Love, Loss, and What I Wore

January 2, 1995
This captivating little pictorial autobiography for adults, a life told through clothes, features Beckerman's brightly colored drawings of the vestments she wore at different times in her life, accompanied by diarylike entries. She grew up in Manhattan in the 1940s and '50s, and we see her elementary school outfit, ballet costume, prom dress, etc. After her mother died, her grandparents, not wanting her to live with her father, took in Ilene and her sister; she never saw her father again. In 1955, at 20, she married her 37-year-old sociology professor in Boston. They soon divorced, and in her second marriage, which also ended in divorce, she had six children, losing one in infancy. She is now v-p of an advertising agency. Beckerman's extremely reticent text never illuminates these events, but her minimalist self-portrait is a wry commentary on the pressures women constantly face to look good. 40,000 first printing; first serial to the New York Times Magazine.