Fashion meant a lot to my mother.  She saw it as a visa that enabled her to travel from provincial Kansas City and Minneapolis to glamourous New York, London and Paris.  Couture and tailored clothes from designers and stores like Bergdorf Goodman became essential to the creation of her new selves: Mrs. Oliver Rea a chic trophy wife and then the ex-Mrs. Oliver Rea, swinging divorcee and jet setter.  

My stepfather facilitated this with open accounts anywhere she cared to dress.  I still have a couple of the most beautiful black Italian silk cocktail dresses with lead weighted hems made for her at Bergdorf’s.  

Fashion week or as it used to be called Press Week became something she paid attention to and looked forward to like the changing of the leaves in Central Park outside her windows in the Dakota.  Long after the apartment was gone however, the clothes still hung in her closets, reminders of Fall and Spring collections past.