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    My Mom, Style Icon
    My Mom, Style Icon
    My Mom, Style Icon
    Ebook269 pages46 minutes

    My Mom, Style Icon

    By Piper Weiss

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Moms are people, too...fashionable people! Before we came along to yank on their skirts, they showed leg, sported killer bangs, and flaunted bikinis. Some even wore feathers and halter tops and drove around on motorcycles. Was their style shocking? Yes. Covetable? Absolutely. Based on Piper Weiss's hugely popular blog of the same name, this book features 200 color photographs from decades past of moms showing us how its done. A perfect gift for mothers, daughters, and style mavens, My Mom, Style Icon is an entertaining celebration of the very first—and most important—style icon in a young woman's life.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChronicle Books Digital
    Release dateApr 29, 2011
    ISBN9781452105550
    My Mom, Style Icon
    Author

    Piper Weiss

    Piper Weiss has served as editor in chief at Levo, editorial director for HelloGiggles, and features editor for the New York Daily News and Yahoo. She is the author of the book My Mom, Style Icon and has written for various publications, including Hazlitt, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Elle.com, and Refinery29. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. www.PiperWeiss.com

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    Reviews for My Mom, Style Icon

    4.5/5

    6 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Wish it had a page to add in one's own mum!
    • 5/5
      I presented this book to my mom for Mother's Day and nothing has delighted me more than the wave of awe that spread over her face when she came across the page with a picture of her teenage self smiling up at her. This is the first time someone in my family has appeared in a published work and I am so grateful that Piper chose to include my mom's photo in her fantastic debut book based on her blog of the same name. This book will be cherished forever, passed down the generations so that years from now my [great-to-the-nth-power] grandchildren will get a small glimpse of the woman that gave the life that resulted in their life too. The book is well-crafted with beautiful design elements and a varied selection of photographs depicting mothers from different ethnicities, eras, and backgrounds. My Mom, Style Icon features Ms. Weiss's distinctive voice: fiesty on top yet genuinely respectful at the core. The book's uncommon squareness makes it appear petite, but it is a hefty work much like a treasured family album that demands a delicate handling.
    • 5/5
      Piper Weiss’ epiphany came while looking through her mother’s closet for a fancy clutch purse to bring to a wedding. As she pulled out one fabulous vintage accessory after another, she realized that her mother had, once upon a time, been possessed of some serious fashion sense. Crocheted belts and fringed vests led to a couple of photo albums full of pictures of her mom, Marilyn, looking incredibly fabulous, back before Piper was even a gleam in her eye. When asked, she could peg each piece in her memory, and the answers were a little bit mind-blowing…“That? I wore that to a party in the West Village in the late ’60s. I remember Barry Gibb was holding court by an indoor swimming pool in the middle of the living room. Lots of pot smoke.”The thought of her mother as someone with a whole history of style that precluded all those arguments about how she dressed as a teenager was an eye-opener for Piper. “It’s not that I didn’t know my mother had a past,” she explains, “I just didn’t realize there was so much of it. And that it was so good looking.”So in March, 2009 Piper—a senior editor at Shine, writer and actress—started up a blog, My Mom, the Style Icon. At first it was an homage to Marilyn in all her sartorial wonder, but as soon as she asked for readers to send in their own contributions the photos came flooding in. After all, what’s more fun than looking at those old family photos with an eye toward your mom’s retro awesomeness?The blog blossomed and, happily for stylin’ moms and their offspring everywhere, became a book, just out at the beginning of May. As blog-to-print projects go, this one is appropriately great-looking throughout, with Chronicle’s trademark tasteful colors and unfussy layouts. Loosely organized into subject chapters, the book has a chatty feel, very much like paging through a family album with friends. There are hairdos, wedding dresses, bathing suits, rebel moms, and photos with the lucky dads—no mom-mom couples in evidence, but then this is about the clothes, not the lifestyles. And, in case this needs stating, the women here look great. If a piece of clothing is labeled vintage now, or if a look is being “brought back” by some designer, you can bet it’s been rocked by somebody’s mother here. There’s not a pair of mom jeans to be found. Obviously, we all have a lot to live up to.The daughters, sons and grandchildren who submitted photos get their say as well, most amused and amusing, others wistful for moms gone too soon. Weiss gives us some celebrity features, including Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, John Buffalo Mailer and Chloe Sevigny on their iconic mothers. But most of all it’s the regular Janes who capture the imagination. My Mom, Style Icon will make you look twice at the ordinary-looking older women you pass every day, wondering just what kind of hipster history might lurk beyond that pants suit.And yes, a disclaimer: My mother and I are in there on page 150, in a gondola in Venice circa 1966. My mom looks stunning in a scarf and Wayfarers, and I have hit my apex of style splendor at age three, in a little red car coat and what looks suspiciously like fishnet tights. Never again would I be that well-dressed, and all I can say is thank you, Piper, for celebrating moments in the sun like these—for us, for our moms, and to give our kids a clue of how to best pay their respects to the fabulous women we were, and are.

    Book preview

    My Mom, Style Icon - Piper Weiss

    Copyright

    Introduction

    ENTER ANY DEPARTMENT STORE CHANGING ROOM, AND you’re bound to hear the same two phrases: Try it on and I don’t want to, Mom. As humans, we’re hard-wired to rebel against our parents and control our children. And this species malfunction is most obvious during shopping trips. At least that was my experience. I never wanted to dress like my mom. She didn’t know me or where I was coming from and so on and so forth.

    And then one day, everything changed. I mean everything.

    I had a wedding to attend, and I needed a fancy purse—the kind without strings or straps that you have to hold in your palm all night—the kind that can only fit a few nickels, and—if you’re lucky—a tampon. The kind only moms own. Rifling through my mother Marilyn’s closet, a collector of these props, I accidentally pulled out a crocheted belt from the ’60s. I dug a little deeper and came across a suede fringe vest. Both were items I’d been coveting in stores—the knockoff versions, of course. And here I was in the presence of the real thing. I asked my mom when they were from. Her replies: Oh, that’s from a SoHo boutique. I used to wear that when I was an art student at NYU.

    That? I wore that to a party in the West Village in the late ’60s. I remember Barry Gibb was holding court by an indoor swimming pool in the middle of the living room. Lots of pot smoke.

    Wait…what?

    My digs through the years eventually led me to the mother lode: two white photo albums stuff ed with pictures that I found tucked in a cabinet in my parents’ living room. When I slipped the first one from its hiding place, a brittle, faded snapshot fell out. Mom?

    Oh, that’s when I went to Jamaica for the weekend with my friend.

    For the weekend?

    My rent was low; things were reasonable back then. If there was a great last-minute deal, my friend and I would just take off. We stayed at the Playboy Club in Ocho Rios. It was a total party scene.

    Is that an arm cuff you’re wearing…and a cigarette in your hand?

    Oh, yes. And I remember I just picked up that hat from a little store in the town there.

    Who is that soldier ogling you?

    There were always guys just hanging around.

    Who is this woman, and what did she do with my mother? I wondered. And more to the point, can I borrow those bell-bottoms?

    With each picture I examined, I found more treasures: caftans, chained belts, hair pieces, fake round-framed glasses, false eyelashes, embroidered blazers, mod minidresses. Camels, even.

    When were you in Morocco, Mom?

    Oh, I don’t know—’67? ’68?

    It’s not that I didn’t know my mother had a past; I just didn’t realize there was so much of it. And that it was so good looking. I’d been trying for years to acquire the femme fatale hairstyle she flaunted in the pictures. I collected bracelets for months to pull off the kind of arm accessory she let dangle in front of the camera effortlessly. And the men? I didn’t even know they made them like that.

    I realized then that I will turn into my mother. If I’m lucky.

    Let me reassure you that Mom and I weren’t always on the same page when it came to style. Here is a brief history of our relationship:

    Age 5: I cut off all my hair to play Hansel in an impromptu staging of Hansel and Gretel in my bedroom. Mom flips out, taking complete and permanent control of my follicles. Teaches me her age-old technique of hot rollers and bobby pins.

    Age 7: Mom—an Annie Hall doppelganger—dresses me like she dresses herself—red and blue turtlenecks, oxford shirts with popped collars. I’d rather wear pink tutus.

    Age 13: Mom and I battle over my bat mitzvah dress but come to one agreement—pinning gym socks into the bosom so it fits.

    Age 15: We engage in a period of mutual hatred stemming from polar visions of what kinds of clothing I look good in.

    Age 18: Mom’s silk scarf collection now requires two drawers. Meanwhile, as a freshman in college, I cultivate a single dreadlock and pierce my eyebrow. Big mistake.

    Age 19: Thrift stores have become my way of life. Meanwhile, as Mom’s modern wardrobe grows, her collection of vintage fashions are lodged in an unreachable closet shelf, unbeknownst to me.

    Age 25: I discover her vintage scarves, belts, and jewelry. Her stuff is more authentic and in better shape than anything in a store.

    Age 30: I find her old pictures and covet everything in them. Dressed in the pieces I’ve adopted over the years, looking like a more attractive version of me, our relationship boils down to a fashion page in US Weekly: She wore it better.

    Those pictures triggered a life-altering revelation—the kind that compels a daughter to start, and more importantly maintain, a blog. I’d spent the past few years editing fashion and lifestyle articles for the New York Daily News, where I’d insert the term style icon in stories about Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Angelina Jolie. Finally, I’d found my own. The blog My Mom, the Style Icon began as a tribute to Marilyn’s buried fashion past. But everyone I showed it to would insist that his or her mom had some incredible style, too. They weren’t exaggerating.

    Submissions piled up from around the world, including Canada, Iran, Ireland, and Chile. While the countries, eras, and fashions varied, the subtext of the submissions was the same: awe. It was as if people were emerging from an apocalyptic cloud of smoke, each holding a picture of her mom, saying It all makes sense now.

    One of the first e-mails I received was from a daughter whose mother grew up in Croatia in the ’60s. In addition to describing the schoolgirl wool skirt and sweater getup she wore, the writer added: My mother had a turbulent relationship with her mom, so she moved to Canada when she was just twenty years old to make a new start for herself. Another submission showed a mom flaunting her long legs in high-waisted shorts in 1968. The story goes: "She sent this to my dad when he was stationed in Vietnam

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