My Mom the Style Icon, a Blog Story

I can’t remember how I came across this blog, but I was completely charmed and immediately submitted a photo of my mom (that’s her in the straw hat).

The “My Mom, the Style Icon” blog is written by Piper Weiss, an editor and writer featured in the likes of the New York Daily News, VH1 and bestweekever.tv. She came up with this the idea of creating the mom-as-style-icon website as she came across some amazing old pictures of her mom in the 60’s: “She was dressed in the most incredible frocks and she had a real attitude. I instantly realized I’d rather look at pictures of her than any model. So I posted them to a blog to show my friends. It took off a few months later and now I get submissions from all over the planet.”

I love how, through this site, we can revisit the fashion of some of the last decades, as seen on real women, also known as our mothers. It’s fun to be looking at them through a different lens, that of vibrant, stylish and sexy women, not just as “mom”.

Piper has a “major” fetish for the 70’s: “There’s something cartoonish about that era. Lots of colors and oversized bellbottoms. Big hair, hot beards, fringes and music that’s all about singing your heart out to stadiums. I was born in 1978 so I have a romanticized idea of that time. But that impulse to live inside a picture of what I imagine the world once was is probably what’s driven the site.”

When asked which is the favorite photo on her site so far, she says, matter-of-factly that she is partial to her own mom: “She seemed like such a bada$s. She traveled the world and hammed it up for the camera in a very contemporary way – the way that people pose for Facebook pictures now – that is to say with a sense of humor, a nonchalance and an understanding that a good picture requires more than just a smile”.

Piper is currently working on a book based on the site to be published by Chronicle in 2011. She is hungry for more submissions for the site – and the book. So, bring ‘em on! Any era is of interest. She is also interested in the mother-daughter dialogue behind the pictures: “Discovering your mom’s very cool past is a coming-of-age right. I love finding out what daughters or sons felt, thought, when they first found these photos again”.

Indeed, I re-discovered my mom in a whole new way when I got a hold of these photos, to realize how incredibly beautiful, sexy and stylish she was. And still is so today. And, I think that she got quite a thrill to see herself  being honored for her style in this blog.

Je t’aime ma belle maman!