Holy macks, darlings!  It's been ages and ages and I promised I would write to you about "Outerwear and your Inner Landscape" and there you are languishing still.  Well, there's no chance of it today, I'm afraid.  Everyone is talking about the Princess Tulip and really, when she is around, how can anyone talk of anything else?   And when anyone talks about Princess Tulip, how can they help but talk about her clothes?  So let's get comfy and have a good gossip about Princess Tulip's clothes!

You have perhaps heard stuffy pundits talking about fashion - pooh-poohing it as a mere narcissistic conjunction of identity and integrity - and that is true.   Integrity is essential to fashion (can you tell that I've been reading Weighty Tomes?).  I have argued in past columns of The Bee's Knees Gazette that you must be True to yourself, seizing every opportunity of expressing yourself through fashion (and none of this nonsense of running about in the nude, Mr. Carruthers, please!)   But what the academics fail to honor is the sheer bravery that high fashion requires of its acolytes.  (Oh!  and I see that if I follow that argument out logically, then those nudist types are really cowards, running around with no clothes on - I shall have to mention that to Mr. Carruthers next time I see him). 

Regarding bravery and clothing, I suppose that one can be quietly well-dressed and maintain a quiet sort of integrity, but frankly that sort of person does not interest me.  What I admire most is a person who lives and dresses with fanfare, with shamelessness, and with a mad sense of the possible.  Princess Tulip is just this sort of person.  Gaze upon her ensembles!  Genius, darlings, genius!   I could gush on and on about Princess Tulip's clothes, but allow me to just draw your attention to those areas where Princess Tulip has a truly remarkable Vision : fabrics and accessories.

Princess Tulip's selection of fabrics - her taste in weave, texture, and color - is positively fearless, my dears.  Consider this array of fabrics from just a few of her outfits last season: spaghetti-colored cambric, gumdrop-green duvetyn, solid tinsel, pebble-knit sportswear, airplane fabric, peau de diable, oilskin, taffeta with passementerie, accordian-pleated silk, the skins of elves, triple sec chewed reindeer trimmed with Ibsen and flags of the nations; a new fabric that was not only colorful but good to eat, shirred tinfoil, and my absolute favorite, darlings, and no wonder:  Mercurochrome-colored eiderdown inlaid along the thighs with mosaic miniatures of scenes of Paradise Lost.  How I would love to run that peau de diable through my fingers or press that triple sec chewed reindeer to my cheek!  How I would love to nibble on a bolt of that mysterious new fabric!  Oh, the possibilities, the mad possibilities!

Princess Tulip's choice of accessories is inspired, clearly illustrating her unique personality and her willingness to really make an effort to achieve just the right effect.  Some of Princess Tulip's recent accessories have included a specially trained family of matching chameleons, a suitable dog, a staff of ceremony with a tiny ruby sundial on top, a fish-net parasol, and stilts.  Think of the years devoted to raising and training those chameleons!  Think of the travel arrangements for transporting around the world a kennel of  pedigreed dogs (one of each species, plus a few mutts for those eclectic outfits).  Think of the hours spent practicing on stilts so that she can mince, stride, or prowl, as required by each stilted ensemble.  I am astounded at Princess Tulip's dedication to her vision of fashion.  I am annihilated!

I must say however that I am not particularly impressed by Princess Tulip's chapeaux.  As you know, hats are rather a specialty of mine.  The tartan turban of crêpe hair - worn off the face or on the face, darlings!  You couldn't get me near that hat!  Shudders!  But "the towering Cossack cap ingeniously divided into compartments for the "musts" of one's toilette" - this, this is a HAT!  I must have a confab with my milliner immediately to see if we can't rig up such a hat for me, with an insulated compartment for my cocktail shaker, a locking compartment for spare items of jewelry, and perhaps a compartment to hold a spare hat because as you know, one can never have too many hats!

In the meantime, I bow in admiration of dear Princess Tulip.  A low bow, a very, very low bow, so that I might get a closer look at her pumps.