Pass Down Worthy Show Stoppers: Fashion Finds for the Generations
This past week, my maternal grandmother, “Gramzy”, passed away after 90 years of life. She was a mother to six, and for better or worse, her happiness was profoundly embedded in her children.
When someone you love passes, it is natural to start reflecting on your own life. Since hearing the news, I am experiencing a heightened awareness that motherhood doesn’t stop with little kids. Life as a mother is a series of stages, and they are finite and all deserve to be soaked in for their best, because they are fleeting. So right now, I am hearing my baby’s cry as music. I am finding comedy in my toddler’s tantrums. And I am embracing never getting a second to myself. Because this is a moment in time, and I believe that one day I am going to look back and wish for one more day of this. And I pray that I can hold on to that sentiment as often as possible.
Anyway. This website is intended to be fun and light, and there was plenty of my grandmother that fit that bill!
Gramzy and I were kindred spirits, and I attribute much of my own love of fashion to her influence in my life. She would take me on “shopping sprees” as a teenager, to experience featured couture exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and send me every book on fashion she could get her hands on. In her 90 years of life she never let her love of style and looking her best go by the wayside. Gramzy was old fashioned but consistent- she did not understand women wearing denim. She believed that wearing shorts out to dinner was horrific. And that you should dress to flatter your God-given feminine figure. I didn’t necessarily hold to her tenets as strongly as she did, and I wasn’t borrowing her glittering velour pants suits, but I loved and aspired to how much she still cared about how much she looked. And, style differences aside, there were two big fashion mantras we both always agreed on. Jewelry could never be too dramatic, and that there is no event in life where sequins were inappropriate. My grandmother spent her life collecting showstopping jewelry and outfits, and I was lucky enough to be the beneficiary of many of these special pieces.
So with that said, I’m dedicating this post to Gramzy, a fashion queen- and sharing my favorite pass-down worthy showstopping finds. Some pieces are so timeless, so fun, so special- that you know that they will be favorites for decades to come. And maybe, just maybe, favorites of daughters and granddaughters to come.
“You can be gorgeous at 30, Charming at 40, And Irresistible for the rest of your life.” Coco Chanel
Leslyn Laura Steele
1931-2021.