When fashion meets books
The loyal reader may still remember (you can read it here again) that there was a time in a far distant past when I only wore sweatpants. Makeup? Day cream? Heels? Never heard of it. When I wore jeans, people would ask if I “sometimes had a party like that.” That was back when I was interning at ELLE, and it happened around the same time I started studying at the UvA. Dutch Language & Literature it would be, at the Faculty of Humanities on Spuistraat. Sounds dusty? It was. Especially in terms of attire.
The thing was, half of my time I spent at the editorial office of ELLE, the other half in somewhat musty-smelling classrooms of the Faculty. At ELLE, it was the most normal thing in the world to show up in glitter pants on Monday and in a ball gown on Tuesday, but at Spuistraat they didn't want any of that. Outward appearance was seen as a degradation of your intelligence; heels, dresses, and skirts do not fit with literary theories and linguistic issues. Giuseppe Zanotti does not go hand in hand with inversion morphology, and a clitic pronoun cannot be explained when one is dressed in Kenzo pants. Ridiculous, of course, but that was the case.
People who read three books a week do not walk around drinking champagne in 12cm heels at trendy soirées.
My classmates understood nothing of my love for fashion, ELLE, and magazines in general. They thought it was just silly superficial women's chatter. It was no match, could not coexist. People who read three books a week do not walk around drinking champagne in 12cm heels at trendy soirées. Also ridiculous, and that's why I find it extra nice that Bazaar of the April issue has made a book issue. And even better is that in this issue the female writers are central, where in the literary canon men always dominate. Also ridiculous, so three cheers for this issue with “divas & debutantes.”
Among those writers is also Renate Dorrestein, my fake aunt. That means she is not officially family to me, but it feels that way. She was my mother's best friend, and I have known her my whole life. Besides fake aunt, I also always call her rock star (because she is), and even though I haven't read all her books, she is by far my favorite writer. The moral of this story is that books are not boring; books are a celebration. So everyone rushes to the stores for the new Harper's Bazaar and also buy a nice book as a treat, preferably hers.
