Brenda Starr Reporter and my fashion sense

For as long as I can remember I have been collecting and occasionally wearing vintage clothes.  My grandma Dale Messick, created the Brenda Starr Reporter cartoon strip and her most beautiful era in my opinion has to be the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s.  Of course, I didn’t meet Dale Messick until the late 70’s….but I remember clearly the first time we went to her high rise apartment, which looked over Lake Michigan (it was in Chicago).  I think my mom purposely kept this fancy life away from herself and her children, because when we visited my glamourpuss granny “I was like who is this woman and why have you kept her from me?”…My granny had wild red hair, was gorgeous, had a closet full of fancy frocks and hats — and guess what? She loved to dress me up.  In fact, many years later when grandma Dale moved to California, that’s what we’d do…I’d come over and she’d give me her clothes and we’d play dress up.  So, as sort of an odd-ball teenager, I wore fedoras, capes and in my free-time started buying up vintage clothes.  I dare say I was wearing vintage before it was ever in style to do so. Even these days, I look smashing in vintage clothes… I just ever-so-slightly have a look about me that is from a different era.  Some people have this look…in period pieces it’s called “good casting.”  For example, the HBO series ROME — great casting…the Tudors, not-so-much.  All the dudes in that series look like they are soap stars in present time.  Or maybe it’s the modern day speak dressed up with English accents that’s throwing me off….not sure….but I am only watching it because, well, I am a history buff…and it’s sort of soapy.