Readin' In The Rain

above images via jean stories...

tonne's home from the september 2001 vogue via habitually chic

A rain-soaked Memorial Day weekend (we're in deluge territory here friends) ruled out your grilling and pooling and, well, all other requisite "beginning  of summer" holiday activities. Never fear, there were still burgers, they were just procured from our favorite neighborhood joint and consumed while partaking in a particularly epic Gilmore Girls binge with Audrey.

When not immersed in antics of Lorelai and Rory and the good citizens of Stars Hollow, I read... and read and read. No novels, mind you (it's Memorial Day weekend people, beach-esque reading only); it was all about a towering stack-o-magazines. I've been ripping out inspiring tear sheets and articles like it's my job -- at the top of the heap, Holly Brubach's article about stylist Tonne Goodman and her two sisters in the April issue of W.

The piece had me at Tonne (her style and aesthetic sensibility being pretty much off the charts -- see exhibits A-D above), but by the end of the piece, it was her mother Marian who I'd fallen for. Hard.

Specifically there was this:

Marian made sure the children got the full benefit of growing up in New York—taking them to the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum, the New York City Ballet, an Ike and Tina Turner concert, musicals and off-Broadway theater, including some productions (Hair, The Boys in the Band) other parents might have deemed unsuitable for kids. “These were things I wanted to go to, so I took them along,” Marian says. “And they seemed to enjoy it.” 

 Tiger mothers looking to raise girls who grow up to rule the world would do well to consider Marian Goodman’s style of parenting. Though all of her daughters...have succeeded in careers requiring visual imagination and a discriminating eye, she did not teach them to draw or even encourage them to study any subject in particular. Stacy says what strikes her now as most remarkable about their childhood is the “mixture of discipline and freedom” that their mother cultivated. “The household was very organized, but there was also the chance to pursue your interests. Never this pressure of ‘What are you going to become?’” On Friday afternoons, Marian took them to Central Park, set up her easel, and painted while the children scampered around her “like puppies,” Stacy recalls. That Marian made time to do what she loved left a lasting impression. Though the girls credit their mother with experiences that formed the foundation for their own creative education, Marian insists there was no master plan. “I wanted them to find their own way,” she says.

I've written of my admiration for this particular style of mothering before. Marian and Talia, I do believe you are soul sisters.

Thanks for the reminder.