Bard Book Blowout

There is a fantastic book sale going on this weekend and next at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery. Catalogs for past exhibits at the gallery are being offered at a 70% discount. And if you buy three, the fourth book is free.

These books are all incredibly well researched, and gorgeously produced. Many of them are the only books on the given subject and for other subjects they serve as the definitive scholarly text. The ones pictured above are only a small sample of available catalogs.

And while you are there, you must see the wonderful show, Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones. There is a catalog for that show as well, but it is not part of the book sale.

The top-hat form, below, is in the show, and
there are, of course, many, many amazing hats.


The book sale is at the BGC Gallery, 189 West 86th Street,
near Central Park West, in NYC.
December 8-11 and 15-18, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Inaugural Hats

I’ve been waiting for an excuse to post the beige pillbox Jackie wore at JFK’s Inaugural fifty years ago today.

It may not be as famous as the pink pillbox she wore in Dallas, but this one has such an appealing sculptural simplicity. The nobility and purity it conveys exemplifies how expertly Jackie created not just a style, but an iconography with her clothing. According to Oleg Cassini, who famously dressed her while she was first lady, Jackie's signature pillbox, sitting back atop her bouffant hair, was inspired by images of Nefertiti. This one, I think, is more “white chess queen.” The top hat Jack wore that day completed the coronation/wedding couple "look." What a perfect symbol for our love affair with America’s royal family.



See other items from the Met's 2001 exhibit Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years.
Visit the JFK Library and Museum for the Inaugural Exhibit online.