Sacapuntas

My mother's mother was the quintessential grandmother. She was a sweet woman who never swore, doted on all her grandchildren, took letter-writing very seriously and hostessing even more seriously. (She wasn't the sort to follow you around with an ashtray — that would be intrusive. But when we had grapefruit at the breakfast table, she would get up early to loosen all the segments in her guests' fruit.) She was born in Iowa in 1909. She was religious, but never ostentatious about it. She was what you picture when you picture a grandmother, and I don't think I'm biased here.

So I was really surprised to find this kicky little number among her things.

Excuse me for a second; this wig is all wrong. Yes, the spiraling black curls echo the pencil-sharpening-curlicues of the print...

But Grandma was a redhead all her life.

Out of my whole family, by the way, she's the person I resemble most. (In the face, I mean. Though I consider myself a better-than-average correspondent, the idea of inviting six adults and ten children to share my house every Xmas gives me a bad case of the lazies.)

Here is the mystery: I never saw her wear anything remotely like Sacapuntas, not even in pictures.

(I just considered the possibility of my future grandchildren finding this blog in the future dusty corners of the Internet. Grandma E-E used to be young, kids!)

If Mad Men is to be trusted (and it is, at least sartorially), these kinds of dresses would have popped up in the mid-Sixties at the earliest, though it's hard to tell, because there's not a single character that I can imagine wearing Sacapuntas. Maybe if Abe Drexler's ex-girlfriend came in to make Peggy feel insecure, she'd be wearing something like this. Grandma would have been in her mid-fifties!

And rocking it, most likely.

One of the things I love about vintage is trying to imagine the life of the person who owned the dress first/second/second-to-last. And — in a way — I don't have to do that with the dresses I inherited from Grandma, because I know her life — in a way. In a way — I don't.

All photos by Claire Loeb!