I had no desire to be like my mother; like most of my generation, I was obsessed with “finding myself.” By the time I hit my college years, I fell comfortably into this new hippie generation, determined in its defiance of the norm. It was heady and sensual, and I was deeply into all of it, though I would certainly have qualified as “hippie fashionable.” We went to love-ins and music fests and stopped wearing bras and slips. Our skirts got too short to wear garter belts, and now that pantyhose were in fashion, they were close to obsolete.
Despite my newfound style and free way of being, it never crossed my mind to wear anything but my mother’s underwear, as she’d bring new prototypes and samples home almost daily for me to wear and give her feedback on. New prototypes were like candy in our household, coming in many varieties, each with a purpose, a function. Comfort. And comfort came first. This was true even though the only time I wore a bra now was when I went to work; my choice was the Natural Girl style seamless mini wire bra in polyester tricot with deep décolletage.
My generation recognized our power as we witnessed the oppression and injustice of “’Nam.” I was absorbing Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and the diaries of Anaïs Nin, inhaling Angela Davis, Eldridge Cleaver, and those who dared to challenge traditional authority while dropping acid, tripping at the edge of life, trying to separate myself from the elite status of Brentwood and the Westside. I wanted to enrich my world and intellect but had no interest in joining the establishment in any form. It’s funny to look back to when alternative became a movement—and when discovering new ways and people could put one’s life in danger, even by wearing Olga.
This is not the time to explain the why and how of it, except to tell you what I was wearing the night Charlie walked uninvited into my bedroom. It was in the early summer of 1969. I still can hear the bamboo stalks scratching on the old clapboard beach house where I was living with my friend Mary Lee. I smell the warm salty air drifting through the open window, the muted stars. I was reading Siddhartha; the character had come to a crossroads, a river where he was beckoned. And I was there with him, totally absorbed, when I sensed a presence in my room. My eyes rose to meet a stranger standing at the foot of my bed. Just like that.
We lived right next to the Malibu Feed Bin on Topanga Canyon Boulevard and the PCH where hitchhikers were often deposited on their sojourns back and forth to the beach from the San Fernando Valley. And it was not unusual to have friends stop by unannounced. We seldom locked our front door.
Hitchhikers were common
And we seldom locked our front door,
“What you reading there, honey?” The man spoke in a lazy drawl, like he knew me—but he didn’t.
I blushed as a fire raced through me: a young lady caught in the corner—naked, well, not quite. I was wearing an Olga chemise in pastel pink, trimmed with contrasting ecru lace.
The First Lady of Underfashions is a nonfiction saga-like memoir written by Christina Erteszek and includes excerpts from her parents' unpublished memoirs. It is a complex, layered, and nuanced story that bridges the violence of war, the innovation of thought, the singularity of religion, the quest for identity, and the intrigues and intricacies of family life. Jan and Olga escape from World War II Europe and arrive in the US with just a few dollars. They turn their paltry savings into a multi-million-dollar fashion business. Olga becomes a leading patent holder of female lingerie, a trendsetter in the industry, and is widely known for her innovative business tactics. But as this husband-and-wife team think of retiring, they decide to merge with another fashion company, which proves to be a fatal move when a loophole in the agreement allows for a hostile takeover. This is also a story of a daughter's need to find herself. Along her path to self-discovery, she discovers her parents have many secrets, some of which will never be revealed.
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