I can well remember the burning scorn for my next door neighbor and her overnight love for NKOTB, which included a wall of posters and a comforter. I have a clear memory of sitting on my lawn reading a Natalie Babbit book (doubtless in a sunbonnet) while she and a friend did an earnest a cappella rendition of "Step by Step" over the hedge. Around the same time, a hand-clapping game swept my second-grade class. I was, on principle, scornful and refused to play it: I remember arriving at school one day to find my best friend and lone ally clapping and singing along; that day, I sat by myself on the sidelines while the other 19 members of my class played "Em-pom-pi" in a big circle. At least I had my vague principles!

Even at the time, I would have been hard-pressed to define my objection to these seemingly innocuous phenomena. The fact that everyone else liked them — nay, had lost their heads over them — was enough. In later years, sticker books and Koosh balls and 90210 obviously also aroused my superior contempt . There were moments when I yearned for the tactile pleasures of a fuzzy sticker, the clandestine thrill of the Walsh siblings' G-rated antics; but nothing could provide the satisfaction that my principled individuality did — a thrill as compelling and all-encompassing as the trends that swept my classmates along. And obviously as the teen years advanced, my commitment to outsider status only hardened.

Twilight has made people think about the mass hysteria such phenomena can provoke in girls, just as matinee idols, the Beatles, boy bands , High School Musical actors and teen pop stars have done for decades. Hormones, burgeoning sexuality, issues of identity and assimilation are usually invoked. And everyone's aware of the trope of the teen outsider, defining him-or-herself against such conformity. We've all seen The Breakfast Club, after all, and experienced the rigidity of self-imposed youthful roles. But I don't think it's often said that mass hysteria and anti-establishment posing are two sides of the same coin, and to a teen it can sometimes feel like there is not much of an alternative. It can be hard to enjoy something without joining in, hard to reject it without making a self-conscious statement. It can be hard to just kind of like something when you're defining yourself, even though the bulk of a thoughtful adult life is in fact made up of gray areas and shades of opinion.

When I was talking with my young friend, I tried to be sensitive. "Really?" I said casually. "I'm kind of interested to take a look at Twilight, just to see what all the fuss is about." I could see, with that noncommittal response, that I had failed her. I should, I guess, have been railing against conformity, not joining the ranks of apathetic adulthood. After all, she had known me to be an "independent" teenager myself, back in the day. But the truth is, when I was her age, I know I would have secretly been curious to read Twilight — who doesn't like forbidden teen love?! — and even lose myself in pure hysteria for a change. One of the blessed reliefs of being a grown-up is that it's okay to admit that.

The Vampire Of The Mall [New York Times]

No, the importance of Little Edie is that her variation on a towel dress is representative of the can-do spirit that we're all being urged to adopt now that we're in a Recession. What she wore — the countless bizarre "costumes" and outfits and mix-and-matched pieces — was cool, yes, but what made her a true Recessionista (as it should be used) was that she used limitation as a jumping-off point and did more with that than had she had a huge clothing budget. Did she sew? Re-use? Reinvent? Yes! But even more important, she dressed without fear, for self-expression. She reminded us of the redemptive powers of clothing and how little they have to do with frivolity. There is nothing of the clotheshorse in Grey Gardens: the point is never acquisition, but the actual purpose of the clothes themselves. When designers took inspiration, it was literal: replicating a bejeweled sweater turban or a skirt made from safety pin trousers. But it was the spirit of her dressing that's a help to the rest of us. Nowadays we're inundated with tips for essentially how to manufacture the illusion of an unchanged lifestyle, and that's not tenable. Little Edie, from madness or wisdom, didn't do that. She created a new reality for a new set of circumstances.

It's easy to see why fashion types are enchanted with the famous eccentric, but still a bit jarring. When the Grey Gardens musical first hit the stage, suddenly Little Edie wasn't just the property of those of us who'd long loved the cult Maysles documentary — and maybe wrapped sweaters around our heads in high school: everyone loved her! A film of cut scenes was released. Philip Lim's 2007 show, Marc Jacobs, the Olsen Twins and Italian Vogue were all competing for her favors. Rhapsodized Isaac Mizrahi in 2006: "The way that we now make mistakes on purpose comes from Edie Beale. I'm still and always trying to match her sense of the absurd, her playfulness, her sense of the drama of clothing." The stylesmith for the newest Grey Gardens stage production, Alex Jaeger, had this to say in Sunday's Washington Post:

Her fashion sense comes out of a deep need to be creative. And she was fabulously creative. These outfits, she made them out of whatever she had. As strange as they may be, there was a lot of thought put into them, and she would make 10 or 12 a day. She would change her clothes all day long.

But all of this is really beside the point: Little Edie was poor — very poor — and she was obviously not well. Said Simon Doonan, seldom a slave to fashionable bromides, in May: "[Said my friend Deb] who works in a psychiatric hospital and has a front-row seat at the unwitting fashion show that is mental illness. 'Walk around any in-patient unit: Lots of people are sitting around with things tied around their heads, just like Little Edie. They are not making a fashion statement; they are trying to block out the voices in their heads.'"

It should be said that Little Edie was probably more concerned with covering a bald pate, but there is something exploitative about mining what is essentially tragedy for inspiration (while crying homage), but whereas the Little Edie fashion moment of the past two years had me cringing, I feel like now her true fashion moment has come. Because the times in which we live are unprecedented, an unprecedented role model is called for; we're left not with a scant pile of threadbare basics that need to see us through the next half-decade, but, rather, the detritus of petty decadence: trendy, cheaply-made things never intended to last, that now reproach us from our overflowing closets. In this, Little Edie is a great help. She made the clothes work for her, remembered that they were nothing more than fabric — not a season, not a style, only raw material. She had nothing to do with Fashion, but a lot to do with everyday clothes and the people who wear them. People embraced her a few years ago because they were jaded, hungry for novelty, and sick of perfection. We can embrace her now not ironically, not patronizingly, but as a true role-model, and a boon for our times.

Standing on Fertile Ground for Creative Expression [Washington Post]

Related:
One Flew Over the Couture's Nest[New York Observer]
Little Edie, Big Style [New York Daily News]

Tasha Tudor was one of the last true eccentrics, someone whose peculiarity owed nothing to image (although she was happy to capitalize on it) and everything to individual proclivity. That the larger world found this so appealing is testament not just to the hackneyed yearning for "a simpler time" but, I think, for this kind of rugged individualism. And was she weird! Says the Times, "Ms. Tudor frequently said that she was the reincarnation of a sea captain’s wife who lived from 1800 to 1840 or 1842, and that it was this earlier life she was replicating by living so ardently in the past."

Although her lifestyle was picturesque, Tasha Tudor was not cuddly. She was prickly and hard-nosed, unsentimental about her art and ready to build a thriving cottage industry off of it. And, obviously, she owned a gun.

It's not surprising that she should have appealed to an eccentric child; as the Times (and a 1950s autobiography I cherished) tells us, as a child "she developed a love of times past and things rural, going to auctions to buy antique clothing before she was 10. At 15 she used money she had made teaching nursery school to buy her first cow." So much niftier than sticker books (the fad of the year) and The Little Mermaid! Also appealing to me, she was one of the most prominent unsentimental adult doll-lovers, writing some of the best doll fiction (The Doll's Christmas, Corgiville Fair), owner to a magnificent (1830s style) dollhouse, and host to an elaborate doll wedding covered by Life magazine.

Tasha Tudor lived a long and reportedly very healthy life - and no one can say that she didn't live it exactly as she wanted to. It's hard to really be sad when such a life ends - but a part of me still is. While I don't know that burgeoning eccentricity should always be encouraged (I had to wrest myself forcibly into a semblance of normalcy as a teen for the good of my social skills, and it was a painful process), it was tremendously heartening to me as a child to know that in this day and age someone had that much agency in her own destiny, could be that peculiar and still thrive. When I received a hand-written note from Tasha Tudor many months after sending my letter, it was one of the happiest moments of my life, and I still cherish it. That my best friend found and mocked it mattered not one whit - Tasha had taught me that. Enjoy the 1830s farm in the sky, my friend.

Tasha Tudor, Children's Book Illustrator, Dies at 92 [New York Times]

Earlier: Coming Out of the Dollhouse Closet