Vintage Jacket
She was a lady of refined style and taste.
A Great Lady. Small—not quite petite—narrow, lithe and beautifully proportioned. The missing couture label would have whispered of golf club dinners and bathtub gin, money that flowed like honeyed wine, ocean breezes from the Atlantic as the sun rose, long-stemmed roses with a card waiting in a box on the downstairs parlor table.
Black wool gabardine, onyx as coal once upon a time, black as the longest night in any lifetime. Cloth so dense, a drop of water could not penetrate. She now sagged at the elbows and the cuffs, rich dark color muted to grayish blue.
Broken threads along the upturned hem, raveled by age and use, hung over the seam binding, their randomly scattered number like the years of her long glorious life.
The satin piping hugging the neckline and lapels was pitted like a country road, and there were gaps that would be repaired lovingly soon where piping and garment held thready hands.
Her lining was slightly discolored in well-worn places. In others, the shiny fabric was separating like a spider web with too much dew dripping from a tree limb.
But the jewel neckline— as tender as a bride’s, perfectly circled like a lover’s hands around the neck—still could bring tears to the eyes of a couture lover.
On a starry night in early spring, the evening’s ensemble might have included a double strand of Mother’s pearls and a brooch of faux diamonds. Perhaps a long silk gown with a sweet empire waist. A beaded clutch purse. A scented lace handkerchief. Opera gloves in a robust black with tiny jet buttons, delicately enclosed with cloth loops.
At a holiday ball in winter, she’d dine with patent leather laced boots, a fox stole, a marquis emerald necklace, a velvet cloche. Red, red gloves in Italian leather. Her dance card would be full already, and she would dream about the evening’s waltz with No. 5.
She was serene in her advanced age, regal from her beautifully tailored shoulder seams to her bias cut tails. The black wool, passed on to gray and shiny, still lured the eye and spoke softly and eloquently of her lineage. One had only to touch her lapel to breathe the air of bygone grandeur, of eye-lowered allure, of soft lips and champagne bubbles. Of diaries and sighs and moonlight kisses in the garden after cards.
Alone, but only for a little while, the temperature-controlled room lightly rippling the plastic bag draped over her form, she was still a lady of refined style and taste. A Great Lady.
