Lilly Daché's Glamour Book

“I sell glamour.”    Lilly Daché

I was miserable at 13. I was in the eighth grade. I had a really bad perm, was still being dressed by my mother and was being bullied by just about every kid in my middle school. I was growing up in a steel town in Colorado. My parents had just started their own business so I was by myself a lot. I was super lonely. It was just a really crappy year.

I was a big reader and my mom was good about keeping me in a steady supply of books. She loved the library, as did I.  In the spring of that awful year we ended up at the downtown library on a day that they happened to be holding a used book sale. I wandered off on my own and browsed through the big, musty cardboard boxes. I was searching for Nancy Drew books I hadn’t read yet. Shoved in with a bunch of romance novels, I saw a pretty lilac hard back that was missing its dust cover. The color grabbed my attention, but it was the name that sucked me in. It was called Lilly Daché’s Glamour Book.

Glamour was a foreign concept to me. I mean I watched Dynasty and read Seventeen Magazine, but that was all I knew about the subject. To pursue glamour had not occurred to me. That it might be possible for me personally seemed crazy. The book was written in the 1950’s by Lilly Daché, a French hat designer who lived in New York City, and she promised that if I did what she said I too would be glamorous.  I bought it for a quarter.

I poured over every word. I read it too many times to count. Lilly really believed that I could be pretty. She was so kind and lovely and French. She showed me that maybe life didn’t have to be a struggle. Maybe it could be more than just getting by. Maybe it could be vibrant and glittery. Maybe it could include traveling to places like New York and Paris. Maybe it could encompass party dresses and sparkling jewelry and people who treated me well. Maybe, just maybe, if I followed all of her instructions to the letter, did everything she told me to, life could actually be beautiful.

I’d like to say that I was instantly transformed into a glamorous beauty, but that’s a chick flick, not real life. Eventually, though, my perm grew out, I transferred to a new school and made friends, started picking out my own clothes and finally went away to college to study interior design. But what Lilly Daché’s Glamour Book did for me was to open the door of possibility. It showed me that life could be lovely, and sweet, and that there was a world out there that was full of beauty…just waiting for me to join.

I’m a grown woman now. I’ve been to Rome and London and Paris. I’ve seen New York in the spring, summer, winter and fall. I have a closet full of pretty party dresses and armfuls of sparkly jewelry. No one would dare to bully me now. But still, to this day, that little lavender book rests on my nightstand, reminding me that the girl I was still remains deep down inside the woman I’ve become. And it is…without a doubt… the best twenty five cents I’ve ever spent.