SCHOOL OF THOUGHT
Thursday, July 13th, 2000

The following piece originally was writen not for Blue Fish Tales but for a radio show called "Women's Voices". When we decided to do a show focused on the obsession women have with what they wear, what better topic to examine than Blue Fish? Writing about something so near and dear to my heart was tough, especially because the piece had to run no longer than four minutes. I've reprinted the text of the piece below. Does this perhaps sound familiar?

I love Blue Fish. Not the scaly creature that swims the seas, but a line of funky, block-printed organic cotton clothing designed by JENNIFER BARCLAY and produced in FRENCHTOWN, NEW JERSEY. I speak with a reverence befitting an Elvis sighting....or a pilgrimage to Graceland...because I'm OBSESSED with Blue Fish...and here's my Top Ten Reasons Why.

10) good Blue Fish isn�t easy to get There�s five retail stores nationwide and another 400 boutiques who SAY they carry it.but you�re more likely to find an Easter egg on the Fourth of July. A Blue Fish catalog is tempting with a phone number and photos, but since the garments feature one of a kind artwork, the salesperson choosing your outfit COULD either grace you with a Van Gogh or STICK you with a Jackson Pollock

9) any body can wear Blue Fish. ANY BODY, including Oprah and Julia Roberts. Flexible, flowing, artistic, and ...LOOSE, it works frontwards, backwards, tied up in knots, and layered...turning soccer moms into upscale bag ladies.

8) If you stumble onto a carnival midway wearing Blue Fish, you�ll stump those Guess Your Weight guys every time. Need I say more?

7) Blue Fish style is timeless, and each piece is printed with its year.. The older a piece, the better it is. Nouveau Blue is 1995 or later. Wearing Vintage Blue...94 and earlier....means you�re a True Blue (Fish) Blood.

6) Made from organically grown cotton, Blue Fish feels like a grown-up security blanket. It�s the Lay�s Potato Chip of the apparel industry, No one can own just one. Or ten. Or even a hundred. As I mention some dollar amounts, get ready for "sticker shock." A tshirt sells for $60. A funky dress, over $200. A coat to die for, $500.

BUT, and here�s Reason Number 5) Blue Fish IS affordable if you know how to shop. The secret is the annual Blue Fish Friends and Family Sale, at Tinicum Park in Bucks County, Pennsylvania., which lures shoppers like lemmings to their death. The sale is a no frills event, under a tent in a field. You shop out of cardboard boxes and strip down to your underwear to try stuff on. Go ahead snicker...but when you can get a $400 jacket for twenty, or a $150 outfit for five bucks, it�s easier to stomach the sight of someone else�s cottage cheese thighs than to watch an prime-time survivor eat roasted rat.

4) Blue Fish is collectible and can appreciate in value. On eBay, the online auction house, mature, sensible women fight over worn, tired, even stained Blue Fish. These ebay auctions make day trading look like happy hour. Prices quadruple in the final seconds. Losing bidders threaten and stalk winners, while winning bidders rack up thousands of dollars of debt....and keep buying.

3) Each piece of Blue Fish is printed with a message of harmony, responsibility, sharing, and creativity. I find it comforting to don these values, and live in them, especially after I�ve kicked butt on eBay and hooked ANOTHER piece of Blue Fish online. These messages remind me of what�s important in life.

2) Having a Blue Fish obsession means never having to obsess alone. Hundreds of other online Blue Fish junkies are ready for their next fix, eager to email or talk on the phone until they are Blue Fish blue in the face. They gather at Blue Fish Tales, the website for fans of Blue Fish Clothing, created by a devoted fan whose sole mission is to see every woman everywhere draped in Blue Fish Clothing...and she will stop at nothing to achieve that goal, including hijacking a radio program for four FULL minutes to read what amounts to an INFOMERCIAL! But I digress. The website scores over a hundred hits a day, from women who share stories, enjoy a feeling of community, and clearly have way too much time on their hands.

And the number 1 biggest reason why I wear Blue Fish? As the manager of the Austin, TX Blue Fish store said to me last night, "It�s Garanimals for adults." Remember that clothing line for kids with animal tags that made matching outfits easy?. I�m secretly coordination challenged, and Blue Fish lets me fake being fashionable. And with less time worrying about mixing and matching, I can devote more time to matters of significance, such as protesting the next World Trade Organization meeting...that is, as long as I have the right outfit to wear.

Linda (aka bluecarp)
[email protected]

Please check back for archived VIEWs from March-June which had been lost....but have been found thanks to Joanne Magginnis, who (thankfully) printed them out before my computer crashed in July and I lost this web page. I am working on inputting them again....so stop back later!) Read below for entries from March and earlier.....

HEAD TO TOE
Wednesday, March 15, 2000

Spring has come to my neck of the woods (upstate New York, on the outskirts of the snowiest metropolitan city in the country) and, as Robert Frost once put it, it is the season of mud. Where I live, it's also the season of gravel and grit and sand, which is what they blast the road surfaces with to keep us steering straight and on the correct side of the double yellow line (that is, when we can see it under all the snow and slush and freezing rain).Once the mud subsides, then the fun begins..because it's now shoe and sandal season....giving me more flexibility with my Blue Fish wardrobe.

"Whaaaaat?" you're probably shrieking in disgust. "After all the weighty, signficiant things you've explored in this column, you're now going to talk about FOOTWEAR?"

Yes, I am.

And it's no small matter. What to wear with BF is a big concern for many women, judging from the BF Tales email bag. Here's the comments of Michele of Bethlehem, PA, regarding "the shoe dilemma":

I am often euphoric in the stores or at the sales, trying on outfits, mixing and matching in bare feet. When I get home I begin to lament over whether or not I will ever find the "right " pair of shoes to wear. According to my mother this all could be solved if I were to just wear "normal" clothing. Why would anyone what to do that?

Or this letter from Susan, also living in upstate NY:

What shoes do you wear with Blue Fish and *where* do you get them? (websites a plus!) I'm usually in birkenstocks, which are fine, but not always what I want. My current favorite pair of shoes are my "witch boots", black granny boots with a rubber heel. I found them at a thrift shop and bought them even though they are too long for my feet. (I stuff the toes with old knee highs....a possible link to the rippie phenomenon of creating clothing that fits with "cast-off" materials. ;-) Now my quest is to find a source for *new* granny boots (with rubberized heels!). Ah well,

I too study the catalog models feet to see what they wear with the latest (and older) bf creations. Still, a link to a source of not-quite-fashionable shoes that look great with Blue Fish (and come in narrow through wide widths -- extra wide for me!) would cheer me up.

Susan, Michele, I'm with you. I have some GREAT outfits that will never see the light of day because, short of wandering barefoot on the beach, my footwear just ain't gonna cut it with these flowing, fabulous shapes and drapes. Now I KNOW you see a lot of the Blue Fish models wearing Doc Martens (you know, those big clunky soled shoes that are the rage with people whose ages begin with the digit 1 or 2)...but if you're beyond that age, you've gotta have a lot of style to pull that off.

Like Susan, I often resort to Birkenstocks or similar footwear in summer, depending on the BF...and lately, I've just been wearing my Lacrosse blue plastic gardening clogs with my woolybully socks for that "fresh from the country" look (don't laugh..it works!) and it keeps my feet warm in mud season.

But, and here's the catch...BF women wear BF because of comfort, right? Well, where's the funky shoe manufacturer who makes comfortable shoes with a BF attitude? You either seem to have style, or comfort, but not both in the footwear world. So who's going to be first on the scene with this kind of shoe? Or maybe it's out there, and Susan and Michele and I are in the dark. Until I hear from you about what YOU like to wear with your BF, here's a list of what I've been wearing lately...and who has made it.
1. Deep blue suede "zipper" shoes (yes, they close with a zipper)...spongy soled..made by BORN (with a funny stroke through the O..I think they're scandinavian?)
2. Clogs....blue/black nubuck and plain old brown leather, reasonably sized heel...Joseph Seibel.
3. Fitted black leather square-toed shoes...elastic panels on the side make them easy to pull on...these look very sharp with the Fall 99 stuff....Aerosole.
4. "Pilgrim" looking black leather and brown leather shoes with a squared toe...with a big (for me)heel...similar in style, though one has a button closure and one closes with a black buckle...very sharp looking...both are Unlisted by Kenneth Cole
5. Suede "Mary Jane" styled shoes with a wide band that buckles...I have this pair in both black and brown...flat and comfortable, but more rustic, not funky...by Romika.
And from last summer's collection:
6. Black leather thick soled "sandals" with a wide band across the top of the foot...Aerosole.
7. Gold strappy sandals with a small heel....don't know the manufacturer...
8. Black suede "flip flop" style sandals....flat and casual...J.Crew
9. White/natural woven flat sandals, elastic strap at heel...don't know the manufacturer.....

This is mostly from memory, as the season of snow has kept my feet pretty much in a pair of short day hikers with GoreTex and brown canvas and sticky rubber soles...it works, but it isn't going to stop traffic with its beauty and style...but now I'm inspired to go digging under the bed and in the closet.

If I don't find something that satisfies, well...Susan did mention a certain shoe that I've seen friends wearing, from the Aurora Shoe Company of Aurora, NY....they make each shoe individually by hand, and though they are not cheap, they do have an onsite store at the company so perhaps a road trip is in order, now that the snow has melted. I'll keep you all posted on what I find.

Now, if I only had the right socks....

Linda (aka bluecarp)
[email protected]

CARE INSTRUCTIONS
Friday, March 3, 2000

Blue Fish engenders a lot of passion. And never is this passion more evident than at one of the legendary Friends and Family sales.

These sales are part Filene's Basement (where women strip down to their underwear to try things on because there are no real dressing rooms) and part equal opportunity extravaganza (where women of different colors, faiths, orientations, and economic and social backgrounds all get down to the bare essentials....in plain sight of each other. Where else will you see a pillar of the local country club community share a mirror with a pillar of the local AME church community, with both of them in their skivvies?)

In a situation like this, you would think that maybe, just maybe, we could all move a couple of steps closer to each other and create that "circle of friends." Well, yes and no.

Having gone to a recent BF Friends and Family Sale this past week, I can say it's a lot like a spaghetti western at times...there's the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The good happens when you see women sharing with each other...taking the time to show a newbie how to do the ties on the vintage button dresses or those hemp overalls...commenting on what works together and suggesting something out on the rack that might work better....and doing so simply out of the joy of seeing someone else's delight in discovering Blue Fish.

The bad happens when there is little interaction...when we shop with friends and don't reach out to the woman shopping alone who looks puzzled at the sizing, or feels embarassed because she's not sure how the clothing should fit...or when someone asks longingly "where did you find that great top?" and hears the short cold answer "there's no more like it."

And the ugly? Well, there's a lot of ugly at the sales...but to dwell on it is to empower those who practice ugliness...so let's stop there.

A friend who knew I was sale-bound emailed me the evening after my first foray into the F&F waters...."Ah, the sale.....Was it a dog-eat-dog, shark-attack sort of atmosphere? What is it that comes over people??? I always find that to be very ironic, considering what Blue Fish 'stands' for!"

Aptly enough, the subject line of her email to me was "Blue Fish Blues".

I sat at my computer for a long time, thinking about how I felt after the sale, despite the wonderful bargains...and I thought too about "what Blue Fish 'stands' for." Another friend of mine, facing related frustrations, asked plaintively, "Does anyone really LIVE those labels?"

Is there a disconnect going on between the spirit of the clothing and the spirit of its wearers...and makers?

As women, we seem to want to connect in meaningful ways...at least most of us do. For those who have participated in the buying and selling of Blue Fish on eBay, the online auction house, there are a hundred or more wonderful stories about friendships formed, coincidences recognized, lives compared, and gifts exchanged...both tangible and intangible.

As a new acquaintance wrote to me this afternoon, "Yes, the "Blue Fisherwomen Community", as someone referred to the gang on eBay, is sooo nice (how could you truly love Blue Fish and not be a nice human being??)."

Well, that's the million dollar question, isn't it? Does a shared love of...perhaps obsession for...Blue Fish Clothing mean we're all good people? Do you live the life that is talked about on the labels...and patches...and hang tags...and catalog pages? Do I? Do we "cherish bio-diversity and the beauty of living earth", as the Spring 1998 "Antique Botanicals" catalog asks us to do? Do we care that catalogs are printed on recycled paper with soy inks? Does it matter that the cotton jersey styles of clothing are made from certified 100% organic cotton from the USA, grown in living soil on an organic farm where the fields have been pesticide free for at least three years and are enriched by compst and organic matter? Do you really care? Do I?

Or, on a more personal level, do you "Know what you want...believe in yourself...advance confidently in the direction of your dreams...have fun"(from the Summer 1998 catalog)...? Is it real, or is it an inspiring but empty image?

A lot of these questions are not ones Blue Fish fans want to examine in depth, let alone read about here...but sometimes the ugly can be better for us than the good...and can be more difficult to face than the bad. We learn from the ugly because we are all ugly at one time or another. But if we care enough, we can get past it.

If somehow the phone lines and cables that connect this Internet circle of Blue Fish friends could actually bring us together for one brief hour in a room filled with beautiful Blue Fish pieces...would we practice the "Creative Collaboration" that "makes Life fun!" (Summer 98 catalog) and help each other and share the wealth and the joy...or would we squabble over who gets what?

What are the care instructions for the human spirit...and where do we find them....if not within?

Linda (aka bluecarp)
[email protected]

"THE MOST BEAUTIFUL OUTFIT
I'VE EVER SEEN"
Friday, February 18, 2000

On December 2nd, 1999, Gale Stoppert - an AmericaOnline member who was also an enthusiastic fan new to Blue Fish - issued an open invitation to BF fans via email (addressed to other AOL suscribers she had seen buying and selling Blue Fish at eBay, the online auction house)....in the hopes of starting up a BF chat room:

Hi ! I'm not usually an organizer but I'm doing my part to try and organize a chat room on AOL for Blue Fish fans. There are lots of nice people out there that I've met shopping on ebay for this fun stuff that have kept me going through the bad times, not so many. I'm pretty new to BlueFish so I'm sure I can learn a lot from all of you out there.

So, next Tuesday, December 7th, about 9:00pm EST (come early or late) log on your computer and chat with us. The room will be called "BlueFish".

To tell the truth, I've never chatted in a room and don't know how to type real fast and use the lingo but why not try. It should be fun and maybe it will be a real room, open all the time --are there that many people out there?

Gale

PS Please pass this along to anyone who wants to play. Don't feel left out if I haven't mailed this to you. Many of my address are saved on my computer in Upstate, NY and I'm downstate now.

As it turned out, Gale didn't make it to that chat room... a meeting kept her out late, and when she finally figured out how to create and enter a chat room, it was 10 pm and those of us who had met to chat had already logged off. Yet she was eager to hear how it had gone, and emailed me asking who was there and what was said. She had been nervous about bringing people together, but she was also excited and felt it was important to establish a "real world" connection to each other. Even though she hadn't been a part of it, she had made it happen.

I didn't know Gale very well...she hinted at a life led part time in New York City, and part time up in the Catskills...she had a wood stove and once bid on a large, roomy and cozy thermal Bungalow Jacket I had put up for auction.... she thought it would be great to throw on when she went outside for wood. But that was a particularly wild and crazy auction, and when the price got too high for her it went to another bidder. Yet she and I continued our email conversations, and got to know each other in the way you do online...with feelings and emotions candidly revealed, and the roles of "who" we are and "what" we do unexplained and indistinct in the background. I had the sense there was some difficulty in her life, and offered a virtual shoulder to cry on if she ever needed it, but she smiled :) and said she was okay, but that someday she might take me up on it.

She had been a big Flax fan and was discovering Blue Fish, and I was a big Blue Fish fan and was discovering Flax....she knew that Flax had an annual sale in the spring in Ithaca, NY, and we talked about meeting there, maybe having lunch.

Life around the holidays gets busy, and many people I keep in touch with (weekly through email) disappeared once mid-December rolled around...and though I thought of Gale, I didn't think too much about her silence....until this morning, when Cathy, a mutual email friend, wrote to say that Gale had come down with the flu in January, and had passed away.

I, like Cathy, absorbed the news in a state of shock.

As I read further, the details of Gale's life emerged... things I had never thought to ask, lest I be seen as prying. She was in her mid 40s, didn't have children, but had her kitties. She was a lawyer. Cathy had learned what had happened from Barb (bleufish on eBay), who had tracked down Gale's address and work phone and ended up speaking to Gale's secretary. I knew nothing about this "real world" life...but I did know Gale had delighted in the vintage Blue Fish pieces she'd acquired through eBay, and commented that she'd assembled a nice collection in five short months. She'd email me often with questions I tried to answer as best as I could...and she in turn educated me about Flax and Angelheart, clothing also much loved by wearers of Blue Fish.

Gale's passing has left me with a thousand jumbled feelings....among them the sense that she's still very much with us, in the words that remain fresh and alive in the emails stored in the computers of people she'd never met, but who got to know her because of a shared passion for Blue Fish. I went searching through my own email to track down the first time she'd ever contacted me, in October '99 (when she commented on a BF Strapwork Coat and matching skirt I had up for auction)...and this was how our online friendship began:

I've seen your sales and have to say I just ran into Blue Fish on ebay a few months ago. I was, of course shocked and amazed to find such wonderful clothing.

Well, I just want to say this is the most beautiful outfit I've ever seen. I'm even scared to bid on it but maybe I'll get brave. It has been fun to read your stories and thanks for all the information.

I bid or bought something from a seller who lived in Reading who did not know of a BF store there. I'm trying to figure out who it was. I live in New York City and didn't know they had a store here that closed. Anyway, that is probably why I've never seen it because I normally don't buy real expensive clothes.

I've lived in Flax for a few years now and am adding BF to my world.

Thanks again, Gale

For a short time, less than seven months, Gale filled her closet with vintage Blue Fish clothing from Cathy in Hawaii, Beth in Syracuse, Deb in Seattle, Adrienne in Texas, and Lacey and Carol and Barbara and Rosemary and many others who enjoyed her friendliness and warmth...and shared her joy in wearing Blue Fish. I know she was eager to shop the catalog and the stores, but I don't know if that ever happened. There's a lot I don't know about Gale, and will never know.

But I can imagine a great deal.

No one really knows if there's an afterlife, or angels, or if our souls continue after our bodies are left behind... or even if there's Blue Fish in heaven.... but I find an odd comfort in the knowledge that Gale considered that crazy Strapwork Coat outfit to be the most beautiful she'd ever seen in her life....a coat whose arms and bodice and bottom panels were held together with lacing.... because if there ever was a Blue Fish outfit that could accomodate wings, that would be the one.

Hopefully, now, she's brave enough to wear it...
and thinking about that makes me smile.

Linda (aka bluecarp)
[email protected]