My Geranium is blooming again. I've had her for years and it amazes me how resilient she is. I've also assigned a gender to her and I'm not really sure why. It may be because she is red and the color does have some immediate associations for me. My first job in NYC was with the men's design team at Liz Claiborne and there was a red that was always preferred throughout all the divisions- Liz Claiborne red- used over and over, almost a branded red. The source was a leather glove that Liz actually owned. Its framed with chunks chopped off for color standards over the years. I wonder what the new creative director there makes of this color.
But its not the red of this geranium. It was a bluer cast red. This geranium red casts more orange and makes me think of yet another female icon- Diana Vreeland and her famously red living room- the image is from Billy Baldwin Remembers which she dubbed "a garden in hell". I certainly took Diana's thought process from her Bazaar days when she ran her "why don't you?" series when I saw this bloom on a gangly stalk.
"Why don't you cut that off and put it in a tiny little vase?" I thought to myself. Not quite the grandiose why don't you's Diana used to suggest, like "Why don't you wash your child's hair in champagne?" but nevertheless it made a bright impetuous start to the day.
