Wearing Linda Stein’s Vestment 628 and two other pieces in 2008
Sometimes the past comes up in enchanting ways.
Monday I heard from a friend I haven’t seen in fifteen years, Linda Stein. She reminded me that I visited her studio way back when in New York and she allowed me to try on her handmade suits of armor.
How could I ever forget that?
Well…
Linda has gone on creating as I have in a different field. We are both among the many remarkable women who keep on keeping on…
Now I’ve been thinking about the uses of armor, beyond the decorative. The world seems to require us to protect ourselves now, and maybe always. I don’t think the threat is as dire as predicted; when the kids get loose in the toy shop, they break a lot of things but eventually they get tired of destruction—it takes a lot of energy!—and go off to eat ice cream or the equivalent, consorting with pretty blonds.
The toy shop is a mess but eventually the grownups come in and clean it up and all the people who are being hurt now move forward with their lives.
So why armor?
It is such fine decoration, as Linda imagines and creates it! Maybe more interesting than even the most interesting clothes.
But I remember feeling self-conscious when I tried on a piece in her Tribeca studio years ago.
Who was I to strut in armor?
And then I remembered my lifelong fascination with Joan of Arc, which, curiously enough, I shared with the grandfather I never knew. I grew up dipping into his big collection of books about the woman who wore her armor so resplendently.
We all sport the silver breastplates and the beautiful helmets from time to time, perhaps more often in the defense of others than in our own defense but maturity tends to teach us the value of our own thriving in a world so often inimical. We live with a universal tendency on the part of certain humans to try, always, to put out the light.
But we know how to light it again.
I’m reminded of a novel called The Women, by Kristin Hannah and given to me by a friend. I was astonished when I read in on the frontispiece, “Women Can Be Heroes!”
Whoever thought we couldn’t be?
I’ve always believed that any woman who survives puberty is a hero. And then come all the other battles: speaking up in college classes, springing into a profession, pushing against all the barriers that come with achieving, creating every day the possibility of moving forward, just getting that meal on the table or those clothes in the dryer.
We don’t need armor. We wear it, in many forms, for decoration.
It was probably 1951 when six of us young girls watched a Joan of Arc film, starring Ingrid Bergman. We were not very aware of the history and there was some confusion in our thinking. We were surrounded by the story of a girl who was super courageous fighting evils in the world who was strangely wearing armor and leading armies, Her dramatic burning at the stake was depicted and we all were crying and perhaps we were inspired because she was so good. We later better understood her story. She raised a sense of hope for a country that had lost hope.