The French Room
Girls of the Epiphany
Every spring and fall, my sister and I participate in an epiphany of sorts at the Church of the Epiphany in Winchester, Massachusetts. We call our very down-to-earth epiphany a rummage sale. Like its kindred spirits the yard sale or the flea market, a rummage sale requires a keen, quick eye, an equally keen, quick hand, and the ability to appear quite nonchalant when in actuality, you’re on fire.
As far as this particular rummage sale goes, we’re part of an elite team that goes in the day before and sets up. Even better, at Epiphany, we’re creating the “French Room,” a biannual phenomenon located in the brick and stone foyer of this lovely old church. The maroon choir robes are scrunched way at the end of one coat rack; the rest of those racks belong to us.
After the cheerful greetings and hugs, we set to work: one lean mean five-member team of the most astute shoppers this side of the Mississippi. Our mission is a serious one: in four hours, we’ve got to find, stock, price, and display our wares in such a way that tomorrow night’s shoppers know right away this is no ordinary collection of cast-offs.
It’s a daunting task but not for this team. In minutes, we’re out in the “big room” where everything we’re looking for is buried under heaps of jeans and double-knit ensembles, sweatpants, polyester blouses, skirts with stretched waistbands, t-shirts with corporate logos, sweaters with nearly invisible moth holes, and coats redolent with cedar.
Our team knows its cashmere, its pure wool and linen and cotton; it knows its labels from Gaultier to L.L. Bean; it knows good vintage; it knows that style in the French Room is a little quirky, a little offbeat, very affordable, and best worn with verve or at the very least, insouciant nonchalance.
The French Room is counting on us, Epiphany is counting on us, the madcap rummage-sale shopper is counting on us. And we set to work with a focus you’d have to witness to believe. We chat a bit (multi-tasking is second nature), but we rarely look up; our eyes never waver; our nimble fingers sort, flip, tug, yank, fold, and unfold. And the treasures surface like sprinklings of diamonds buried in the back garden.
Triumphantly, we layer the wool and the cashmere and the linen-so-delicious-you-could-eat-it over our arms and deliver our finds to the French Room, where everything is hung and priced and displayed for all the world as if Paris might indeed be watching.
Here’s my fantasy: a renowned photographer finds his way from Milan and Barcelona and New York to Winchester. He pushes open the heavy oak doors. His camera is on the hunt, hungry for style. He stumbles into the French Room. He sees the arresting Girls of the Epiphany displayed forthrightly on the old gray screen. His camera flashes like lightning. The photographer trembles. He is on fire too.