What I Wore to the Mad Men Party

It WASN'T these unique and authentically 1960's palazzo pajamas designed by Anne Fogarty!

If you recall, the challenge I accepted from daughter Eleni was that I would wear  these appallingly ugly pajamas to the Worcester Art Museum's Mad Men Party on Saturday night, instead of the more seventies black suit I picked out, but only if 100 people voted that I should, voting on this blog or Eleni's or my Facebook pages. (Isn't that more fun than Elizabeth Warren vs. Scott Brown?)

While over 300 people read the post, only about 36 actually cast a vote, and the result was two to one -- 24 for the palazzo pants and 12 (mostly my friends) for the black suit.  But I only said I'd go for the pajamas if 100 people wanted me to.

So this is what I wore to the party.  I know, it's more "Dallas" than  "Mad Men", but at least the Beverly Feldman shoes were sort of psychedelic.

The party was a blast.  Six hundred people crowded into the Museum and had a great time--many of us revisiting and remembering our youth in the wild, wacky and tumultuous sixties.

The exhibit was brilliant--all the iconic news photographs of the decade including two Kennedy assassinations, the Beatles, Patty Hearst, Martin Luther King, Bob Dylan, Malcolm X, Marilyn Monroe --my husband Nick remarked that as a reporter, he'd met and interviewed most of them.

The Renaissance Court was packed with people drinking martinis around the mosaic floor excavated from Antioch.  Shrimp cocktail in martini glasses, deviled eggs, smoked salmon, and later Jello with ReddiWip carried through the Sixties theme.

Museum Director Matthias Waschek spoke about the Museum's acquisition of the personal collection of David Davis to create the "Kennedy to Kent State" exhibit.

And everybody listened.

Including a lady in her mother's mink stole.  ( I realized I have my mother's silver mink stole in a closet somewhere--I'd forgotten all about it.)

Upstairs in the cafe, everybody was grooving to Rock'n'Roll, reprising their long-forgotten dance moves.

Barbara revisited the Carnaby Street Mod era.

Young folks were learning to love martinis.   Everyone was having fun.

But because I chickened out of wearing the palazzo pajamas, and so many people felt I should have, including a number of my friends at the party, Eleni insisted that I pose for the first photo above, wearing them in the privacy of my bedroom.  Maybe I'll work up the courage to don them for some future Sixties party, if I imbibe enough margaritas first. (I was going to pose holding a martini glass, but we don't own one.)

Behind me in that first photo you can see my 1960's self (lower left) in a grouping that includes four generations of teenagers--my maternal grandmother, Anna Truan Dobson (upper left), my mother, Martha Dobson Paulson (upper right) and my daughter, Eleni Gage de Baltodano (lower right.)   I can only imagine what my mother and grandmother would have to say about the Anne Fogarty palazzo pajamas.