Literary Looks: The Great Gatsby

There are people who live in my head. I’ve collected them over time, over thousands of pages read everywhere: on subway seats, in library cubicles, under the covers, over the moon. The best of these people are realer to me, and more enduring, than many flesh and blood faces that pass through my days. Characters they are not. Rather, they are icons.

This second installment in my collection of “Literary Looks” is inspired by one of such paper icons: Daisy Buchanan of The Great Gatsby.

Daisy. The socialite. The cynicist. The girl with “the voice full of money.” Her style represents all the hope and flash and fleetingness of youth. But underneath the felt cloche hat, behind the mink stole, is the emptiness of broken promises, the sad realization that the most a woman of her class and time can aspire to is to be a “beautiful little fool.”

Lucky us: we have more options.  From our post-feminist perch, we can pity Daisy, maybe even judge her. But we can still admire her style, no?

Clockwise from top: Cloche hat from The Village Hat Shop, dress by Calvin Klein Collection, Fascination Evening Bag from Rochambeau, Hearted Mary Janes from Anthropologie, art deco jewelry by Lulu Frost.