Your Blue Girlfriend
“Your blue girlfriend is very pretty.”
The year was 2008 and it was springtime in Paris. My mother had come to visit me while I was on my romp across Europe. That was the year between high school and university when, fancying myself a real “beetnik” who drank wine under bridges and wrote poems under persimmon trees, I cycled from farm to farm and harvested olives or planted tulips in exchange for room and board.
Neither of us had much money, but we were staying (free of charge) in spitting distance of the Champs Elysées in my mother’s Italian boyfriend’s former lover’s stylish pied-à-terre, and we were feeling luscious.
One afternoon while we strolled around the Île St-Louis, we saw a beautiful blue velvet coat with floral embroidery in a shop window, and though she really couldn’t afford it, my mother insisted that she had to buy it for me. Walking out of the shop wearing that dreamy confection, I felt a little guilty about my mother’s sacrifice, but there was something in her face that said I shouldn’t - she was proud.
Later on, still high in the azure on the cloud of this purchase, we descended into the metro station at Cité, and an elegant pair of Frenchmen in their early twenties - beautiful men - smiled at us, and one of them said to my mother: “Your blue girlfriend is very pretty.”
While it was flattering, this small Frenchy flirtation, I’ve never been one to dress for the male gaze. There’s nothing inherently wrong with doing so (all the power to every femme fatale who looks a million bucks!) but for me, the greatest sartorial pleasure is in wearing clothes that I find pretty, that speak to me, that float my boat.
Clothes have been on my mind more than usual, lately, as I’ve committed to getting out of a bit of a rut in terms of my self image. Full disclosure (and this is me being vulnerable): I’m currently recuperating from some mental health challenges that have also affected my physical experience. For a long time, I’ve been wallowing in shame, contemptuous of my body, most days hiding it in the same couple of things that disappear it - a big, black Nirvana sweatshirt, a coat like a sleeping bag, a now-threadbare pair of leggings. I’m not saying that clothes make the woman, but I certainly do feel a pep in my step when I dress myself well - and when doing psychological battle, I think it’s fair to say that making this effort might help secure the little wins that add up to better days.
So: a commitment, in April, to wearing something cute every single day. Importantly, it doesn’t have to be for the entire day. Before cooking or cleaning, say, I usually change back into my old (faithful, comforting) rags. We’re a third of the way through the month today, and so far I’ve kept up the experiment/kept the promise to myself. It’s been fun, putting together new outfits, actually wearing the clothes I thought I couldn’t wear unless I felt more confident in my skin. Turns out sometimes you have to fake it til you make it.
One thing I will say about the journey I’m on to figure out my style: I don’t know much yet, but I know I still - and will always - love blue. From the linen wrap-around work dress I wore everywhere on my honeymoon to the trusty men’s button-down I wore all last summer on repeat to my shifts at the farm, I always feel most at home in this colour. Most truly myself. True blue.
The initial idea for the garden bed that borders the outdoor dining area at Maison Blum was to have only white flowers that would glow in the half-light as we sat out for late dinners - I imagined a sort of Sissinghurst vibe - but blue crept her way in. First she came in the form of some stubborn lupins that had been there already for some time, and then she came in a frank, welcome wave of everything from delphinium to sea holly to hydrangea.
If I were to choose a perfect shade of blue, it might just have to be that of this grape hyacinth pictured above. Muscari armeniacum has such a lovely springtime scent, and with the little white frills at the edges of each bell it reminds me of a bygone time of lace gloves and ballgowns. I can hardly wait to plant it out at Maison Blum. Apparently, it’s as easy to grow as dandelions (almost) and it is eager to naturalize and spread. The bulbs do not require lifting, but every few years or so it can be done in early fall to manage overcrowding, and you’ll get bonus plants by dividing the clumps.
Now, to get out of this housecoat and on to the day in something cute and, likely, blue! I will leave you with these lyrics from Joanna Newsom who looks quite like a grape hyacinth herself in this perfect dress from Rodarte: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/46936021092204507/
THIS SIDE OF THE BLUE
Svetlana sucks lemons across from me,
and I am progressing abominably.
And I do not know my own way to the sea
but the saltiest sea knows its own way to me.
The city that turns, turns protracted and slow
and I find myself toeing th'embarcadero
and I find myself knowing the things that I knew
which is all that you can know on this side of the blue
And Jamie has eyes black and shiny as boots
and they march at you, two-by-two (re-loo, re-loo)
when she looks at you, you know she's nowhere near through:
it's the kindest heart beating this side of the blue.
And the signifieds butt heads with the signifiers,
and we all fall down slack-jawed to marvel at words!
While across the sky sheet the impossible birds,
in a steady, illiterate movement homewards.
And Gabriel stands beneath forest and moon.
See them rattle & boo, see them shake, see them loom.
See him fashion a cap from a page of Camus;
see him navigate deftly this side of the blue.
And the rest of our lives will the moments accrue
when the shape of their goneness will flare up anew.
Then we do what we have to do (re-loo, re-loo)
which is all you can do on this side of the blue.
