فصل 27

27

My Life in Fashion

As you probably know, I am regularly featured on best-dressed lists, constantly praised for “owning it” and “killing it” on the red carpet, and have Zac Posen on speed dial. Wait. That’s not me, that’s Cate Blanchett! But obviously, in general, I’m a popular fixture on the fashion scene and can usually be spotted sporting free outfits sent to me by designers while sitting next to Anna Wintour in the front row of all the hottest runway shows during New York Fashion Week, before partying the night away with one to seven members of the Kardashian family. Wait. That’s not me, that’s Gigi Hadid! Wait. That’s not her either, because she’s a successful top model who is most likely to be walking in the show. Well, whoever’s next to Anna in the front row is probably pretty psyched to be sitting in this place of honor. They’re also probably hungry and their shoes are too tight. And whoever they are, they aren’t me. But for some reason, I always forget that I’m not really a fashion-type person, and every once in a while I attempt to be one anyway. Who am I? When it comes to fashion, I’m not entirely sure.

My dad is six foot three, thin, and athletic, so even without him trying very hard, clothes look great on him. He was voted best-dressed in high school, even though he went to a Catholic school where they all wore uniforms, so I’m not exactly sure how it was that he distinguished himself, or why the school even bothered to assign that superlative to one of hundreds of boys wearing identical navy blue blazers. But what that says to me is that my father was so innately fashionable he somehow managed to look better-dressed than his classmates, even though they were all wearing the exact same thing.

So I suppose my dad was my first fashion idol, which is troubling only in that when I was a preteen girl I learned everything I first knew about what to wear from a tall preppy lawyer in his thirties. This was the 1980s in Washington, D.C., which meant my key pieces included wide-wale corduroys, L. L. Bean boat shoes, and anywhere from one to forty-seven shirts layered on top of one another with collars of varied jauntiness. My turtleneck was up and scrunchy, or sometimes neatly folded down! My Izod collar was down sometimes, unless of course it was up! This made for lots of fun choices, which in any combination ensured you were both overheated and bulky—you really couldn’t go wrong.

After a while, rather than simply being influenced by my father’s law office fashions and continuing to reinterpret them as a teen girl, I began to just cut out the middleman and wear his clothes. Back then, I really didn’t like dresses. I remember having to buy a skirt for the eighth-grade band recital because I didn’t own a single one. Fine, I was a tomboy. But here I am in one of my dad’s starched white dress shirts, which he wore underneath his suits for work. So presumably all the extra length and bulk of a man’s dress shirt is tucked into my (probably boys’) Levi’s corduroys, thereby obscuring any girl shape struggling to emerge from beneath.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Gap, where I got most of my dad-like clothes, was not yet the fashion-forward ubiquitous mall shop it has become, but more of a place where construction workers got their basics. Back then, they didn’t even carry any of their own name-brand stuff. The Gap specialized in plaid flannel shirts by nameless designers and crunchy Levi’s that had to be washed twenty to thirty times before they would stop standing up on their own. Luke Danes–type fashions. Skinny jeans didn’t yet exist, but we knew enough to see that straight-leg jeans weren’t as flattering as they could be, so some girls I went to school with had their jeans taken in along the inseam. I was too free-spirited (disorganized) for such tailoring frippery, so instead of sewing mine to make the leg narrower, I folded the jeans inward along the inseam, and I STAPLED THE TWO PARTS TOGETHER. My look was stocky teenage boy meets Office Depot.

But I always liked the idea of fashion and of being fashionable, and as I got older I felt it was my responsibility to at least try—perhaps in part because of the trend toward actors being not just actors but also brands of some sort. It’s not enough today just to be a good actor, it seems. One must also be a fashion icon, colon cleanse spokesperson, and designer of a line of plus-size dog costumes on the side. Your St. Bernard has been overlooked for too long!

In my family, there are several well-dressed ladies. My mother could take something odd from any sale rack and turn it into part of an elegant ensemble. My stepmother, Karen, and sister Maggie both have a great eye for patterns and fun accessories. My sister Shade always looks chic in her New York City color palette, which ranges from black to black. And my brother, Chris, like my dad, has a classic East Coast style. It’s in my blood, or so I’ve tried to convince myself again and again. Those first twenty or so years of dad shirts and Stan Smith sneakers were my dormant phase, but I knew that Trendsetter Lauren was in there somewhere, just waiting to come out.

So when the call came one early summer day to be a judge on one of my favorite shows, Project Runway, I thought my fashion destiny had finally found me. Peter and I were spending the weekend in East Hampton, so not only was the call exciting in itself, but the whole request took on a beachy, Nancy Meyers–movie golden glow. Oh, oh, look at me! I walk barefoot on the beach, wearing a straw hat I paid nine million dollars for at Calypso on Main Street! I got this iced coffee at Once Upon a Bagel in Sagaponack! I vacation in the Hamptons! I’m a judge on Project Runway! Whose life is this—Bethenny Frankel’s? After all those years of schlepping around Manhattan in my black puffy Reebok high-tops, I’m now positively killing it as a New Yorker!