If she doesn’t whisper anything in my ear . . . it would be catastrophic. : The Pale Greening of Encino
I have heard it said that when a duck is born, he automatically assumes the first living creature he encounters is his mother. It could be a puppy or it could be a werewolf, but regardless of the disparity in looks and attitudes, it is mama nonetheless. Ducks, you might say, are damned fools.
I mention this only because I have a similar problem when I awaken in the morning. I do not assume that the first person I see is my mother, but I do tend to concentrate on the first color I hear. Which is why as I open my eyes for the first time, my wife leans over and whispers “pale blue” in my ear.
What happens then, you see, is that pale blue becomes locked in my subconscious and, when I get to my closet, I respond to the message like a man in a trance and pick the combination of colors that revolve generally around pale blue. You can’t go wrong with pale blue.
If she doesn’t whisper anything in my ear or if she whispers, “Pick your own color,” it would be catastrophic. I would go to work dressed in such a garish combination of oranges and reds and checks and stripes that even a newborn duck would refuse to accept me as its mother.
Which is why on the morning I was to interview Arlyn Goldsby-Goldbsy, my wife whispered “pale blue” in my ear and then, as a double-check, waited until I was fully awake and asked, “What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you look at the closet?”
“I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” I said.
“The bathroom can wait. Look at the closet. What do you see?”
“Pale blue,” I said.
“Good boy. Go to the bathroom.”
The significance of this is that Arlyn Goldsby-Goldbsy is an Encino fashion designer and boutique owner, and my wife did not want me looking like an Easter egg while interviewing someone involved in haute couture.
As it turned out, she needn’t have worried. Arlyn Goldsby-Goldbsy is a down-to-Earth, good-humored woman with a Joan Rivers edge who put her business together with spit 21 years ago in what had been a chicken house near the Clark Gable ranch.
She has a to-hell-with-Rodeo-Drive attitude and believes that the future of the fashion world rests not in Beverly Hills, but at the corner of Ventura Boulevard and Genesta Avenue. From Paris to New York to the San Fernando Valley? That may be wishful thinking, but you never know.
When I first met Arlyn Goldsby-Goldbsy, she was slumped in a chair in a cluttered back room. She was exhausted, she explained, because she had been in a pit with 40 Chinese all morning unwrapping bowls.
This requires a little explanation. Last October, Arlyn opened a gallery as part of the boutique to display artifacts collected from around the world. The bowls are from China. Exactly why she was in a pit with 40 Chinese unwrapping the bowls, I am sorry to say, was never explained.
However, I knew that she was not the ego-encased person I had expected of a fashion designer when I took one of the business cards for Van Dusen Green, which is what she calls the boutique. On the card was the name “Arlyn Goldbsy,” as in Goldb-sy.
What it ought to be is Goldsby, as in Golds-by, but by the time she became aware of the error, the cards were paid for and she figured it wasn’t worth hassling the damned thing.
Years ago at the Oakland Tribune, a printer I somehow offended exacted revenge by setting my byline so that the “M” in my last name was replaced with the letter “F.” At first, I was incensed, but then realized it was such a collector’s item it would live long after I was gone. And I learned never to antagonize a printer.
From Arlyn Goldsby-Goldbsy, I learned that this year’s color is celadon, which is a pale green the Chinese use as a porcelain glaze. Holly Harp is stressing celadon and so, probably, are Judy Hornby and Hino & Malee and Marika Contompasis.
Since you buy off the rack at Sears, you are probably not familiar with those names, but don’t worry about it. Just go for pale green and the devil take tomorrow.
Ladies of ample proportion, however, should be forewarned never to wear shorts or miniskirts in the vicinity of Ventura Boulevard and Genesta Avenue because Arlyn Goldsby-Goldbsy will come tearing out the door and rip them right off your fat behind.
That’s just as well, anyhow, because the frilly look is in this spring and all the other looks are out, including, thank God, the jack-booted guerrilla feminist look that has terrified me all winter.
I learned a lot from my morning with Arlyn and couldn’t wait to get home and tell my wife about it. She was so impressed with my knowledge that now she whispers “celadon” in my ear each morning, and I leave the house looking like a dream, followed by ducks.
