Eric Smith | Irene Williams: Queen of Lincoln Road / 2005

you can’t say i’m dull

by Douglas Messerli

 

Eric Smith (director) Irene Williams: Queen of Lincoln Road / 2005 [23 minutes]

 

Eric Smith, who graduated from New York Law School in 1982 and passed New York bar exam on his first try, had already created the E. G. Smith Socks company, creator of “slouch sock,” the loose sock that was particularly popular with Japanese schoolgirls in the late 1980s and 1990s.

     Like many a New Yorker, he enjoyed traveling to Miami Beach for weekends and short stays. During one of his visits in January 1995, while sitting on Lincoln Road, he noticed an elderly woman, then probably in her late 70s, walking past him from one end of the road to the other, where she worked.

     Smith recalls: “One day I noticed this little old woman dressed in hot pink. And then I noticed the next day she was there in lime green. And then the next day in orange, and then at that point I thought, ‘I want to meet this person.’”

      He not only met her, inviting her to tea the next day, but developed a close friendship with her over a decade, getting to know her quite well. Irene, whom he describes as an unintentional feminist who had been living in Boston, left her life there, moved to Miami alone and opened up a stenography, notary, typing service where she was sought after for her notable skills at creating resumes for those in search of jobs and lawyer briefs. For a brief while she was hired by Orson Welles, writing about him after her employment ended, “All I can say is that I never worked for someone so difficult, and I feel like I'm released from bondage."

       Irene was also a strong and rather truculent individual who, if she didn’t like something about a person, immediately told him or her, a trait that helped lose her many a friend. When her sister’s husband died, the sister invited to the funeral only on condition that she wear black; according to Smith, in his interview with Alicia Zuckerman in WLRN in Miami, “Irene showed up at the funeral in fire engine red patent leather from head to toe with like go-go boots, to boot. And that's how she went to the funeral. So she had her way. She was not going to wear black. And that was Irene. She was a rebel.”

       The most notable thing about Irene, however, was her daily attire, which is what first caught the eye of Smith, which led to their relationship and his role of what he and friends describe as a “hag fag,” a gay man who’s attracted to elderly celebrities. Smith, in turn became for him a kind of gay icon. The film Smith shoots of Irene is mostly a long fashion show of Irene’s hand-made creations which she sewed with patterns and no past experience, but which looking stunningly fresh and original in the second wave of the mod-style of female dresses and accoutrements.

        At one point in the film, Irene describes the elderly women in her building having nothing better to do all day that to wait in a nearby gathering place to see what she was wearing as she passed by. At least I have them some pleasure, she observes, while clearing feeling dismissive of anyone who has nothing better to do with her time.

        Only a few short years later, Annie Liebowitz and Versace were doing shoots of her home-made designs. But while Versace sold outfits in a store which Irene and Smith visit in the film for $1,800 dollars, hers often cost less than $10, sometimes repurposed with material she bought at discount stores such as Marshall’s.

        Smith summarizes her sense of style:

 “…She would choose bright colors, from head to toe: from the hats to the shoes, to the bag to the umbrella to the glasses and all the accessories. And these clothes were made out of terry cloth, out of fake fur, out of all these kind of wacky fabrics that she customized. They were all handmade and one of a kind -- and pretty do-it-yourself, not like haute couture, but in her own way, made with a lot of skill. No patterns, all by instinct. …So she had this outfit that was made out of avocado fake fur. I think there was a bag, a coat and a hat, and maybe some other little accessories. And she was telling me that she loved the color and she loved the fabric, but the only place she could find it was in the bathroom accessory department. So the hat was made from a commode cover, or toilet seat cover (laughing). And she turned it into her hat!”

 

        By the time their relationship ended when Irene was beginning to suffer from dementia, she had almost fallen in love, it appears, with Smith, fully enjoying their visits together whenever he vacationed in Miami Beach.

        During one of their encounters, she told Smith, “When I lose my memory, it’s the nudist colony for me.” And indeed, he was told that in the assisted living quarters where Irene came to live, they have difficulty keeping clothes on her. Perhaps without her wardrobe, her hats, and her sewing machine she simply felt she had nothing appropriate to wear anymore.

        As she says early in the movie, “What you can’t ever say about me is that I’m dull.”

 

Los Angeles, November 7, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2023).