Barbi Does Miami

mostly from my oxymoronic years between Miami and Milford

Author Archives: barbidoesmiami


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the perfect dress

We were invited by Cheryl from Bal Harbour Shops for our premier Miami night out together since husband arrived in Miami. The billing was the first Lanvin show EVER in the USA at the Fontainebleau and the most coveted ticket last Saturday night.

So.

I needed a dress.

I had not bought myself something I really LOVED since husband’s book party three years ago when I bought a gold sequined tunic at Neimans and pink Pucci pants for our Spaced Out hippie party at the Ramscale loft in NYC ( see link to groovy video of this 60-ties party right  here).

But this was an occasion, like OCCASION…

My inner frugal Dutch housewife voices argued with the Barbi Does Miami voices who told me: You deserve it, how long has it been? You’re such a goody-two-shoes but is Loehmans, TJ Maxx, a bit of Zara here, a bit of  Woodbury Commons there really, really you? But what about being careful, the frugals said. What about the girl’s dentist? What will husband say?

My inner head was far far from the days when I made lots of dough, and shopped all the designer stores in Paris, London, Milan, NYC and had a $25,000 clothing allowance at Calvin Klein.

We’re sick of it, some voices said. You NEED to look like YOU, they said. Enough with that trashy Miami Beach look already. What happened to your own style? What’s with all this bling role-playing?

I dunno, Barbi said. I kinda like it. Its fun, you know high heels and mini’s and tits and ass. But I do rather like All Saints. Given an unlimited budget, which no one will give me, I’d blow it at All Saints, Spitalfields….

Before I knew it I found myself on Lincoln Road, ambling into the Victorian environment with hundreds of antique sewing machines (where do they find them all? Do they have this many in every store?) touching a fatigued leather jacket here, a weathered gold embroidered tunic there, an open-back ruffled washed habutai dress, a sweater that was to-die-for but luckily totally unnecessary in the Southern climate.

I headed towards the back.

Where the gowns are.

I was looking for…

That one dress…

The one I had seen before…

When they first opened about a year ago…

That parachute dress…

It was me. I remembered it as definitely me.

I passed an embroidered gown, long to the ground, somehow looking like it came from the V&A costume department.

I tried it first. The boob area, once I slid into it, was somewhere between my collar bones and my breasts. Hmm. Designed for some giant (it dragged the dressing room floor) high breasted fifteen-year-old Pre-Raphaelite nymph but clearly not for me.

Next I tried the parachute. The ropes were all tangled around my neck and I looked like some mangled British soldier who’d landed in a Normandy tree. The sales girl brought me another one – the sample from the display wall. It was perfect (they give good mirror at All Saints, all golden and dusky and slimming and oblique). This Parachute-dress made me look like Aphrodite on D-Day, exactly the look I was going for.  Like so not Lanvin and so not Versace and so not where I’d been in my first year of Barbi Does Miami.

Before I allowed myself to hesitate. To re-think and second-guess. I said to the punky white-haired sales girl:

I WILL TAKE IT!

(My first expensive dress in over, what? Five, six years? )

Now.

Which part of a woman’s brain springs into action once she has the dress? The part that goes: Well … now you need a tiara! And shoes! And earrings! And what will you do with your hair? And make-up? And what color nails for the pedicure?

By the time I got to the car at Epicure I’d figured it all out.

I must admit I succumbed to adding a bit of Miami bling to my traditional beach-plastic cross earrings:

I also, don’t ask why, did a very blingy beach plastic tiara.

Which husband told me to take off my head before we left the house (I think he was right).

I got stainless-steel colored nail varnish. Did smokey eyes and hair like that Aphrodite parachutist on D-Day.

Oh, what delight to be in the bathroom for two hours putting it all together. First the shower, shave, blow dry, curlers, make-up – foundation, blush, eyes (light, darker,  dark, black and mascara), take the curlers out, brush and spray. Underwear (I actually got a Macy stick-on front only bra, likeWhoTF thought of those? because the parachute back dipped really low), silver stilletto heels, and then I was ready for my dress.

It was hanging high on the bathroom door so I could somehow dive into the mass of tousled skirt and find my way to the neck opening without upsetting all that complicated roping….

Where it hung my eyes were kind-of level with the hem.

What?

Was that? A speck of dirt? Actually a bit more than just a speck. More like an area of dirt. Like three/four inches of dirt near the hem. I got a wet towel and tried to brush it off. I realized it was mold and as I rubbed the fabric parted into a hole.

SHIT!

FUCK!

A hole! Mold and a hole!

Now what?

Should I wear it anyway? I did not have anything else half as glam. Not anything that went with my hair and toes and shoes and the expected image in my head.

So WTF now?

I slipped into it.

The hem draped around me, sweeping the floor (my very clean bathroom floor).

I decided on denial.

I mean. I looked good. No one would see the hem. I had no choice. Husband was calling, we were already late.

Should I call the All Saints store now? Tell them I was wearing the dress with an existing hole cause I had no choice? Would they believe me, tomorrow? Or would they say that I was the culprit who wore the dress and ruined that hem?

As I came down our bachelor-pad stairs husband took pictures:

He did not notice anything.

I arrived at the Fontainebleau, and by the time I entered the ballroom I’d forgotten about my hem.

I had fun.

We found my super-pretty Winona/Audrey-esque friend Rebecca

and together with the Lanvin mannequins we ogled the local recipients of the now permanent (how could you, Mr. President?) Bush tax cuts, and the ways they’ll spend it..

.

and sat with our less affluent but smart and funny press and pr friends at an eleganca table…

We watched the show which went much too fast (the bride was there before I even started paying attention) I mean what is it with these models ? Do they run, possibly misinterpreting the word run-way, oblivious that some people are actually interested in seeing the clothes they are wearing?

In the end I even danced with husband on the catwalk while my inner ex-model had fantasies of sha-shaying down that runway showing off my All Saints gown…

But before I totally embarrassed myself we headed home.

with my prince and no slippers

The next morning I woke up in love with my dress. I had a super fabulous time in that dress! I got compliments from strangers in that dress! I looked at it lovingly, hanging on my bathroom door….

and there…

staring me in the face….

was a giant, at least two inches across, L-shaped rip….

about half way up the skirt in the folds of all that cotton…

My lovely dress no longer had a small innocuous hole at the hem, it had a HUGE fucking rip!

Not my rip! That was a rip caused by some short bitch who wore her stillettos in the dressing room and had tripped, and ripped, my dear darling dress before we even became acquainted.

I had bought a dress with serious baggage! Mold was one thing, but a rip called for divorce!

SO.

I phoned All Saints.

I got Gill the Manager.

Gill was lovely. Gill understood right away. Maybe Gill even knew that my floor sample of the parachute dress had been stained and ripped long ago because most women are not 6ft2 in careful bare feet.

Gill, I said. I love this dress, you gotta help me out…

Come and get a new one from the store room, Gill said.

So, at 1pm on Sunday, with a bit of a hangover, I snuck out to exchange my darling parachute dress.

Only there weren’t any in stock.

No more left. Not one. Not in Lincoln Road and not in Aventura.

I can give you a store credit, Gill said.

I do not want a store credit. I want my dress….

Sweet Gill looked at me. He pondered, then walked me over to a giant Apple screen in the middle of the store and ordered me my dress on line. All new. Untouched. Unworn. Never tried on by some Miami Beach midget in twelve inch heels.

A new parachute dress all of my own.

I think I’ll wear it to the Bruce Webber opening at MOCA on the 18th.

Fingers crossed it will actually arrive….


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mother daughter art collaboration

Iona’s project for the weekend was to create an image with an unconventional material. Since our house is filled  with enough beach plastic for 900 tees this material was kinda obvious.
So.

She created and image of Jon Kortajarena, her favorite male model, in blue beach plastic bits awaiting sewing onto tees…


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Fashion flash-back > from London to Calvin Klein NYC to Milford…

barbi and her spring 1983 collection...

Twenty-four years ago I moved from London to New York.

I moved because my (financial) partner closed my business. He closed my business because my PR, a Buddhist fashion personality called Lynne Franks, told him that I would never amount to much. That he was wasting his money. She had called a meeting with him behind my back. Two days later he broke the news.

Her motivation? She was a struggling fashion PR wanting to break into big corporate (like damage control) PR, he had just sold his corporate PR company for millions. It was just selfish politics. I lost my business, he lost his respect for her  and she closed her business a few years later, just around the time when I launched CK at Calvin Klein and, for a fashion nano-second, amounted to something in the eyes of the groovy international fashion PR.  A case of divine justice? Or karma? For what it was worth.

Anyway. After her Machiavellian move I moved to New York. A good move. I loved New York. I got a great job, then another great job. And then the super-job: Design Director at Calvin Klein as the designer hired to create a collection that would compete with DKNY and I came up with CK.

CK Jeans 1992

That first year in New York I sold my flat in London and put a deposit on a loft in the Duane Triangle, Tribeca. In 1986. Imagine! My only view, I was on the 2nd floor, was of the World Trade Center, like I was David and there, looking up, was Goliath. I thought it was cool, after all I was New York!

BUT.

Every Saturday night the building behind me had an all-night disco in the basement. The music would pulsate through the walls up and into my bed and I’d have nightmares about my heart. Like it’s beat was off and I was dying. Came June, I decided to rent a house on Shelter Island, and  after one summer of spending the weekend outside Manhattan I was hooked. I needed green. I needed space. I needed acreage. I craved the Ralph Lauren country life-style.

So. I looked in the NY Times weekend real estate section*. I noticed: “Two farm houses on 20 acres, pond, streams, pasture – $185,000.”

Do-able, I thought. Desirable, I thought. But where the hell was Milford PA?

That Saturday morning I got in my GMC Jimmy, blue and white, with lift kit and oversized wheels (don’t ask – I was into being a cross between Thelma and Louise) and drove out to the Delaware Water Gap.

*Explanation: I was living in my Tribeca loft but I could not buy it. I had a mortgage lined up for months, and every few weeks I had to “renew” it and pay another $2300. My building did not have a C of O. It was owned by Meile Rockefeller and when she added the penthouse she had added 13″ over code, so fuck her, that Rockafella, the city was not giving her permission to sell. As a result I could not actually purchase my loft. In fact it felt I’d never be able to buy unless Meile decided to chop a foot off her penthouse, which, according to her, was like chopping a foot off her own body.

Those two farms on 20 acres had been renovated and had shag carpet everywhere. On the floors wall to wall, but also between the fake hand-hewn beams and on the toilet seats.

I passed.

But.

Back at the realtors office I spotted, between pictures of lake fronts and A-frame skiing cabins, this: “1790 historical farmhouse. 12 acres. Streams. Close to town. Needs TLC.”

TLC? Perfect, TLC was me!

That one, I said to Debbie the realtor.

No, she said. I’m not going there.

But it sounds perfect.

Trust me, she said.

I want it, I said.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you….

So. The house was rented by a drug dealer. A guy called Jo Monaco. He had a German shepard that attacked our car mirror as soon as we drove up.

Jo yelled from the porch: “Didn’t I tell you to call first!” “I did and you didn’t pick up!” Debbie yelled from the car.

Still. We looked around the place. The dealer’s gun collection was on one wall. It looked huge and scary to me, recently arrived from Maida Vale, London.

His shag carpet was old. His shower was a porta-cabin. Still. The paneled ceiling whispered that real hand-hewn beams were hidden, as well as a 200 year-old  fireplace. I couldn’t see the stream but I could hear it.

But more than anything, I heard my future.

the hidden beams and fireplace

I had, what I call, a future memory.

And based on this future memory I placed an offer with the owner of the drug dealer’s house. (Ten years later Jo was arrested for killing a cop in Staten Island,  sexual abuse and child pornography, he’d been hiding out in my house, they nabbed him a few years later, sent him to Rikers where he eventually died.)

Maybe the house had egged me on to set it free.

then and now

And I did. I loved my house. I love my house and my house loved me.

I am here now. At the old English kitchen table that I brought with me from London. Writing this Ode to my Home.

the old kitchen table

The house where I brought future husband the weekend after we met and where we made love for the first time. Where we explored and learned about each other, away from everything else.

Where I came a few weeks after Iona was born and where my mother first met her first grand child.

Where I came with Kiki and Leila as babies,when life, after 9/11, became almost unbearable.

Where husband and I decided to settle down by moving out and adding 3000 square feet that included studios for both of us and bedrooms for all four kids.

the old and the new

And, as you know, then we moved to Miami.

But I am here. Now. Inspired to write this as I hoosh for our new renters. The fridge, the pantry, the drawers,the laundry room,  I finally scraped the “Energy Guide” sticker off my ten year old dryer, and even moved the female nude (my favorite painting, which I bought at a Lambertville gallery) because it makes me feel exposed somehow.

tits and toy soldiers

It is here I want to return, eventually, maybe just husband and I, older, wiser, calmer, to write and paint and design and Skype with our kids all over the world.

It is here that I still see many, many more future memories…

overlooking the stream

dinner party room

new living room

all photos of the house by Erik Freeland

Architects of the new addition: Smith and Thompson Architects


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Tutus and burkas are forever…

 

whoops too short

 

At eight this morning Iona called from school.

“Mom, you have to bring me jeans, my short shorts are too short.”

Hello! When I saw her at 6.30 in the kitchen I thought she’d forgotten her skirt. But, this being a common thought, it slipped away without becoming another sarcastic remark, we were late for the bus, I hadn’t printed her essay nor sick note, panic ensued and my opinion on dress code was forgotten by the time we met up in my (still dark at 6.30) car.

Yes, DASH has a dress code. Its tolerant, but does require a certain amount of body coverage.

So.

At 8.45 I arrived, bagged jeans in hand, and told the dear woman at reception that my daughter had been nabbed by the DASH fashion police and here I was; bringing her Burka.

Don’t you hate it when a good joke goes to waste? It was a case of flat ears.

Now rewind 12 hours to 200 yards across the street from DASH at the Moore building in the Design District, 5- 10 pm yesterday evening.

Burka’s crossed my mind then too.

I was there selling tutu’s. My original princess-dress tutu’s.

(I don’t mean to confuse you, yes-yes I work with beach plastic now, and not tule).

But I confused myself. I mean what was I thinking when my friend Francesca told me about a giant sample sale fashion event called Sassy City Chicks?

Fate, I thought.

Tutu* destiny calls, I thought.

*Aside – I keep a “past lives storage unit” in Milford, across from ACE hardware. Last summer I was getting two tutu dresses from my previous Baby Gordon collection (in storage for ten years) for friends with brand-new baby girls in their lives and, in an inspired moment, thinking that Miami was the perfect market to get rid of my tutus once and for all (those princesses in the making) I UPS-ed two boxes down to our candy land bachelor pad.

 

my chic display for young miami princesses...

 

Little did I know that  the crowd of childless  Sassy City Chicks Fashion Bashers had come for the DJ, the party atmosphere with free Smirnoff Vodka while they had their nails done, carried no cash, nor checks, only credit cards (which I did not take) and had about fifty dollars to spend on themselves, which went to an instant gratification piece of bling and not a Christmas tutu for their favorite niece.

 

tutu or bling? that was the question...

 

I took one look at these girls’ heels, cleavage and legs and thought:

I may as well be selling burkas.

Like pastel baby tutus or black burkas @ Sassy City Chicks Fashion Bash = wrong demographic!

 

Miami trend: two drinks, one for each hand. Predicament: how to shop...

 

Still, I sold six pieces. I only lost thirty-five dollars. I had free Vodka. I hung out with Francesca, who oozes Italian style, and we bitched about the fashion Chernobyl going on around us.

 

Francesca = effortless chic...

 

I met a few cool young guys who do cool young things.

I got to stay out late by myself.

But, when I left the building and had to step over the passed-out body of a young woman lying in her own vomit, I decided to put my tutus back into storage for another ten years…

 

the fashion apocalypse

 


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Ten things you can do in Miami that you can’t get away with anywhere else in the US of A

OK

So…

I didn’t do my 22 laps today. I did homework. I prepped beach plastic. I made dinner. I edited. I had a Martini (or two) …

Then suddenly I had a window, so I went down to the pool.

I did my 22 laps. Or was it 32?

Let me tell you; after those martini’s it was soo easy. It was actually fun! And pretty! Prettier than I’d ever noticed before. The palm trees lit from below swaying in the wind, the lights from the apartment buildings across Indian Creek, the slice-of-a-moon rising, the last contours of a pink sunset…

I swam like a fucking dolphin!  I would have leapt if I  could have!

I wondered if I’d burned the same amount of calories as when doing the same, only sober.

So politically incorrect though. No?

I mean I’m from the north. And from Holland. Swimming laps while intoxicated? Bad mother! Bad, bad mother! Bad temporary single parent!

But.

Hey.

This is Miami.

So while exercising intoxicated I thought of all the things you can do in Miami that you can’t do anywhere else in the U S of America….

Like:

1. Sex rules without boundaries #1 – Cross a busy intersection wearing nothing but a red sparkling Brazilian bikini (thong that is), on Friday evening Sabbath in the center of the Jewish quarter, 41st and Pinetree Drive… You go girl! (It wasn’t me, I wouldn’t dare).

2. Safety? Up yours! – Do a U-turn, in a SUV, in the center of a three-way-zebra crossing during  blinking-light school hours with uniformed kids pulling their Zuccas on every black and white stripe  (I don’t do this, it drives me nuts).

3. Fun beats responsibility – Send your kid on a two-day field trip with a chaperone, never call her (kid nor chaperone), and then NOT collect kid for another two days (courtesy of my friend F B ).

4. My body is my business – Sunbath topless on the regular (not nudist) beach. I do this when its REALLY quiet (my Mom and I tried it on Shelter Island and almost got arrested….)

5. Get out of my way, bitch – Cut into any and every line, whenever you can, proudly, as if it’s a Mark Jacobs Spring 2011 fashion statement.

6. Spontaneous manners –  RSVP to an intimate  (early-ish) dinner party, not show up, then call at ten, ask if you can bring a friend, eat left-overs and have a fabulous time till the wee hours…

7. Honestly I’m an honest person – Text a hostess to thank for a great dinner party, and write that it was fun only until the moment when she (the hostess/me) made that one stupid comment about…

8. Sex rules without boundaries #2 – Sit by the pool and hear the explicit details of a druggy orgy, as told by three extremely pretty Russian girls, while there are at least a dozen children under the age of seven swimming amongst them…

9. Scary shit is fun any time of the year – Have “Night of the Zombies” on Lincoln Road four weeks before Halloween, where adult men walk around in blood stained T-shirts, drunk, yielding real and churning chainsaws…

10. Sex rules without boundaries # 3 – Have a bus stop sign that says: Still a Virgin? Need Help? call 1-800- etc. on one end and a sign that says “Raped? Need Help? call 1-800- etc.” on the other…

(11 and 12 are added since this post was first written:

11: Have the office of a male and female, boys and girls, modeling agency inside a church building. Yes the Green agency is conveniently located (for recruiting purposes) on Lincoln Road inside the community church building, instantly absolved and blessed with divine credibility. And oh those lucky priests, inside the kids candy store….

12: On Sunday, when the sale of liquor is forbidden in many states including PA, we were give free and rather generous wine samples at the Publix supermarket check-out line at 11am, Halloween day. The man behind me passed “because I have to go to work” and the sexy wine seductress tried her best to persuade him that a bit of wine would do no harm…. )

I’m sure I can think of ten (yes I did) more but I have to get out of this wet bathing suit and call husband back…


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Barbi does Miami, alone…

Ok

So

Here I am, in (on? I always wondered about this) Miami Beach.

One year later…one year after the TB scare and the rashes from the fiberglass chairs.

Like one year ago is when we came down for our nine-month get away…

As in, lets try a school-year away from Milford with its six-feet-of-snow winters when I need a focus-group to determine how to best get from the front door to the car to pick up the kids, where we have crazy neighbors who shoot at eight-year-old twins (or at least try to hit a target that stands about ten feet in front of their neighboring twins) and then try to get the mother (moi) arrested for shoving the neighbor for almost shooting my twins (one day I’ll be ready to blog you that whole story), getting away from having Obama signs stolen five times from my yard, being called a commie for trying to have a library built in town and having to spend at least 1/3 of my life in the car driving for every little  brain fart.

Anyone would agree that these are plenty good reasons to try something else for a while. And as you know, from 12 months of blogging, we did.

WE. I said.

We, as in husband and me and our children, Kiki, Leila and Iona.

So, if you’ve been a faithful follower of this Gordon de Vries adventure, you know that, based on mainly but not solely, Iona’s acceptance into DASH, we went for the second year. A second year in DJ Tiesto’s bachelor pad. Tiesto loves us, despite the fact, or because of the fact, that we’re not bachelors, we dont wreck the place every Saturday night, but instead the “Dutch Cleanser” has moved in, one who occasionally slips into heels and a mini, but still reports every toilet blockage.

Anyway.

I’m here. Kiki is here, very popular in her grade. Leila is here, very popular too, Iona is here, loving DASH.

But where is husband? I’ve been looking everywhere! The closets, under the bed, the garage, by the pool, in the car (maybe he locked himself in?), the fridge, the gym, the jacuzzi?

He’s not here.

He’s in Milford!

Yep, believe it or not, he’s there.

Next to the crazy neighbors, who reportedly are building a moat between them and us, like they’re the bridge and we’re the water  (one day I’ll tell all…)

And I miss him. Husband, not the neighbor.

He’s there because of work. Like suddenly, isn’t it always like that, like you think you’re in the shitty check-out line and you move and then the register in yours breaks and the other, previous, line turns out to have an additional bagger, well this year he, husband, happens to have loads and loads of work in New York. He HAS to be there. Meetings every week. New editors, new jobs, new websites who want him, launches and openings and suddenly New York is where its at.

FUCK!

Like now I’m a single parent without benefits.

Like I go out with my single and divorced girl friends but I don’t get to flirt, exchange numbers, and pretend to be BAD.

I’m GOOD.

I’m so good I bore myself.

Sometimes, when husband calls at midnight on a Saturday night, just when I’ve come home and read his e-mail saying “call me when you get home”, I pretend that I was bad. But, to be honest, I don’t even know how to do this…

So between now and Halloween Barbi does Miami, alone.

waiting...like a good girl...

; )

Do you have my number?


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Barbi (so NOT India Hicks) does the Bahamas

sunset from my terrace, soon after I arrived

I went harvesting.

Harvesting beach plastic.

Not a bad job. In fact if you had to write yourself the perfect, anything goes, job description wouldn’t it go something like this?

“I’d like to work on a beach. A perfect soft, pink sand beach somewhere in the Caribbean, but Hawaii or Tahiti would be fine too. This would be a quiet beach, one untouched by development. The water would be perfect shades of turquoise, going from pale to dark, and long waves roll in from the reefs a few miles off the coast. They crash at my feet, their sounds become like my heart beat, regular and reassuring. A light wind blows off the water, carrying a salty smell that sticks in my nostrils, still there later when I lie in bed  listening to the frogs singing in the hurricane shutters. I will sleep well, because I’ve been outside all day with the sun on my back, bent over, scanning for material in the sand at the water’s edge, the ridge further up the beach caused by waves from hurricane Igor a few weeks ago, then I look along the dune, and between the dune’s grasses. My professional dress code is a bikini and a hat, even on casual Fridays. Sunscreen is my only mandatory regulation. Occasionally, when I get too warm or just when I feel like it, I wade into a particularily pretty pool and float, the waves rocking me like I was back in my mother’s womb. Curious fish surround me, a barracuda comes at me fast, but then veers away, just letting me know that he’s keeping his eyes on me. I look at the island from the water, the curve of the cove, the palm trees and casuarina’s, the cliffs, the occasional vacation home painted pink or yellow or green. Maybe my office is in one of those cottages….”

A few years ago, when I first walked the beaches of Eleuthera I became mesmerized by the bits of colorful beach plastic along the surf line, scattered and stuck in the sand. I now wonder if, at  that point (I certainly wasn’t thinking job description), fate took my hand and softly whispered, here, look down, these colored bits should not be there, they are pernicious, like poison, but you can do something, this pollution may be a future for you, a place where  all you have learned and who you are can come together with creativity and purpose…

I listened and every day since then I have used towards repurposing more and more beach plastic.

But like in a romantic dream, reality has turned that corner where the above idyllic job description foreshadows a nightmare.

The melancholy I feel when I take my first steps in the sand this time, is not just the melancholy of my memories.

(Why can memories be so melancholy?  A longing for our family time spent here, when the girls were  too young to worry about what they might be missing, like Facebook, friends, and other artificial stimulation?)

It’s not just me, there’s melancholy in the air. I can feel it all over the island. Tourist season doesn’t start for another six weeks and there is hardly a car on the road. The small shops are deserted, their shelves half-empty. The locals ask me about the American economy.

” No jobs man, when America sneezes we catch a cold,” they tell me.

Sneezing as metaphor feels too exuberant to me, what they mean is that when America holds its breath in fear, they suffocate. But I don’t say this. I just nod and tell them I know what they mean. Times are hard everywhere, I say, but don’t tell them that maybe our golden age is gone forever.

club med beach

My melancholy takes a turn towards despair, when I reach my favorite beach. The three mile long curving stretch of pink sand looks raw, windswept, covered in seaweed and caught in this seaweed is garbage. Plastic bottles, toothbrushes, crates, detergent containers, tops, cups, plates, knives, forks, spoons, barrettes, combs, beads, single sneakers, flip-flops and shoes in every size, pots, cones, hinges, signs, and I wonder, while the ancient Greeks, Romans, Incas, Indians, left us musea full of  ancient pottery, jewelry and tools, will this legacy of our plastic culture, ever be displayed and admired in musea of the future?

museum worthy?

synergy?

mimic nature?

I peel off my backpack, spread my towel and sit down. I’m surrounded by plastic. I pick what I can reach and make a pile. I feel like I’m on the edge, one step away from overwhelmed. Is it too late? Have we lost control? The way I felt when watching the BP oil spilling uncontrolled. I teeter on giving up. Whatever I do, however much of this I pick up, clean up, sort and take home, it won’t make any difference.

Still I get up.

Still I pick up.

Red. Blue. Green. Yellow. White. Black. Grey. Pink. Orange. Funny, there’s never much purple.

Within an hour I have  three bags full. I’m only half way along the beach when I run into Bob and Kathy.

“Not enough plastic here for 900 tees, hey?” Bob jokes.

I’m disoriented, like I came out of deep meditation too fast. What does he mean?

“You should have seen it just after Igor,” he says, “Its all been swept away now!”

“I don’t want to know,” I say. “There’s plenty here.”

Sometimes I find messages in the plastic:

Ironic ones to make me laugh…

if only...

Encouraging ones to keep me going…

One that reminds me to check my messages…

One to make sure I will fly home…

I spent two full eight-hour days on the beaches.

I gathered plenty but I wonder, how much is enough for 900 tees?

When I get back to my house on the cliff I sort it and clean off the sand, seaweed and algae by putting the beach plastic in a colander and using the hose of the outdoor shower.

Then I let it dry in the sun.

I’m alone with my harvest.

It looks pretty all laid out by color.

I’m no longer sad.

I feel at home and I’m happy….

for more of my beach plastic work over the past few years:

http://itsamanmadeworld.wordpress.com/

http://www.itsamanmadeworld.com/home.html


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Repurposed in Miami

Last year was a transitional year.

I realize now that, for me, last year was still transitional. From  reading my blog you’d probably  already figured this out, but I was oblivious.

I thought the previous year had been transitional and that I was out of transition and in destination. But, just because I’d moved to Miami didn’t mean that I had arrived. I know what you’re thinking, moving to a new city is always a transition, and that is exactly what I would answer, if anyone asked.

But I’d already been in a real full-blown transition since early 2008. And it felt like being stuck. Like I couldn’t go back, and couldn’t move forward. I no longer knew who I was nor who I wanted to be. My identity had always been so wrapped up in what I created and I didn’t want to go back to designing “more stuff “. My last gig had been with Pantone as the Creative Director of every licensed product that carried its logo and name. Plates, stationery, shoes, a home collection, clothes, bags, you name it. A lot of stuff… So I helped Alastair with the design of Spaced Out and started  collecting waste beach plastic. I worked it,  made jewelry from it and educated myself in the causes and effects of plastic pollution. I did a website called Its a Man made World.

And I wrote. I wrote an entire novel about a woman in transition. A woman like me, who from one moment to the next realizes that her perfectly crafted life has fallen apart, and that nothing will ever be what she thought again.

I did both in a bubble. Not a pretty, floating-on-air Californian bubble, but more like a soundproof one-way-mirror bubble, feeling unheard and unseen. Lost even.

Moving to Miami had everything to do with breaking out of whatever it was that I was in. Husband knew it, like he was aware that a change would do me, and us, good.

And it did, almost right away. (SO, for anyone who feels stuck: Move! A different city, a different country, a different job, a new house, a whole new slice of of life to explore).

But then I thought Miami Beach was just playtime, and that’s hard for me because I was brought up with a huge sense of purpose and responsibility, and here I was having lunch on the beach!

Some days it felt like I was doing the same as I did before, writing and recycling beach plastic, only in better weather, in DJ Tiesto’s bachelor pad, away from the knick-knacks of my old life… and maybe I still wasn’t getting anywhere…

The only difference I felt was a sense of patience and maybe this comes with age. Maybe  the ambition endorphins turn into patience endorphins, and for the first time ever I enjoyed the process of what I was doing, instead of being anxious about getting to the pay-off: money, attention, a good review…

I added some beach plastic clothes and called the collection Plastic is Forever. I got a small order for scarves from Base at the Delano, which lead to picking, cutting and drilling the beach plastic and finding the local women who would sew it on silk georgette for me. I enjoyed meeting them, Lucia and her mother, at Normandy on Saturday mornings and buying organic vegetables and flowers at the market afterwards.

I enjoyed doing the Barbi does Miami blog, not only did writing about being here help me redefine who I was , but I also connected to my readers for the first time. I made friends with people I’ll never meet. This, for me, is the joy of writing. Not the sitting alone at a desk for hours on end, losing all sense of time, like passing through CS Lewis’ closet, entire days disappearing into what feels like an hour. I don’t like that aspect of writing. But I love the dialog. The ability to create a connection, a shared experience, a feeling that we’re never alone in what we go through and how it makes us feel…

But this year is different. I’m working manual labor in Miami. I have to produce 900 tee shirts for Barneys New York, using organic blanks from Loomstate. And 900 tees is about 35,000 pieces of  beach plastic, and about 50,000 drilled holes! Its a group of women beaders who need 50 kits every week between now and end january, and I’ll have to provide those. I’ll be working hard and I love it.

In fact. I think that…

I’m a bit like my beach plastic.

All that plastic I collect had purpose in a previous life, be it a bottle top, a crate, toothbrush, hair clip, spoon, detergent container, cup, plate, comb,  or any one of a million other things. Then it was useless. Discarded. It tossed around for a bit. Sand, sea, sun, salt even coral. Then it started to look good again. And now this patina-ed beach plastic has a whole new life as fabulous adornment on Barneys tees that’ll sell to green fashionistas for one hundred and thirty five dollars.

So.

I too feel repurposed and it feels good…

and there will be black and white...


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Fashion’s Night Out Miami

photo by Iona Gordon

I finally  dressed up and went out, Miami style.

After being absorbed by getting the kids back into school mode like meeting teachers, signing into after-school programs, seemingly endless driving to and from new friends and  special classes, dealing with Iona’s bi-polar morning-bus driver who is on a pick-up schedule that stretches somewhere between 6.30am and 8am (yes some kids wait 90 minutes at their bus stop),  it has taken me three weeks to get back into being Barbi who does Miami.

If it wasn’t for Fashion’s Night Out, the one-night celebration started by Anna Wintour to make shopping super glamorous and revive the fashion economy, I would still be the anti-social Mommy taxi service.

But, for once thanks to Ms. Wintour, I glammed up and went to Bal Harbour Shops, here in Miami Beach. Husband is back up north, so I took Iona. Iona cleaned up very nicely, adding about three years to her 14 years, and was a hotter date than husband…(sorry Al)

Iona with Celine Model

Fashion’s Night Out in New York could leave one, no, would leave me, completely paranoid, as in the desperate feeling that the best party was most definatley NOT the one I was attending, but had to be one of the other three hundred that were being tweeted at me from far flung corners of the city, like the Vogue show at Lincoln Center or Barneys, Isaac Mizrahi or Ralph Lauren uptown or Alexander Wang in Soho, Scoop in Nolita, Balenciaga in Chelsea… and I would have ended up of the verge of a fashion-stress induced break down. I mean just looking at the schedule of FNO New York events left me aching with I-should-been-there-ness.

Bal Harbour Shops, on the contrary, is a contained tropical retail village and everyone  who is anyone in designer retail is there. From Marc Jacobs, Prada, Pucci and YSL to Gucci, Saks and Neiman’s. They all have gorgeous stores in what must be one of the most pleasant shopping experiences anywhere and Miami fashionistas of all ages partied under the giant Royal Palms by the ponds and waterfalls, walking in and out of stores that offered  free champagne, DJ’s, celebrity chefs, photo-ops and fashion shows. Only Chloe seemed to miss the point and had a hyper PR guy with a clip board culling guests at the door. If you weren’t on the list you weren’t exactly welcome, but no-one cared, and by 9pm the fashion’s-night-out penny had dropped, the doors were flung open and the pr guy was last seen posing for the paparazzi…

so they shopped…

and they drank  champagne…

They danced…

They posed.

They played bocce ball…

It was not New York.

It was so not New York. It was Miami. Glamorous, tanned and toned, wealthy and bling and sexy and showy and nipped and tucked and implanted and perfectly groomed and South American and Russian and Israeli and Middle Eastern. And, in contrast to New York, where everyone is wondering who can afford all the exquisite designer clothes shown on the runways, it appears that almost everyone here can buy just about anything that the designer stores in Bal Harbour have to offer.

My five favorite moments:

1. Stanley Whitman, the 92-year old founder of Bal Harbour Shops, watching the crowd and the bocce court and enjoying his unique retail creation…

2. The attention that was showered on Iona,  whomever wrote Snow White  had no idea how lovely it is to be the proud mother of a budding beauty.

3. The vast mix of (under yet overdressed) ages and nationalities, all happily partying together under the warm night sky.

4. Wearing high heels again.

5. Marc Jacob’s exquisite fall collection, which made me remember and re-appreciate great design, fabric and craftsmanship…


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20 – a love story

my dear father, an architect

I was not quite two when my father died

Seven years after he survived a German concentration camp he married my mother. Five years later they had me. My mother told me that my father loved me deeply and that, after the war-years in which he’d lost everything, which had been dear to him, he was  happy and hopeful again. Still it all ended, regardless, as his car hit a solitary tree, waiting for him like the last Nazi, by the side of the highway.

Three years later my mother married my stepfather. Eleven years after that my stepfather left us for  my mother’s best friend.

me, age two, waiting...

So, for the following fifteen years, I had relationship issues. I fell only for men who went away. I had quite a few long distance relationships, passionate when we were together and then heartbreaking when we were apart. It felt like love to me. I loved men who were emotionally unavailable, I loved a famous athlete who was always either competing around the world or in training, I loved one married man, I loved a junkie who loved his needle, I loved a Jew who told me he only could get serious with Jewish girls, I loved a man who always, always stood me up, and all this felt like love because I thought that if I could make these men come back to me then everything would finally be alright again.

When I turned thirty I moved to New York where I met a woman called Midge. Midge saw me. Like really understood all of me. Midge said, “I know just the person you need. A young medicine woman called Ashtiana, she helped me beat cancer….”

For three years I saw Ashtiana, once or twice a week. Ashtiana was psychic, she had trained with an American Indian medicine man, and healed purely from deep instinct, which never failed her. Ashtiana  helped me save myself.

I’d grown up in Amsterdam , which was hardly a mythical place, then moved to London which was hardly spiritual.   I’d never heard of  New Age  so  I went to see Ashtiana without any prejudice. Our first appointment was a traditional psychic “reading”. She didn’t use a crystal ball or palms or tea leaves or cards. We just sat together in her  Greenwich Village fourth floor walk-up  and surrounded by American Indian blankets, drums, flutes, pots, dream catchers and crystals in every color and size it felt like a visit with a new friend.

I did not need to tell her that I made dumb choices in men. The first thing she said to me was, “they always leave you, don’t they?”

So I asked her if I’d ever find true love.

She said, “Yes. Yes, he is very tall and he’s creative and he’s not American.” ( I rolled my eyes, another long distance one?) she said, “no, no he lives here, he’s here and once you meet him he’ll never leave. He’ll never ever leave you, even if you’d want him to, he’ll never leave and he’s not the kind of man who brings you flowers every day (I don’t care, I thought) but he’ll bring you unexpected gifts…”

“When?” I asked. “In three years,” she said.

Three years seemed an eternity, I wanted him tomorrow.” He’s not ready either,” she said. “he’s going through his own changes.” She made it sound like my future man and I were  getting prepped for each other by the universe.

So. I became celibate as if I was trying to erase my patterns, like rebooting or creating a blank slate, whatever, it was not something Ashtiana had told me to do, she only led me to what I needed when I needed it…

Then, when I was ready, open I guess, I went out for dinner with a tall, good looking artist. We connected. We had a great time. I asked him if he was American, but he was too drunk to answer.  I called him the next day and he could not remember me. I was shattered. How could he not remember, we were perfect together! As I sat in a traffic jam on my way to my weekend house in Pennsylvania, I said  out loud:

“I did not make it up. I did not make him up. I did not make him up.” Again and again like a mantra.

And then next to me, in the passenger seat, appeared my father.

“No, you did not make me up,”  he said.  “I am here. I am always here. All you have to do is remember me and remember how much I love you…”

Over the years I had come believe that when he died  I was too young to remember him.  I never realized  that he was a part of me regardless of my mind. That our spirits were bound together no matter how young I’d been. I cried the whole way home. I cried for me and for him, and for all those years that I thought that I’d been  too little to understand.

I had to re-unite with my father before I could love and be loved. Does this make sense, now, to you, as I write this 22 years later?

Of course I told Ashtiana that after my breakthrough I was ready, and could the universe please send my man along a little sooner.

me, thirty-two, still waiting...

But there were more lessons, more memories, more layers of perception and expectation that were laid bare, each one first painful then enlightening…

Twenty years ago, Labor Day weekend 1990, I must’ve  been deemed ready, or maybe my grandmother thought enough already…

My Grandmother, Oma in Dutch, died five days before Labor day 1990.  Oma and I were very close.

Odd circumstances conspired so that I could not go to her funeral in Holland and at the time I was devastated. I did not want to be alone in Pennsylvania while the rest of my family mourned her. But then my friends Bern and Ilonka invited me to Easthampton for the weekend.

On Sunday we went to play baseball with their group of friends. And there , on first base, was a man who was tall and not quite American. I was in the outfield. I miraculously made a catch. Next I hit it out of the park and ran my first home run ever. He was waiting for me on home plate  and held up his hands. As we high-tenned the energy shifted. I knew it was him, tall, good looking, funny, smart and Scottish. I’m sure  my Oma’s spirit was there on that diamond behind the Catholic church, helping me along before she passed on to the hereafter…

Twenty years ago today we went on our first “date”, which I refused to call a date, because I’d had so many bad ones and this was my new beginning…

all ready ....

and twenty years later my  “date” wrote me this e-mail (ironically we are apart this week, he in Pennsylvania and me in Miami):

– Good morning on the 20th anniversary of our first “date”
of me getting up and waiting around
to call you, not wanting you to think I was over eager to see you and then
dialing the number you’d written on the orange Post-It
with a little flying heart above the number and saying
hey
shall we go to a restaurant in Montauk for lunch?
and you not wanting to go to a restaurant so
we decided on a beach picnic
and me
coming to that house on 3-mile harbor road
and you not being there and me thinking that I
was getting a high class blow-off, imagining the race car driver having zoomed in before
me with his faster car while I was driving the beat up old pick-up
like a loser,
fueling my insecurity about not being
urban enough for such a
lovely fashionable woman
and making small talk with Ilonka who seemed embarrassed
and sort of restless and thinking
I should probably
leave
and almost walking away when you finally
pulled up with Bern
and then
I remember
my first impression was how
beautiful and tall you were
and then
you rushed up to me and gave me a huge wet kiss
and apologized
and we kissed again
quite passionately
in the bedroom there
and you got ready
and then we drove off in my truck to
Springs and bought some beers and
sandwiches
a single chicken cutlet
and down to
Gerard Drive and found that little quiet spot around the bend
and lay there and chatted and put the beer in the
water and kissed a lot and swam and fell in love
even more.
And then the rest of the day and you
going back
not sure about me being around

and I kissed you and hugged you and told you that
it was crazy but I felt like I was already in love with
you and that I ‘d be there no matter what happened

and you driving back to city…

twelve years later...