The Tears of Things

Catherine at Carmen

Portrait of Catherine King in The Psychedelic Leprechaun by Jerome du Bois, October 8, 2005. All rights reserved. Do not copy in any form.

by Jerome du Bois

Exactly a year and a month ago, I published "The Fashion Designers' New Clothes," which featured the unfinished version of the dress you see finished above --The Psychedelic Leprechaun, Outsider Haute Couture created for and worn by Catherine King. (One photo detail lost in the earlier article will be made up later when Catherine herself posts about this dress, its background, its wider history, and its making. These are just my notional jottings for now.)

She wore it to the Arizona Opera's opening of Carmen Thursday night, and I couldn't have been more proud to have her on my arm. There we were, on the opening night of the cultural season in Phoenix, attending one of the half-dozen emblematic operas of the world, and she was bedecked as the essence of gypsy and flamenco, in a dress that began with a single ribbon's width --the width of life's fragility-- and never widened.

This dress was made in strips no wider than an inch-and-a-half; made of ribbons, and strips and circles from an outrageous voile dressing gown bought from a second-hand shop. And sewn together obsessively by both machine and hand. By her alone. Made with no pattern at all, and no comfortable wide swatches or bolts of cloth to begin with. And why did it take over two years to finish? I just told you: life's fragility. But we're here, all right, aren't we? bigger than life, as all of Phoenix's cultural cognoscenti saw Thursday night.

No other woman even came close. (Details not in the photo above included lace stockings and lace fingerless gloves I call "the gauntlets" and a jet-bead choker.) We know this because we promenaded back and forth on the ground floor before the performance and during both intermissions, weaving our way among the crowds, looking in vain for style, me occasionally pointing the way with my new stick, the crown of which features a woman's head, her long silver hair blowing back in the wind.

Wait until you see Catherine's outfit for The Threepenny Opera. Marlene Dietrich weeps.

Looking good at living well is the best revenge.

Posted by Jerome at October 8, 2005 07:15 PM | TrackBack