sartorial veracity

My mother loved to buy me coats.

Green coats in particular.

Warm green winter coats that will never wear out..

One day I asked her why she chose green and she looked at me in surprise. “Because you always wear green coats.”

And of course by that time, she was right.

The oldest of these is an enormously puffy down jacket I pull out when temperatures really plummet—perfect for the last farmers market of the year which was a coolish 18 F (-7 C).

Also ideal when standing outside on an icy evening waiting for Beryl to find a pee spot, safe from moon shadows—

— just as functional now as it was for meandering to the goat shed for evening milking back in 1982 when Mum gave it to me. Indeed, if I’d been drawing comics then the only difference you might notice is that my first blue dog Scarface had some brown on her head and chest, and that my baggy leggings (for who needs more when your top half is so cozy) were known as ‘long undies’.¹

Not surprising, then, that I’ve drawn these coats a lot. And why not?

1. Sartorial truth in comics feels important to me.

2. Green is a lovely color, especially when other things are grey.

3. Being warm and dry is a fine thing.

4. A good coat is hard to find so why make myself crazy trying to choose one from the millions in the world when I already have four right to hand—functional garments whose parameters, strengths and weaknesses I now know quite well.²

5. In a lineup of comic friends, you’ll always know which one is me, for even as my hairstyle and glasses and “under layers” change, the coats do not.

Of course clothes are a relatively easy way to keep track of things — but really, what is truth in comics?

Last Wednesday morning it was the pink pen in my pocket (a mammogram party favor), and that I got to wear my skirt, leggings and shoes even as my top half was being examined to its core. For someone else it might have been the minutiae of the boob squishing machinery at the Imagery Center.

On Saturday with R, my comic truth included what we were wearing and eating but not the timeline. Perfectly willing to imply that we went to the used bookstore before we ate lunch (it was after), I’m now fretting because I see that I neglected to add color R’s shoes.³

Sometimes I choose to weave at a particular scale on a particular loom because I’m in the mood to render the wing nuts on the tiny one, or the red string of the heddles of the larger.

In the name of accuracy I have several times cut my hair so I can draw it in a new and interesting way for heaven forbid my comic self appear with a ‘do that I don’t have. Yet for all this I rarely think about pen and ink when I actually get dressed. Those decisions are motivated more by texture (what would feel good against my skin), or practicality (I will definitely need a pocket), or social situation (that garment is too tattered for comfort in public).

This can lead to unexpected surprises during the drawing phase of my routine-driven mornings, and I’m often more than a little amused by what I have inadvertently chosen.

Last week for instance, feeling slightly unprepared for halloween —

—I discovered that Beryl and I were meeting trick or treaters at the door dressed as twins (the kids noticed before I did).

Though now that I think about it, it might be that I dress like Beryl fairly often. What’s with that?

R and I were talking about this while we munched our respective pepperoni and pesto pizzas the other day: that for all the clothing we each own and wear (mostly sweaters in my case), we not only can instantly come up with specific iconic cartoon versions of each other, but also can easily compose such versions of ourselves. Like fictional comics characters with their ever-present outfits: Charlie Brown and his zig zags, Mo and her stripes, or Wonder Woman and her white stars on blue skirt/shorts/undies⁴ we each have some baseline look to which we habitually return, know it or not.

Not that things don’t shift with with the decades. Twenty- something Sarah will forever be dressed in tall leather work boots, cut-off shorts, and a home made buckskin bra, while the peri-menopausal Sarah who pulls her from the crumbling diary pages diary will be in mended jeans and a hand spun sweater (replacing an earlier version in a long skirt), and contemporary Sarah will undoubtedly be wearing wool from top to bottom (bras and undies too), and at least three hand knit/made/mended items— several of which have been dyed with indigo.

So different yes, but just as I think I’m telling the truth when I’m drawing, I think the real truth gets told back to me by the comics themselves once they are inked and painted. For suddenly I really see just how many hand made blue and brown items there are in my world. How the amount of pattern shifts, but slowly. How most items are of natural fibers. And, yes — that I continue to wear the coats my mother gave me (not natural fibers but what can you do).

So— um—have I spent all these years trying to look like my dogs?

Well — it’s not a bad choice if its true, at least if one is looking for models of enthusiasm, patience, joy, veracity, contentment, curiosity and sense of possibility.⁵ Well, Scarface was sometimes a bit aggressive and she never backed down from her principles—but then I was kind of a pushover in those days and needed the back up. Geez. Interesting stuff. I’ll have to think more on this.

But not right now. rRght now I’ve gotta go eat some kibbles lest I faint. Literally.

Though before I go I have to ask—do you have an iconic comic self? A green coat—or four—you never chose but somehow has become ‘you’? A style icon you didn’t know about until pencil hit paper? Now that I’ve inadvertently written myself into this unexpected place (I had no idea idea where this was going until five seconds ago), I’m longing to hear more.

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1. It (the down jacket), is also now old enough that it has gone from being the height of winter fashion, to outlandishly dated, to deliciously vintage — all without changing itself a bit. For those who notice such things, its extreme puffiness and the particular shade of 1980s green are apparently a total giveaway to people who notice such things. I’m now getting comments like “my mother had one just like this back in….”

2. Plus they are all plastic/synthetic material of some sort (down filling excluded), so will never wear out or decompose, regardless of location: on my back, in my closet or in a landfill somewhere. I honestly wouldn’t mind moving on from one or two if I could put them in the compost pile like a disintegrating sweater. But I can’t. So I won’t.

3. R — if you read this, can you let me know so I can fix that shoe problem? Also I’m assuming your leggings were black cuz they usually are, but if not —say that too. Eek!

4. Charlie Brown; Mo; Wonder Woman

5. Character development is a huge part of the construction of comics. Scott McCloud devotes myriad pages to it in his amazing book Making Comics, as do Jessica Able and Matt Madden in Drawing Words and Writing Pictures . It’s also enormous thing that each of us undertake every day. Who have we been in the world and in our lives? Who and how do we want to be in the world — and what helps us to be that person and how does that person do what she needs to do? Sometimes drawing ourselves as we see ourselves (the good and the not so fabulous bits alike), can help provide a clue or two.