Growing Pains

    Despite only working one day at the FHCC this week, I’m exhausted.

    To sum things up, I volunteered at an event on Sunday, didn’t have work on Monday, and was sick at home on Tuesday. And, you know, other stuff.

    Wednesday was the day of the Ciao Bella event for DesignPhiladelphia. Earlier in the day, we finalized what shoes would be included in the viewing. One of the last additions was a donation from one of the graduate students in Westphal – a pair of Emilio Pucci wedges. Because we didn’t know much about them, I was given the task of finding a date to put with them.

    The best way for me to go about this would have been to check the Vogue archives or Style.com archives. Unfortunately, my eye is not “calibrated” to date anything, not even remotely (This is something that one develops with time.) So, I just had to input descriptors into Google and see what I got. I was able to find an image of the shoes very quickly, but not so much link them to a specific year or season. Eventually, with a few more tweaks in keywords, I found a video of the Emilio Pucci 2007 Spring/Summer Ready-to-Wear show. Coming down the catwalk were the shoes I had right next to me! Honestly, how cool is that?

    Once all the decisions were made about Ciao Bella, I went to work looking at accessories – hat pins, hair accessories, and hats. They had been taken out and examined to find possibilities for the exhibition, but many of them didn’t have updated tags. As usual, tagging became my job and I got to look at every pretty, shiny piece up close. My favorite items were a set of two hat pins with real beetle shells on the ends. While I do feel a little bad for the beetles, they were absolutely gorgeous.

    I didn’t take any photos of the hats or hair accessories, but seeing the fancy hair combs made me think of my 90-something-year-old great-grandmother. She, from what I know, has worn her hair the same way every day for many, many years. This hairstyle, naturally, involves multiple combs inserted into the hair. I think it’s so interesting that an item as random as a hair comb can evoke such strong feeling and/or memory.

    Later in the evening, after work, I came back to hear the Ciao Bella lecture and help with crowd control at the viewing. I really did enjoy the lecture and appreciated that a small number of people in attendance meant less pressure on us to make sure nothing happened to the objects in the collection.

    I failed to mention my other job in my past posts, though, and feel that I should probably mention it now to give you the whole picture of my life as a Co-Op student. Thursday-Saturday I work at a gift-shop in Old City all day. So in a normal week, I work 6 days and have Sunday off. The transition isn’t exactly rough, but it hasn’t been easy, either. From looking at the posts from my peers, it looks they’re all experiencing this same “grown-up” exhaustion as I am, and realizing how different the college lifestyle is than that of someone who’s working full time.

    At the moment, I’m not sure how I feel about this. I’ll keep you all posted. This might get deeper than I thought it would.