|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
There is a photograph
of Victoria Ocampo that depicts her crossing at
an intersection: proud and paying no heed to the
traffic. She wears pants and a fur jacket. Victoria,
a fashion lover, sought comfort above all and flouted
the absurd customs of the women of the era who believed
that pants were meant to be worn only by men.
Sylvia Marlowe recalls that one day during the 1940s,
Victoria went out to lunch with Alfred Knopf in
New York. At the restaurant, the doorman refused
entry to the pair, indicating the flannel pants
of the lady as the root of the rebuff. “She
never seemed to pack a single skirt when traveling,”
Marlowe remembers.
Yet Victoria’s feminist stances didn’t
interfere with her admiration of Coco Chanel. When
in Paris she would always make a detour to the Maison
Chanel to pick up a few suits; in her autobiography
she describes in detail the Chanel suit she wore
for her first meeting with Keyserling in Paris:
“navy tailored suit, blue, pink, and brown
sweater.”
Although she admired and shared the writer Susan
Sontag’s positions of the rights of women,
Victoria diverged from her North America counterpart
with regard to fashion. Sontag maintained that the
dictates of style were frivolous, and advised women
to stop worrying about their physical appearance.
Victoria, in contrast, reflected that “it
would be a shame for them to do away with the spectacle
of a well-dressed woman.”
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
