Yesterday Flavio, my trainer, said, "You're the lady in red. Do you like that song?"
I didn't know what he was talking about. Lady in Red? I'd never heard it.
While I'm doing my neck exercises, Flav starts playing the song, and explains that he and fiancee dance at home (he's Brazilian), and when that song came on his playlist, he told his fiancee that it reminds him of me. She said, What, are you in love with her? And he said, No, Jo always wear red. She's the lady in red.
Right then at the gym I was wearing a red striped top and my glasses with red frames. I asked Flav if he knew that I wore a red dress when I married? He said, Yes. I didn't mention that when my late husband died, I'd worn a flaming red Norma Kamali coat to his memorial service.
"You're always wearing red," said Flavio, who mostly sees me at GOLDs, the gym in Venice.
The genesis of my affair with red was undoubtedly because of Babe, my mother. When she was pregnant with my sister she wore a a striking ruby red maternity dress with pleats that flared from the neckline all the way to the hem. I was nine and I've never forgotten when she leaned over the flowing crimson cascade of red pleats. It ever there was a power-red dress, that was it.
I'm leaving for D.C. next week, our nation's power center where most people day and night will be wearing black. Dull, fade-into-the crowd, black, widow's black. You'll be able to spot me: I'll be the Lady in Red.