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to be worn under a cardigan of the same shade. If you were fortunate enough to own one, you added a subtle string of cultured pearls to your ensemble. Some of my sweaters were cashmere, a kind of supple wool that made me perspire and itch; I never wore them. I knew nothing about Jewish holidays; they were as invisible as our many cousins in Austria and Germany who did not survive the war. Thoroughly assimilated, we marked Christmas with a tree and presents; my mother gave me a cashmere sweater every Christmas for years.
    During the day a young lady wore a woolen skirt and tailored blouse and either a cardigan sweater or a jacket cut like a man’s. Sensible shoes: low-heeled pumps or polished penny loafers. If you were going to meet someone at an office or restaurant you wore a dark-colored wool or silk dress. And tan stockings held up either by a garter belt that cut into your hips’ flesh or a panty girdle, depending on whether you thought you were thin or fat. Before the war, women wore silk stockings of a gossamer thinness. During the war silk disappeared into parachute factories; stockings were made of thick, orange rayon. Brassieres were cone shaped and made you stick out in front. If a man could unhook a bra without fumbling you figured he was promiscuous.
    For going out or entertaining after dusk you had a separate wardrobe comprised of “party dresses” and “party shoes.” You transferred your stuff from a daytime handbag into a smaller, fancier evening bag. Dresses hit you just below the knee until the “New Look” in 1948, when they abruptly dipped to midcalf, rendering your old dresses and skirts obsolete. Party dresses were generally made of silk or taffeta that shimmered and made a swishing sound. Shoes had high heels, and often were open somewhere, to show off naked toes or heels. (On our honeymoon in 1954, I bought a custom-made pair of blue suede pumps in Rome with four-inch heels; they squeezed my toes so hard tears came to my eyes and I wore them only once.) Even when you were invited to a friend’s house for an informal dinner—”it’s going to be just us”—you changed from your daytime clothes into a nighttime outfit. You put on more casual clothes—slacks and sneakers or Top-Siders—for strenuous outdoor activity. Only beatniks and hipsters, artists and writers, jazz musicians, actors and hard-core Village inhabitants defied the Uptown dress code and wore whatever they felt comfortable in. I knew a couple of Ivy League men who considered themselves cool enough to be seen almost anywhere in a torn oxford shirt, a pair of chinos, and blue sneakers, the more beat-up the better.
    A man who worked in an office was supposed to show up every morning with a clean shirt—white, blue, or pale yellow—a tie and a jacket. After work, at home, he might remove the tie and jacket. A hat, usually a “fedora,” made of felt with a snap brim, was so standard that if you saw a man without one, you wondered what was the matter with him—was he trying to tell you that he was a rebel? Convention had a firm grip on most of us—at least on the surface.
    For any woman a hat was considered as essential an element of her city costume as a pair of shoes, although of course it wasn’t, it merely said of its wearer, “Here is a lady.” After the war my mother, who thought she was ugly but wasn’t, had her hats custom-made by Mr. John, whose atelier was on East Fifty-seventh Street. Mr. John (I didn’t know whether this was his last name or his first) looked like Napoleon Bonaparte and made the most of the resemblance, brushing his hair down low over his forehead and to one side. The creative procedure involved in making one of his hats was long and painstaking and largely a matter of theater, starting with an initial visit to develop a concept and consult on design and fabric. A week or so later, Mother returned to his workroom