Like Mother, Like Daughter?
Do you buy suits, shoes and such that remind you of your mother? Do you hear her voice when you’re shopping alone? If not, do you call her? Do you cherish lessons learned at her shopping knees? Do you feel she made you the well-dressed woman you are today? If you do, your name is not April Benson. The New York psychologist was so adversely affected by shopping forays with her mother that she now conducts workshops on the subject and plans a self-help book.
“Shopping is a lot like eating,” explains Benson in words she will pen. “Both are ways that women have of feeding themselves and both have to do with appearance. The anorexic who looks hungrily at food and refuses to eat is like the shopper who looks endlessly but buys nothing.”
The mothers and daughters you are about to meet are not apparel anorexics. They have ample wardrobes, can recall only minor clothing-related clashes and seem the best of friends. But in listening to them and to the Bensons of the world, it’s clear that mommy-and-me store excursions involve more than arriving home with the perfect purchase. Riding along with the tissue, the garment and the receipt are memories that can blight or brighten the entire mother-daughter relationship.
A Shared Love of the Classics
U.S. Atty. Nora Manella and her mother, Nancy, are so connected at their shopping hips that they recently bought identical presents for a young family friend. A duplication easily explained by Nora, who says: “It was the only decent tailored dress in the children’s department.”
She remembers that her mother, a docent at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and former radio-television journalist, “always had strong tastes. From her, I learned to buy quality. I didn’t have lots of pieces; we lived in a house with small closets. But I always had nice clothes.”
Nice for them now means classic designer suits and dresses, purchased together, often in London. But while their clothing might be Escada, Cerruti or Guy Laroche, their jewelry is Ciro and Kenneth Jay Lane--chosen according to Nancy’s precept: “The more restrained pieces look more real.”
They wear the same small size (maintained by ballet classes), avoid pants--even for traveling--as much as they do ruffles, and shop so “efficiently together,” Nora says, “that we never take things back.”
Their dressing-room exchanges are frank, which means Nancy will tell her daughter: “You look like you should be selling cigarettes in a night club--if the dress is too tight or too pinched in,” she says. In return, Nora, 44, steers her mother toward more color and less beige, white and black.
Today, they share a fondness for the same Ferragamo, Bally and Bruno Magli shoes. But in high school, Nora wanted to be like her peers and wear sneakers without socks. “Although I would have been willing to wear those little peds,” she recalls, noting that she wore heels with nylons instead. “I insisted on a proper shoe,” Nancy admits. “I forced her into Ferragamos.”
A French designer jacket that hangs in Nancy’s closet is a more recent issue: “There is some dispute over who took it off the rack first,” Nora says.
It hardly matters. They borrow freely, sharing clothes that Nora calls “impeccable but dull. Neither of us is too impulsive.” That rules out separates, she says. And years ago her mother ruled out trendy by insisting: “Never buy this year’s fad.” It works. The Bill Blass ball gown Nancy bought 30 years ago is still going strong--on both of them.
No Polyester for Them
Pasadena restaurateur Xiomara Ardolina, 41, a native of Cuba, says her seamstress mother taught her the ills of polyester and the blessings of fine fabrics.
The lesson was passed to Xiomara’s daughter. “She taught me how to appreciate the good designers, the fabrics and the cut,” says Melissa, 21, a college student and hostess in her mother’s restaurant. “We agree on the big things, but we disagree on smaller things--like shoes and tights.”
Although Melissa is “more conservative,” preferring longer skirts, roomier clothes and minimal makeup, she trusts her mother’s instincts: “When I go shopping by myself, I hear her voice, saying: ‘Ewww! That looks like something an old lady would wear.’ And I won’t get it.”
Melissa is also “more creative,” says her mother: “She gives me ideas. She never wears a suit the way it comes. She switches it around, and then I copy her.”
They share clothes (impulsive purchases that always work out) and a taste for Moschino, Herve Leger and Donna Karan. They once shared a penchant for Laura Ashley, dressing as a threesome with Melissa’s younger sister at Thanksgiving and Christmas. But they parted company, briefly, a few years ago: “Melissa wanted to wear black velvet with everything, and jeans with holes,” her mother says.
Melissa recalls other disagreements. She couldn’t wear jellies because plastic sandals “were what poor people in Cuba wore.” Worse yet: “She always put me in blazers and I hated them--jeans and blazers. And she would wash my sneakers. I liked them dirty,” says Melissa, noting the irony. “We went out to lunch today, and guess what I wore? A blazer and jeans.”
Shopping might be a favorite Sunday pastime, but it’s not pure pleasure. “Because we work in this restaurant, and she has worked with me a long time, we were almost forced to wear nice, conservative clothing,” Xiomara says. “My customers come in looking really, really special. You’re the hostess and you have to look good too.”
Melissa agrees, in words that her grandmother would appreciate: “I think a hostess sets the mood in a restaurant, because she is the first person you see. In a trendy restaurant, you never see them in baby-blue polyester.”
Offbeat, for Sure
Joan Quinn--art collector, fashion curator, photojournalist and talk-show host--does not like to shop for clothing. Friends, many of them designers, and her 27-year-old twin daughters do that for her.
“I like to shop, but I like to shop for art and jewelry. That doesn’t bother me,” she says. “I don’t like to go in, take my clothes off, try on something, come out. It’s a waste of time. I feel I could be doing something cultural.”
A sale item is the exception. “Because it’s something that people have overlooked. It’s something that maybe is too bizarre for the normal person to buy.”
No problem, say Jennifer, a musician who dislikes shopping, and Amanda, a free-lance wardrober who likes it. They bring their mother gifts--she got silver sneakers by Joan and David for her birthday--and piles of Leon Max clothing to try at home.
They grew up in a house filled with art, fascinating people and “strict rules.” They couldn’t cut or perm their hair because Joan, remembering her curly childhood curls, liked it straight. They learned she was right when they acted on the sly. “We ruined ourselves in 10th grade,” Jennifer says. “We chopped off our hair, we got perms.”
The twins, who share their mother’s love of fine jeweled crosses and rings, can recall clothing acquired during unusual shopping expeditions. Those lasted until the twins were 16, the same age, Joan says, that “I had my own style and stopped shopping with my mother.”
“But we never shopped out,” Jennifer reminds her. “We went to your friends’ warehouses--to Issey Miyake, Michele Lamy, Emmanuelle Khan--and got things.”
“Every country we would go to she would know somebody,” says Amanda of family excursions that included side trips to Paris uniform stores and the London hair salon frequented by their mother’s friend designer Zandra Rhodes. When the twins were in fifth grade, they had bakers’ outfits and patches of pink and peacock blue in their hair.
The twins continue to shop in offbeat places, including thrift stores, which Jennifer points out “are not so thrifty anymore.” They wear clothes and glasses that belonged to their grandmothers. And while Amanda doesn’t dye her hair a wild shade, Jennifer and Joan still do.
Jennifer seeks advice from her sister, mother or father (lawyer Jack Quinn, identified as “the shopping parent”) when, she says, “I’m spending a lot of money, $200 on a dress. I would definitely call and say: ‘What about this?’ ”
Amanda, however, prefers Jennifer’s word on the matter: “It has to do with age, looks,” she explains. But she remains in awe of her mother’s closet creativity. “People just can’t wear clothes like she does,” says Amanda, referring to a recent pairing of a Leon Max suit with her father’s old Armani shirt.
“If I saw anything that reminded me of my mother, I would say: ‘Give it to me now,’ ” Jennifer adds.
“They liked what I planned for them,” says Joan of her unorthodox parenting--and preferences.
“ Now, “ the twins say in unison.
