Scrubbing Up

Ah, January in Chicago.  My hands are so dry that I got a paper cut the other day from a pink Post-it note.  (I bleed for my art, no?)

Here's how I survive: I make liberal use of the eucalyptus-scented steam room at my Equinox gym, then I coat myself in Creme de Corps by Kiehl's.  This is the richest body lotion I've found.  (As it should be, at $26.50 per 8.4 ounce bottle!)

To balance out the high cost of staying soft and hydrated, I advocate a simple, effective and practically free body scrub.  Just mix up Kosher salt and honey to your desired texture (test on back of hands) then add a few drops of essential oil.  (Lavender is nice since it contains natural antibiotic properties.)  This takes care of any rough spots.

But be careful if you write this recipe down on a sticky note.  Those things are hazardous!

A Plaza Tale

I've heard from a number of people who remember the Tailored Woman store and its mercurial owner, Eugene K. Denton.  I received the following message a few months ago from Diana Pons, who gave me permission to share her story.

My father, Victor Pons, was the maitre d' of the Oak Room at The Plaza Hotel on 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, just steps from The Tailored Woman. I am writing a book about my father's years at The Plaza (1953-1973) and the many experiences he, and I, had there. I was trying to remember when The Tailored Woman closed. I just Googled the store's name and I found your web site!

My father's years at The Plaza reflect my life from age 6 to 26. Your great-great-granduncle (Eugene K. Denton) came often to the Oak Room. He liked my father very much, and my father liked him. When I was 18 (that would be 1965), I was looking for a summer job. My father asked him if he needed help in the store. He gave me a job for the summer in the accounting department on the top floor. At the end of the day, all the merchandise ticket stubs from sales were brought upstairs (there were four of us in my department). We'd spend the next day adding them up to make sure that they matched the amount of money taken in. I had other duties too, but that was the primary one.

I read on your web site that you never met your great-great-granduncle. He was a character, and I mean that only in the nicest way. He was a tough taskmaster and kept everyone in the store on their toes. When he would get upset if something wasn't done right, he would bluster and yell. His face would get so red that I thought he would explode! He was, however, never anything but courteous and kind to me. When I left at the end of the summer, he took me to lunch (not in the Oak Room - women were only allowed in for dinner and supper until 1973) and he gave me a gift of a lovely brooch from the store, befitting a young girl, which I still have. My father told me that he said that I was a "smart girl and an excellent employee who would do well in life." Especially at age 18, I was very honored by his compliment.

I did run into him once more in a restaurant on Madison Avenue. He recognized me first and came to my table to say hello. I was pleasantly surprised that he would remember me, considering all the people he must have met over many years. He left before I did, and when I asked for my check my waiter told me that it was paid, compliments of Mr. Denton.

I thought you might enjoy my story, and I am so glad that I found your web site and learned a little more about your family and the history of The Tailored Woman. It was a wonderful store owned by a man I have never forgotten.
 
Isn't that lovely?  And isn't it fortunate that I didn't inherit the Denton temper?  (No comments from the peanut gallery, please...)

Meet John Insley Blair, Our Robber Baron

There I was, innocently leafing through Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, when I stumbled across my family's very own robber baron, John Insley Blair.  Imagine my surprise when I learned that Gladwell ranks him as the 52nd richest human ever.  In recorded history.  Upon his death in 1899, Blair left his direct heirs $70 million, the equivalent of many billions today.  He left my family a creaky old house, the Homestead, in Blairstown, New Jersey.

Blair was a cousin and business partner; my Vail ancestors helped him build the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western railroad.  My great-great-grandparents shared the Homestead with Blair when he was an elderly widower.  In this photo, Blair sits at the center of a family grouping in front of the house.  My great-great-grandparents are on the far left and right, respectively.  My great-grandmother, Mary Gregory Vail, is leaning on her father.  (She married Allen Collier of Cincinnati.)

Blair is wearing his shabby old coat in the photo.  Famously tightfisted, the multi-millionaire ate a cup of custard and coffee as his daily lunch.  There is a great family story about Blair dining at a railroad cafe while inspecting work on the line at west.  Upon noticing that railroad employees were entitled to a discount, Blair plunked down his quarter to pay for his meal.  The young woman at the cash register said, "Do you belong to the railroad, sir?"  Blair replied, no doubt with a miserly gleam in his eye, "No, but the railroad belongs to me!"

His descendants left Blairstown to join New York society.  Daughter Emma married publishing magnate Charles Scribner, and we have photos of their son (Charles Jr.) in short pants.  A great-granddaughter became Mrs. H.O. Havemeyer, Jr. Long before I knew of this connection, I admired items from the vast Havemeyer Collection (including magnificent Impressionist paintings) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

As for the Homestead, my grandmother grandly gave it to the president of neighboring Blair Academy, who promptly tore it down. (Figures.)

The Tailored Woman store, circa 1967

I received permission from the generous and talented Dave Hay to post this photo of the Tailored Woman store, taken as part of a series of photos of Midtown when Dave was newly-arrived in the city in 1967.  I love this shot of the corner of 57th and Fifth.  The building, which still houses Bergdorf Goodman, looks very much the same today.

Take That Frown And Turn It Around: Wasp Botox

Sure, you could spend upwards of $400 a pop on Botox. But if the idea of shelling out that kind of dough to shoot a deadly toxin into your face makes you, well, scowl, pick up a box of Frownies facial patches instead.  (Find them for $14.99 at Whole Foods.)

Supposedly a Hollywood secret for decades—Renee Russo has copped to using them—these retro wrinkle remedies are just the thing for a needle-phobic Recessionista. The nifty adhesive patches smell like craft paper but work like a charm. I moistened the back of one and slapped it on my forehead before bed, and it smoothed out my brow crinkles by morning. The company claims that, over time, the patches will actually retrain the muscles of the face to reduce lines permanently.

One caveat: while the patches are pain free, the sight of your Frownies-covered face could cause your significant other to vanish along with your wrinkles. (Unless, that is, he thinks they make you look like Renee.)

Fleeting Thoughts of a Grumpy Wasp Girl (or, don't stand in my way at the escalator!)

So much for my New Year's resolution to stop scowling so much.  But can you blame me?  I have to commute by bus and train every day, and the Chicago Transit Authority is guaranteed to put a frown on my face, rain or shine.  Today's gripe: commuters who choose to stand on the escalator, when the rest of us are trying to get to work on time.  (It's only about 20 steps, people. Remember that resolution you made to get more exercise?  Well, now is your chance!  It's called walking!)

Here's a bonus impatient-me-at-escalator story: I almost knocked Rod Stewart down a couple of years ago while I was shopping at 900 N. Michigan.  Emerging from Bloomingdale's, I passed a leggy blonde ("Wow, that woman is really tall!") with a baby stroller, then almost ran into an older blond guy just hanging out at the top of the escalator, waiting for the rest of the family (Penny Lancaster and son Alistair) to catch up.  The thing that stopped me was his spiky hair, sticking out like porcupine quills.  ("Wow, that guy has Rod Stewart hair... oh, wait...").  Rod sort of shuffled out of my way and I murmured an apology as I slipped by him. 

I didn't look back to see what sort of scowl he was sporting. 

Haiti, Blood and Revolution

A somber post, I'm afraid.

Haiti is on everyone's mind this week. I gave to the Red Cross and Yele, but wish I could do more. Unfortunately the stupid Red Cross variant Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease restrictions prohibit me from giving blood, since I spent more than 3 months cumulatively in the U.K. between 1980 and 1996. (Others may say I am a bit of a mad cow, but I assure you I'm sane and I have quite nice blood to offer.)

Speaking of which, it turns out I'm not entirely English; there's a bit of Scottish, French, German (and even possibly Cherokee) in the mix. As I've dug into the research for my family memoir, I've learned that we have a Haitian connection. The French blood comes via Rene Gregoire, who lived in Port au Prince.

Gregoire's life is a tale of two revolutions. According to family lore he first came to the states with Lafayette, fighting for the colonies in our Revolutionary War. Then he made his way to Haiti, where he owned a coffee plantation. He died on the eve of Haiti's revolution, which started as an uprising by slaves; his family believed that Gregoire was poisoned, perhaps by one of his own servants. (If Gregoire indeed had a plantation, which has not been proven, then he must have been a slave owner.) Most of Rene's offspring were presumed to have been killed in the violent insurrection that took the majority of white lives on the island. One son, Caspar Gregoire, survived; he was supposedly rowed to safety by a sympathetic slave. He was taken onboard a U.S. merchant vessel and landed in Philadelphia, where he changed the family name to Gregory.

Caspar became a boat captain and, in a strange twist, once took freed slaves from Charleston to Liberia. My great-great-great-grandfather, Caspar's son Henry Duval Gregory, was a very learned professor. One of his brothers moved to Leipzig, Germany and enlisted to fight for his adopted country in World War I.  So the Gregoires were an interesting if misguided bunch, hurtling back and forth between quests for liberty and domination.

I'll end with a prayer for the living and the dead of Haiti: As blood flows once again in the streets of Port au Prince, and lives and hope are crushed, please God may the miracle of peace and stability spring forth this time from the ruins.

In which my hometown is Gill-otined

Oh dear. I opened the new Vanity Fair (the one with the creepy photos of Tiger Woods on the cover) and found my hometown slammed in the first sentence of A.A. Gill’s article on the even creepier Creation Museum: “It’s not in the nature of stoic Cincinnatians to boast, which is fortunate, really, for they have meager pickings to boast about.”

True enough, after last weekend’s drubbing of the Bengals at the hands of the Jets. And I suppose if Cincinnatians hide all of our other vices (booze, gambling, live nude girls, the airport) across the river, we’ll have to accept the wacky, anti-evolution Creation Museum--actually located in Petersburg, Kentucky--as ours, too. 

Happily, this issue also includes a spotlight on Persephone Books, the English publishing house devoted to reissues of forgotten 20th century classics. I’m a longtime subscriber to the catalog, and while visiting friends in London a while back I stopped in at the tiny Persephone shop to pick up The Shuttle, Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1907, ripped-from-the-headlines novel about American heiresses snapping up English lords--sometimes much to their mutual regret.

(Too bad the hilariously acerbic, Scottish-born Gill wasn’t around back then to warn our young women of fortune about the English, whom he memorably describes as "the lumpen and louty, course, unsubtle, beady-eyed, beefy-bummed herd" in his book The Angry Island.)

Pret a Vendre (to Pret a Manger)

Translation: ready to sell to Pret a Manger!  (Which means "ready to eat" in French.)

In my last post I mentioned that I was hoping the UK's Pret A Manger would bring their fresh, tasty, ready-to-go sandwiches, soups and salads to Chicago.  I received a nice comment in response that my dreams are set to come true this year.  Can't wait to be able to snap up a Cheddar and Chutney sandwich on my daily commute. 

I noticed this intriguing statement while exploring the company's website: Do you have a friend or neighbor who makes delicious natural food? Anything from jam to sausages. Please let us know or get them to call us. We are always looking for delicious, ‘out of the ordinary’ ingredients.

Wasps adore savory cocktail snacks, and my father makes the best bleu cheese dip in the world.  (He uses a secret ingredient that I am not at liberty to reveal.)  At Christmas my step-siblings and I gobbled up an entire bowl--leaving no room for a perfectly nice ham that was supposed to be dinner--while discussing how to market Dad's special concoction.  The dip is terrific with potato chips (or "crisps" in Pret's parlance), but it would no doubt make for a decadently rich, tasty sandwich spread.  I think we'll have to call on our new friends at Pret a Manger! 

(Being known as the "Denton's dip heiress" would be rather fabulous, no?)

Tea and Telomeres

I blame my Anglophilism in part on my mother’s tea parties when I was a little girl. I still have a cup of English Breakfast tea every morning, and I sip green tea in the afternoon. (Never, ever coffee… shudder.) So of course I was intrigued when multiple news sites picked up on a study purporting to show that tea drinkers may be 5 years biologically younger than their actual age (and presumably younger than you Java Joe types). The results appear in the January issue of the British Journal of Nutrition. (Now, now--let’s not have any snide jokes about how 'British nutrition' is an oxymoron. Yes, there’s little nutritious value in Spotted Dick or Toad in the Hole, but overall, British cuisine has come quite a long way in the past few decades. I for one am delighted that the wonderful Pret A Manger sandwich chain and Wagamama noodle shops have arrived on our shores, and hope that Chicago will be next for colonization!)

At any rate, I looked up the study and found that it has the rather racy title, “Chinese tea consumption is associated with longer telomere length in elderly Chinese men.” Yowza! Aren’t their wives lucky!  But seriously, I read that telomeres are “endcaps on chromosomes,” and shortened telomeres are not such a good thing because they lead to a slowdown in the division of cells.  (Sort of like split ends, right?)  Three cups of black or green tea a day appeared to have a positive effect, preventing those Chinese men’s, um, telomeres from shriveling up.

While the study doesn’t say anything about making Wasp women appear 5 years younger, I’m guessing my cells are fresh and youthful from my lifelong tea consumption. I’m going to go grab a cup of green tea right now just to make sure. Might I suggest that you do the same?

Americana Woman

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, two iconic Wasp brands, L.L. Bean and Land's End, are trying to make their clothes and their catalogs more appealing to younger customers, who tend to shop online or in person.  These same consumers started the recent 'Americana' trend; the term used to mean historical documents and artifacts, but apparently now means classic clothes worn with a twist of irony.

Of course, there was no Internet when I was growing up, so catalogs were a big deal.  We kept a large basket full of them near the fireplace in the family room, and I idled away many a winter night flipping through pretty much the entire list from the iconic Preppy Handbook: Bean's, Eddie Bauer, Carroll Reed, Lilly Pulitzer, Gokeys.  But my favorite was the splended Miller riding catalog.  I wanted everything in it.  (An Hermes saddle, which even then cost over $1,000?  Yes, please!  Alas, Santa didn't comply.)  Now catalogs irritate me--such a waste of paper--and I've turned into one of those cranks who calls the company and asks to be removed from the mailing list.

I am going to give Bean's a try again, however.  I've decided that Hunter Wellie boots have become too common a sight on the streets of Chicago, whereas they used to be reserved only for gardening and mucking out stalls.  And they offer little warmth unless paired with very thick socks.  So I'm going to go back to what I grew up wearing in cold, snowy Midwest winters: the classic Maine hunting shoe. A piece of 'Americana' I'm happy to support.