Since style isn’t just what you put on your body, it’s also what’s in your head, I have a book to share. I just finished 11/22/63 by Stephen King and loved it. It’s about time travel, but in a cool way, trust me. The characters in this book get brought back to a specific day and time in 1958 and decide to try to stop Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963. It was the perfect amount of history and adventure to satisfy all the kinds of nerd I am. Some of my favorite quotes, with no spoilers, promise:
“The cyclone even had a sound, two Russian words spoken over and over again in a flat Southern drawl: pokhoda, cyka. Walk, bitch.”
“My dad used to say you can tell a lot about a person’s health just by the state of his or her fingernails.”
“Human things are terrific right to the end, it seems like.”
“When you put on a clown suit and a rubber nose, nobody has any idea what you look like inside.”
“In America, where surface has always passed for substance, people always believe guys like Frank Dunning.”
“He listened. He did it as the world’s more charming and magnetic people do, always asking the right question at the right time, never fidgeting or taking his eyes from the speaker’s face, making the other guy feel like the most knowledgeable, brilliant, and intellectually savvy person on the planet.”
“Which brought the house down, of course. In dark times when even the sages are uncertain, declarations of love always do.”
I had 21 kindle pages of notes and highlighted quotes, so I had to narrow it down. I also teared up on the subway (seriously, books have brought me to tears on more than one occasion on the train) when I read about Jackie Kennedy, and of course Caroline and John-John.
Anyway. Dedicating an outfit to Jackie seemed a little sad, so instead, here’s what I would wear, if I were going on a time traveling adventure from now to 1958.
Simple. Chic. Could look good now and in the ’50s and ’60s. Black is versatile and never out of style. The wedding band would keep hooligans away as you go about your business. But throw some flats in your vintage Chanel in case you have to run.
(Want to read with me? See what’s on my bookshelf on Goodreads.)