A costumed tribute
Halloween weekend was a strange one this year, and I had to delay and transform some planned things. It turned out to suit the personality I evoked, who was always fashionably late.
Today marks fifty years since we lost Edith Minturn Sedgwick. I didn’t foresee at the time I first explored her life how quickly and radically she would influence me in style and mindset. Not that I’m aiming to follow her activities down to the letter (“should I be concerned that you’re imitating her” : my dad) but just that her approach to and presentation in the world has given me permission to be a little more experimental and whimsical and bold. Or at least to wear flashier earrings and indulge my existing love for black tights.
I’m not sure young women with privilege and charisma are done any less a disservice in the current public climate than she and her ilk were in theirs. I do think there is more personal agency to go around nowadays, and that women of all ages are using it to amplify their own voices and tell their own stories. Edie didn’t often get the opportunity to tell hers. The work we do, we can do in her honor.
Raising a glass to your fog, your amphetamines, and your pearls. Whatever party there is after this, I’ll dance on the table with you.
20 April 1943-16 November 1971 ♥️