Katherine Hepburn

I hold a picture in my mind of a very young Katherine Hepburn wrapped in a solid and simple black coat with her hair parted cleanly on the side and brushed down, flat and smooth, into a curved bob. She wears no jewelry and her nails are short and unpolished. Eyebrows arch in calm confidence while lips shine with the same wild intensity as her ambition.

A true American beauty.

Style.com tells me that classic American style is a coming trend for this summer and fall. So I asked myself two questions: what is classic American style and why do we keep returning to it?

Oh, I know what you'll tell me in response to the first question. You'll run down a list that includes loafers, chinos, linen, button downs, chambray, horizontal multi-colored stripes, ballerina flats, low pony tails, polo shirts, small button earrings, and then you'll remind me that classic American style is the preppy look of the eighties.

But isn't there more to it than that? I think so…which brings us to the second question. But if you'll allow me first to digress…

In 1855, Walt Whitman published the first edition of Leaves of Grass. The first poem "Song of Myself" begins, "I celebrate myself" and later commands, "You shall no longer take things at second or third hand…nor look through the eyes of the dead…nor feed on the specters in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself."

This command to develop a strong sense of self-identity and to remain fiercely loyal to that sense runs deeply throughout the American ethos. The nineteenth century, we remember, also brought us Emerson, Thoreau, and Dickenson, all encouraging us to think independently, to be truly and completely ourselves.

I think herein lies our obsession with an American beauty, an American style. Once we try on British rocker, Parisian glamour, Italian cool, we are able more distinctly to define ourselves and thus return to push our roots ever more deeply into American soil.

American style is not as easy as donning chinos, a chambray shirt, and loafers; rather, it involves adopting a style that is completely and uniquely our own, a style that shows the world that we are comfortable with who and what we are.

My mind returns again and again to that photograph of Katherine Hepburn not because of what she is wearing or what she is not. My mind returns to that photograph of Katherine Hepburn because of who she is. I see passion, confidence, ambition, talent, intelligence in those eyes. She knows who she is, where she is from, and where she is going. And, above all, she exudes an ununwavering sense of identity.

That, my friends, is American beauty.

May 2001