Nancy Talbot, RIP

If you were raised in the suburban northeast of the United States, the store known as Talbots (or "The Talbots", as it was archaically and correctly called in its earlier years) was a simple fact of growing up.

I owned countless Talbots cardies, skirts, and dresses over the course of my teens and twenties. It is a tribute to the store's unswerving dedication to tailoring that was "ladylike, simple but not contrived, gimmicky, or extreme" that I cannot remember a single one of them. Before it became a national chain, the physical proximity of Manhattan--with its helter-skelter seasonal trends--did little to ruffle the becalmed racks of Talbots. No, this shop had as its compass the redoubtable dress sense of Boston.

If you count yourself among the Talbots sisterhood, there's an interesting history here, courtesy of Nancy's obit in The New York Times.

More interesting still might be this vintage Talbot's bathing suit, up for sale on Etsy. Conservative, well-boned, and unwittingly clashy in the color department. It's the Talbots style to the nines.