Plumcake’s internet friend, Annalucia, writes:
The Annalucia’s Great Challenge of Superfantasticness will occur on the 18th of August. On that day … she is off to Oak Park to meet some professional translators. The translation is the profession she is only just now adopting, and she confesses to some trepidation as she has been many years out of the work force and is meeting these people for the first time. The plan is to meet at the open-air art show and then to adjourn to a cafe for dinner, and the weather will probably be most brutally hot.Have you ladies any suggestions for the middle aged size 16 lady in this situation? The Annalucia is considering the white cotton trousers, the white camisole, and the “aubergine” silk shirt over all. Perhaps she will wear her white sandals, or if this is too much white, she can wear her red ones.
Plumcake wholeheartedly supports wearing white in the light, natural fibers but worries that perhaps the silk aubergine shirt would be Too Much. Especially if there might be a glistening situation to worry about (Plumcake herself glistens like a saran-wrapped mule)
Solution? Linen!
There is nothing more chic than summer linen on a woman of a certain age. It’s so Kate Hepburn I can’t even stand it. A society grand dame who goes to my church wears nothing but silk and linen in the summer and she always looks so elegant and cool as she just breezes by the rest of us mere mortals who are melting in the Texas sun.
I recommend this light silk-lined linen dress available at Macy’s –that’s Marshall Fields to you Chicagoers, Chicagoites, residents of
Even better, it’s in your size and on sale for under $100!
No white sandals please. Though many will disagree, Plumcake feels that all-white shoes are best left to nurses, brides and strippers dressed up as nurses and brides.
Bonne chance & buena suerte!
Plumcake
What a pretty, elegant dress! But doesn’t linen have just the slightest problem with wrinklage? One would hate to show up at a job interview all rumpled. Or does the silk lining help with that?
Comment by Bridey — August 7, 2007 @ 3:59 pm
oh – but linen WRINKLES, unless the silk helps. And, perhaps depending on the weave, the seams in linen pull (separating warp from weave – or whatever you call the longitudinal threads from the latitudinal threads). So you have to be very careful about fit – no tight/snug spots when standing or sitting – or they will loosen up nicely on their own by separating the threads at the seams.
Comment by g-dog — August 7, 2007 @ 6:41 pm
LINEN? Oh honey, no. I do a wrinkle test: grab a handful of the fabric and crush. If the creases remain, I don’t even try it on. Life’s too short for linen!
Comment by Nabushi — August 7, 2007 @ 7:03 pm
Oh, but linen is supposed to wrinkle – and curiously enough, it still looks good wrinkled. It adds a hint of insouciance to an otherwise too stern outfit.
Comment by dinazad — August 8, 2007 @ 2:18 am
I’m not so sure about linen. I myself adore it and usually end up buying it when I see it and regretting it when I actually wear it. Hence, I have many wonderful linen outfits hanging in dry cleaning bags in my closet that I am terrified of wearing. On another note, you have awakened memories of my childhood with the “glistening”. My mother used to say “a lady never sweats, she glistens”. Too funny :-)
Comment by gemdiva — August 8, 2007 @ 8:49 am
The linen dress is really attractive, but if wrinkling is a worry, I always kind of like the wrinkling in my linen shirts and not so much in my linen skirts. I wonder if a big linen shirt might not be good with another fabric bottom. I also liked the sound of the aubergine shirt.
Comment by maryb — August 8, 2007 @ 9:30 am
I actually liked the sound of the aubergine shirt as well — not my own personal style, but it sounded like the Annalucia, she was comfortable in it and could pull it off smashingly. I’m envisioning the original outfit proposed, but perhaps with a pair of elegant embellished flat sandals in a caramel-like light brown?
Comment by in la — August 8, 2007 @ 1:54 pm
Hrmf. All due respect to the Plumcake, and much is due given the excellence of the posts preceding this one (both authored by the Plumcake and the Francesca), but.. Macy’s shall never be Marshall Field’s to Chicagoans. Full stop!
Comment by sabrina — August 8, 2007 @ 2:16 pm
Plumcake, the KateriBella also “glistens like a saran-wrapped mule.” The perfection of this statement needs nothing more than a hearty laugh and a nod in agreement — superb!
Gemdiva, I, too, am terrified to wear linen. I have a cream linen pant and jacket combo that looks absotively wonderful on me…but don’t like looking like I just took something out of the dryer 2.7 moments after I put it on!
Comment by KateriBella — August 8, 2007 @ 7:45 pm
Ah! Molte grazie to the Plumcake and all the kind ladies who gave their opinions and advice on this matter.
The pretty beige dress, alas, will not do, even if the link did not lead to a little notice saying “Sorry, this item is unavailable.” The beige color does the Annalucia no favors, and the tie belt…well, even as a younger and slenderer woman, her figure could only be described as “rectangular” – no waist, and anything that ties there merely calls attention to this unfortunate fact. So she favors tunic-length shirts with no belts. But perhaps the brightly-colored linen shirt will serve the purpose. And she will definitely go looking for the caramel sandals.
Comment by Annalucia — August 9, 2007 @ 9:28 am
I have found that if you wash the linen instead of dry-cleaning it (wash in cold, tumble on low), over time it softens nicely and doesn’t wrinkle as much. Love the linen. Good luck to the Annalucia on the interview.
Comment by Pinkleader — August 14, 2007 @ 1:28 pm