My Grandmother Loved Travel and Fashion—She Showed Me That Both Meant Freedom

12.03.2024 - 20:55 / cntraveler.com

I learned how to maintain dignity and self-respect, even in the face of humiliation, from my grandmother. My mother’s mother was widowed suddenly at the same age I was when I started Accidental Icon. She sold everything she owned, including her home in Connecticut, and moved to Dallas to live with her two sisters, all three widowed during the same year. As young women, the sisters performed as a trio; one sister played the harp, one the piano, and my grandmother the cello. They traveled often, and that is what they did for the next twenty years—this time without their instruments and husbands.

We saw my grandmother during this period maybe four times a year. She would call and tell us to meet her at the New York piers or the airport, when she and her sisters were embarking on a European adventure or a trip to Asia. My grandmother, in an exquisitely tailored bouclé suit, would envelop us in a cloud of expensive perfume. The jingle of the charm bracelets she wore on her slender wrist announced her arrival. She would bring gifts—pearls from Japan, or perfume from Paris—upon her return. For me there were geisha dolls, books of watercolor scenes of cherry blossoms on rice paper with transparent covers, carved perfume bottles, and netsukes made of wood.

Sometimes she would stay for more than a flyby, and there would be a shopping trip to the city for a new outfit for me. I remember one time in particular when she took me shopping for a special Easter outfit and chose a pair of shoes to go along with it. Constructed of the softest white kidskin, they were as graceful as ballet slippers. In fact, Capezio made them. The final achingly exquisite touch was a pearl button that fastened the strap. We both just sighed in appreciation as we looked at the shoe on my outstretched foot. After shopping, we shared tea and chocolate eclairs at Charleston Gardens, the café at the old B. Altman on Fifth Avenue. Both voracious readers, we would trade stories from the books we were reading, and she would tell me about her travels.

Author Lyn Slater in upstate New York

When I was younger, I believed my grandmother to be the most glamorous woman I knew. My mother was so angry with her. I could not understand why. The women who were constants in my daily life were housewives—often unhappy, apron strings tying them to their homes as they conformed to the role of 1950s housewives—and nuns, with vows of poverty, chastity, and, most alarming, obedience. In comparison, my grandmother was an exciting and inspirational figure who offered me a glimpse of what life could be for a woman freed from masculine or societal authority. I admire my grandmother for being such a rebel, doing something most women of her time did not dare to do. I