a nap. She berated me, telling me I always sewed a garment that I would either never wear or discard soon afterwards. In truth, it was rare that I liked something I had made, though I enjoyed sewing itself. I went to my room, lay prostrate on my bed, and cried. Soon afterwards, she came into my room and curtly announced that we would go to Montgomery Wards and look for fabric.

Celebrating her 85th birthday with her grandchildren, Folsom, CA, June 25, 2011.

Celebrating her 85th birthday with her grandchildren, Folsom, CA, June 25, 2011.

This past year, I have gravitated towards listening to music from the 1970s and 1980s – thanks to Pandora radio. While I have always had a weakness for music from those decades (and go through the motions of apologizing for my bad taste in music to friends), as I listen to the songs now, it brings me back to a time when you never ever doubted that your parents would always be there to protect you. They would always be this age, full of vitality even when they were weary of their lives.

I have found that when you discover your parents’ history – and this oftentimes only happens when you are an adult, and for me this happened when I was in college, after taking many Asian American Studies classes – you understand the root of their actions and decisions – good and bad, hurtful and big-hearted. And in that understanding, you receive the power of forgiveness, the weight of sacrifices, and most importantly, the burden and comfort of unconditional love with open arms.

Flowers for my mother's memorial service, January 9, 2012.

Flowers for my mother’s memorial service, January 9, 2012.

Christmas past and present

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Christmas Day is in our grasp, so long as we have hands to clasp.
Christmas Day will always be just as long as we have we.
Welcome Christmas while we stand, heart to heart, and hand in hand.
– Theodor Seuss Geisel, American writer, poet and cartoonist,
from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas

My mother and father in our living room, Terra Bella, CA, Christmas 1982.

My mother and father in our living room, Terra Bella, CA, Christmas 1982.

Christmas is my favorite holiday. When we watch A Charlie Brown Christmas or How the Grinch Stole Christmas with our kids, it reminds me of the tradition of watching them as a kid. Of course, back then we had to wait impatiently for the night it aired on television and endure commercials, but no Christmas season was complete without having seen the two animated shows. Now our kids watch them several times in a season, and we have added the Polar Express to our Christmas viewing repertoire, complete with hot chocolate and popcorn.

In high school, I was in choir so we always sang Christmas songs for the annual winter concert. When I was in college, Christmas was a time to get together with all my high school friends to compare college experiences. It’s a Wonderful Life became a staple for me going into adulthood. I still get teary-eyed when, in the last scene, Mary Bailey’s eyes glisten with pure joy as she watches her husband George realize how rich and blessed he is with the many friendships he has made throughout a life of giving.

Since then, Christmas has become the holiday associated with loss. On Christmas Eve 1995, as I drove my parents from their home in Terra Bella to my sister’s family’s home in Folsom, near Sacramento, my 88-year-old father’s heart and kidneys began to shut down. Of course, my mother and I didn’t know that at the time. It was a tense four and a half hour-drive. After we arrived, we took him to the hospital.

My parents' last Christmas together in Folsom, 1994.

My parents’ last Christmas together in Folsom, 1994.

We spent Christmas Day going back and forth from Folsom to the hospital in Sacramento. It wasn’t really Christmas. That’s what I thought to myself when we drove back to Folsom that evening to take a break, staring at the blinking and streaking outdoor Christmas lights from the car window. Not long after we had returned to my sister’s house, my brother-in-law, who was still at the hospital, called to tell us we needed to come back. We didn’t make it to the hospital in time. The presents were left unopened that year.

As the years passed, I didn’t associate my father’s death with Christmas. The mind would not allow that to happen. After all, it didn’t seem like Christmas; therefore, it did not happen at Christmastime.

Last Thanksgiving, my 85-year-old mother was stricken with pneumonia and was in the ICU for two weeks with a coma. When she awoke, she was transferred to an acute-care facility that dealt with patients with ventilators. Last Christmas, my sisters and I took turns watching over her. She had her first setback on Christmas Eve, as we were preparing for midnight mass. When we asked her if she was done fighting, she nodded.

Dumbly, and numbly, we waited for her body to comply with her wishes. It wasn’t until after my oldest sister returned to her home in San Antonio, and a week had passed that on New Year’s Eve my middle sister and I realized my mother could not do it on her own. We were at her side during her last hours. She did not “slip quietly to the other side,” as the veteran nurse had assured us that she would, but she was not alone when she took her last breath.

Christmas and New Year’s Eve would never be the same again, I remembered thinking, as we drove in silence back to my sister’s house in the early morning hour.

A wintery scene from one of our lighted Christmas in the City streets.

A wintery scene from one of our lighted Christmas in the City streets.

It’s true that the holidays will never be the same, and I admit that I approached this holiday season with panicked moments full of fear and uneasiness. However, whereas last year I returned from the long Thanksgiving weekend and found that my husband and kids had completely decorated the house to welcome me home, I was able to decorate the house with them this season. We put up the seven displays of our lighted Christmas in the City buildings throughout the house. The final and traditional touch was the kids’ “letting it snow” over the city buildings and streets with fine plastic bits of snow. We decorated our seven-foot tree with treasured ornaments, many with memories associated with them, and instead of spending our evenings in the family room we moved our activities to the living room, as we always do at this time of year, so we could enjoy the fire in the fireplace, the smell of the pungent tree and the lighted Christmas villages. We’ve had a few friends over for Christmas cheer and enjoyed listening to Christmas music. It’s a Wonderful Life is on my list of things to do before New Year’s Day.

I survived the sadness of not being greeted by my mother at the front door when we first arrived at my sister’s house or seeing her bedroom now home to a new treadmill and a relocated futon couch. We are enjoying a respite from the rain and frantic last-minute Christmas shopping. This morning we are preparing to visit my mother’s niche, where her ashes are laid to rest. My 10-year-old daughter is excited to deliver the Christmas card she made for her lola.

I am navigating these new traditions. It is a part of life – learning how to embrace loss and honor our loved ones by celebrating the present.

Welcome, Christmas. Celebrate the holidays, be it Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or other honored day.

Welcome, Christmas. Celebrate the holidays, be it Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or other honored day.

Celebrate in style with hints of gold.

Celebrate in style with hints of gold.

 

Fifteen years later: On becoming a writer

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Celebrating with glimmering gold.

Celebrating with glimmering gold.

The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.
– John Ruskin, British art critic

In 1997, when I began researching and then writing my first novel, I could not have imagined that in 2012 I would still be working on the umpteenth draft. If I had known how much time would pass, I might have given up. Thomas Edison was credited as saying, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

The thing is: I did give up.

The first draft was 1,000 pages. It was easier to write when my husband and I didn’t have children and my job was not demanding. My son came, I changed jobs a few times, job demands grew, and sleep deprivation was my companion in the middle of the night when I sat in front of the computer screen, writing articles instead of fiction. I finished another draft when I went into labor with my daughter. In 2006, I was finally done and sent the trimmed-down (at 650 pages) manuscript off to literary agents, only to get rejected by 60 of them. One writer friend exclaimed, “I didn’t even know there were 60 different agents to be rejected by.” The manuscript was too long and there was no market for a novel about Filipino immigrant farmworkers, labor unions and grape strikes, I was told. And I believed them. I also believed that a more talented writer would have made the novel more compelling. I understood that I was not good enough to have made it work against any and all odds.

So I gave up. I put the manuscript away. I stopped reading fiction and book reviews. I didn’t go into bookstores anymore. I did other worthy and necessary things in my life. I had some inkling that I would come back to the writing, maybe to the novel. Every now and then, through the years, my two high school best friends would ask me when I was going to resurrect Fausto, my main character, and his story.

For anyone who has known the passion of creating, who has experienced the ecstasy of getting the emotion or moment right with the precise words in the only order that makes exquisite sense, who has stopped whatever ordinary activity she is doing because she has solved a niggling and bottlenecking problem with a character’s motivations or actions, the desire to create is never abandoned. Somewhere deep inside me, I knew that.

When we are ready on the inside, it may still take time for that desire to radiate outward and make us aware of its awakening. Sometimes it takes an event in our lives that turns the key or opens the window, and the desire is unleashed and demanding to be nurtured and given the tools to create anew. I took a week of vacation in April to start the next major revision of the novel, and my happiness was palpable. I did not want to lose it again. Getting stuck on a word or a sentence was a gift, not something to agonize over or dread as a tedious task. Carving out time to reintroduce myself to my characters was a gift.

Gold accessories on gold brocade - my own vintage early 90s tassel earrings and M.E. Moore reclaimed vintage bracelet and necklace.

Gold accessories on gold brocade – my own vintage early 90s tassel earrings and M.E. Moore reclaimed vintage bracelet and necklace.

In May I submitted the manuscript to a local independent book publisher’s annual contest. I had high hopes, but my novel wasn’t chosen. I was disappointed to be sure, but undaunted. Last month, I heard from my undergraduate professor who, along with his partner, is an independent book publisher. I asked him to consider my manuscript, and while he didn’t accept it, he told me that he and his partner “enjoyed it and admired the sometimes quite lyrical prose” and that they “liked the rendering of the setting, at once exotic and universal.” This time I was ecstatic. He was one of the best creative writing professors I’ve ever had, and he gave me the gift of his time and his advice for the next and hopefully last revision. His response – the outside world’s response, so to speak – validated what I’d been feeling inside: I’m getting there, I’m on the right track.

In September I sent the manuscript to the Poets & Writers’ California Writers Exchange contest. Last week, I received an e-mail announcing the winning poet and fiction writer. I honestly did not expect to win, but there was an itch of disappointment. Yesterday, however, I received a letter, letting me know that I was one of 15 finalists whose manuscripts, out of a total of 609 fiction manuscripts, were sent to the fiction judge for his final selection. I was quietly happy. I felt a warmth growing inside of me.

Fifteen years later, this is what I know: In 2006, the novel was too long and I was not a skilled enough writer to make Fausto’s story resonate. I am a much better writer now and the novel is almost there. All these years of toil have made it thus.

A love of mixing textures again - thrifted embroidered purse, faux fur, Frye leather booties, textured tights, and bold jewelry by M.E. Moore.

A love of mixing textures again – thrifted embroidered purse, faux fur, Frye leather booties, textured tights, and bold jewelry by M.E. Moore.

My lola’s locket

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My lola's locket and the ring my grandparents gave to my mother.

My lola’s locket and the ring my grandparents gave to my mother.

What’s past is prologue.
 – Shakespeare, The Tempest

A number of years ago – in truth, I don’t remember how long ago it was – my mother wanted to inventory her jewelry. I didn’t know why she decided to do so at that point in time – perhaps a relative had passed away or she sensed her mortality – but I willingly obliged when she asked me to write down the descriptions of the pieces that her parents had given to her when she was a young woman in the Philippines. She retrieved a round cardboard box from beneath her bed and showed me sets of matching earrings and rings. I couldn’t recall what the locket looked like that evening, but I always remembered the story attached to it.

Six months after my mother passed away, when we put her ashes to rest in June 2012 – the month of her birthday – my sisters and I spent a late night going through her list of jewelry and matching the descriptions to each piece. Before we took turns selecting the pieces that we wanted to keep, I asked my sisters if I could have the locket. It had originally belonged to my grandmother’s friend’s mother. My grandmother – my lola, in Tagalog – became the owner of the locket in a barter during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines in World War II. I was more intrigued by the story than the locket itself, though the Art Deco style has grown on me. Inside, were two small photographs of my lola and lolo, which were intact when the locket was given to me.

Pictures of my lola and lolo from my lola's locket, with the ring they gave to my mother.

Pictures of my lola and lolo from my lola’s locket, with the ring they gave to my mother.

I never really got to know my lola. She was only in my life three times: when my mother took my two sisters and me to the Philippines for the entire summer of 1972; when I was a junior in high school and my mother petitioned my lola and lolo to join us in the U.S., which ended tragically when my homesick lolo died enroute to San Francisco International Airport on his journey home; and when as a college graduation present to myself, I went back to the Philippines in December 1984 with my mother and oldest sister. My lola died not long after our visit.

Capturing my lola by her open front door, Baguio City, Philippines, December 1984.

Capturing my lola by her open front door, Baguio City, Philippines, December 1984.

I have few pictures of my lola. The last time I was in the Philippines, I tried in vain to take a candid photograph of her, but she would always catch me and strike a rigid pose. One morning, I snuck up on her, as she enjoyed her pastime of sitting on a wooden bench by the open front door and watching the morning unfold. The light was shining just right on her. It is my favorite photograph of her and hangs in my office.

Now that I have her locket, I’m beginning to wear it more. It does no good to be hidden, along with the rest of the vintage jewelry of my mother’s, in the black-and-white cardboard box with “Brownies, Brownies” written in cursive across the lid and in smaller print beneath it “and other sweet surprises.” Taking a cue from friends of ours, who inspire us to use the good crystal stemware and dishes for every day or casual dining, I wear her locket whenever I can and in so doing honor her memory.

Going neutral with mint brocade and brown maxi skirt.

Going neutral with mint brocade and brown maxi skirt.

The satellite accessories around the centerpiece locket.

The satellite accessories around the centerpiece locket.

 

Mixing Art Deco, 1950s brocade, and a splash of swishy navy.

Mixing Art Deco, 1950s brocade, and a splash of swishy navy.

 

Vintage treasure hunt: The 1960s faux fur dress

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To change one’s life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly. No exceptions.
– William James, American psychologist and philosopher

1960s faux fur dress from Treasury (Washington, D.C.).

1960s faux fur dress from Treasury (Washington, D.C.).

A few years ago, I became interested in vintage pins when I spied a simple but striking rhinestone pin on a young woman’s sweater. When I asked her where she got it, she proudly told me it was a vintage piece. Thus began my love of all things vintage.

My neighbor, who scours garage and estate sales and flea markets, and then sells her found treasures on eBay, introduced me to the addictive world of bidding and buying collectibles. It was a short addiction from which I’ve fully recovered, but I’ve amassed a beautiful collection of pins, earrings and necklaces from the likes of Eisenberg, Miriam Haskell, Vendome, Weiss and Whiting and Davis as a result. For one of my Christmas presents, my husband David gave me Julia C. Carroll’s Collecting Costume Jewelry 202: The Basics of Dating Jewelry 1935-1980, which provided wonderful backstory to my icy rhinestone and aurora borealis rhinestone jewelry! If only, however, I knew the history of the previous owners. That would be amazing.

The love of vintage evolved into a treasure hunt to find one vintage store in any city I happened to visit, which is mostly, but not always, as a result of a business trip. In the last couple of years, I’ve happily discovered N. 3rd Street in Old City Philadelphia (home to wonderful stores such as Sugarcube); Encore in Portland, Maine; Twentieth Century Limited in Boston; the Brooklyn Flea Market; and the U Street corridor in Washington, D.C., home to Treasury, Legendary Beast and GoodWood.

I’ll blog more about these places in the future – because each store has its own charm and story – but I just wanted to put out there that the idea of a treasure hunt for whatever suits your interests in visiting cities adds additional excitement to any trip. Who doesn’t love the childlike pleasure of a hunt? What is especially enjoyable is leisurely talking with the owners and sales people and learning about their stores and the stories behind their vintage finds.

Circa 1930s traveling sewing kit from Treasury (Washington, D.C.).

Circa 1930s traveling sewing kit from Treasury (Washington, D.C.).

Today’s photos focus on finds from Treasury, which was featured by Refinery29 and is nicely curated. I looked around the store, eyed some vintage pieces, went on to other treasure-hunt destinations, and then returned to Treasury.  I spied an unusual necklace, which Ashley, the friendly salesperson, had just put out. It is a 1930s traveling sewing kit shaped as a walnut – with the original thimble, straight pins, safety pins, thread and mossy green felt lining still intact. What a find. It is in fantastic condition, which made me wonder about its owner and its 80-year journey – the care in keeping it safe and sound, or maybe it was put in a drawer or box and forgotten about for years.

Inside the 1930s traveling sewing kit - all original items still intact - from Treasury (Washington, D.C.).

Inside the 1930s traveling sewing kit – all original items still intact – from Treasury (Washington, D.C.).

The other find pays homage to the decade of my birth, the 60s, in the form of a faux fur dress, which is also in mint condition. Either the dress was well taken care of or never worn. I’ll never know, but this vintage dress – literally – has a new life with me. Referencing William James’s quote, how could one not be flamboyant in a 1960s faux fur dress?

Unsigned vintage screw-back earrings and brooch, and my mother's ring, given to her by her parents in the Philippines.

Unsigned vintage screw-back earrings and brooch, and my mother’s ring, given to her by her parents in the Philippines.