Jean Zimmerman

Category: Fashion

  • Queen for a Day

    There is a lot of hurry up and wait for an arborist working on Webster Avenue in the Bronx, catch basins and pipes go into the trenches and the equipment doesn’t brush a tree. In the meantime I people watch. The folks here are diverse. There isn’t money for Park Avenue designers, but some of…

  • As Beautiful as a Day Can Be

    …when the calendar page flips over and suddenly you’re older by a year. But let’s take stock. Here on West Street there is a tumbling breeze and the sky is robin’s egg blue–what a cliché, let’s just call it cliché blue –with streaky white clouds and sunlight that bakes us all but perfectly. The men…

  • All This and a Cow Face Too

    It looks like I will soon be working a new assignment, in a park rather than the mean streets of Brooklyn. Green! Summer! Lofty trees! Even a lake. Yet I already feel nostalgic for this world of impressively staunch street trees, truck exhaust and rough-edged asphalt corners. I’ve spent the last week on Utica Avenue in Brooklyn,…

  • Goodbye to All That Merchandise

    Today was my last shift at The Somewhat Fancy Ladies’ Clothing Store. No, I was not fired. My tenure as seasonal sales associate concluded in the same way it always does, at the end of winter, with the bright smocks and palazzos of spring entering the shop in dozens of boxes, and fewer and more pennypinching…

  • Scutwork

    Working in The Somewhat Fancy Ladies’ Clothing Store can be tedious. I fold sweaters. Process returns, a mental challenge that is only getting slightly easier. Size the merchandise, meaning make sure the clothes go in the proper order on the rack. Take outfits off mannequins. Put outfits on mannequins. Wait for customers. Where are the…

  • Skipping History

    A girl I knew in college used to tell me she had a crush on the subject of Anthropology, in which she had taken so many wonderful courses. She like to say she was having an affair with Anthro, until she came to her senses and settled down with Economics as her major. I know…

  • You’re Not Doing Great. Really.

    “You’re doing great,” said the customer, her three big bags of returns flopped open on the counter between us. Snarl, snarl, I said. Inwardly. “Really,” she said. “Why, you are too,” I beamed sarcastically, as I knew I shouldn’t. She called out to her friend, who was waiting for her. “I can’t believe my husband…

  • Belly Fat and All

    Come in here, come in, you’ll see… I crack the dressing room door and poke my head in. You see this? She grabs a handful of belly fat. That’s why I can’t wear this, I can’t wear certain things. I’ve always had it… We’ll find you something, I say. I’ve only worked here a month,…

  • The Proper Way to Fold a Sweater

    An arborist in winter can’t hibernate, even though it won’t be time to plant or nurture trees until the ground thaws in March. An arborist has got to make a living. And that’s how I wound up as a seasonal sales associate in a Somewhat Fancy Ladies’ Clothing Store in the local mall. I don’t think…

  • Ms. Wiggy

    I saw some striking wigs today. Gleaming, glinting, brunette, raven black, strawberry blonde. They don’t resemble real hair, and maybe that’s the point. My job site was on the corner of Dayhill Road and 53rd Street, in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. The two Zelkova trees I was there to watch over had gnarled roots…

  • My Cloak of Invisibility

    Every day before I leave for the job I suit up in my orange fluorescent vest. I love these eleven things about it, in no particular order. It marks me as a person of distinction. It’s the first time in my life I’ve worn a uniform. No matter whether or not I wear eye liner and mascara,…

  • Cowlin’ for You

    I ventured out today. After two and a half weeks in a foot cast, I was ready. The sky was an egg, the fall breeze fresh, the sun silky on my arm propped up at the passenger window of the car. There was sushi, at our local place not usually the best, but which tasted…

  • The Exquisite Realism of Pleats

    Hiatus. Mine was a long one, at least in the terms of this daily blog. I took off in the spring to research my new novel, then to write the novel, then to take a break after writing the novel, then putting the novel on the market. Now, with my foot up after a third time…

  • Savage Girl O Mag Pick

    Savage Girl might never be an Oprah Pick. But that doesn’t mean the book doesn’t rank some standing in O The Oprah Magazine. A friend of mine mentioned that she read the glossy’s April 2014 issue and saw Savage Girl highlighted there as one of “Ten Titles to Pick Up Now.” She probably noticed this while…

  • The Larky Life

    [This post will be saved on the site under the Savage Girl tab.] Cross dressing permeates the world of Savage Girl. Tahktoo, also known as the berdache, goes about in women’s dress a good portion of the time. He is brawny and manly but feels more comfortable as a rule in a gown. (That doesn’t mean…