Requiem for the Belle Epoque

So who is this guy who posts an entire blog about women wearing long leather coats? Find out in the following memoir...

I contently gazed at my wife while sipping a hot cup of coffee.  I wanted to permanently imprint the memory of how she looked in my brain.  We were sitting together, just the two of us, at a table in a Bob Evans Restaurant on a cold Sunday morning in February 2014.  It was about 9:30 AM and we had just rolled out of the hotel bed about thirty or forty minutes earlier.  Sleeping in until 8:45 and eating out for breakfast was quite a leisurely morning for parents with young children.

My black leather biker-style jacket hung on the back of my chair.  I was comfortable in a gray sweater and black trousers.  My wife, who is always cold, was chilled by the frigid winter air and kept herself buttoned up snug inside her black leather maxi coat the entire time we were there.  Her dark brown hair fell in voluminous, wavy curls to her shoulders, arranged presentably well by hand alone.  Her pretty eyes were remarkably bright for the little sleep she had gotten.  Somehow my wife never appears tired, even if she has gotten no rest at all.  My short, blonde hair was probably messier than usual and my eyes were undoubtedly fatigued with bags below them.

My wife clutched a mug of hot cocoa with her delicate ivory hands, savoring the warmth of it.  Her manicured nails were slick with red polish and she applied a fresh coat of red lipstick to her mouth before we left that morning to replace what I had worn off by kissing her.  If I happened to call the color “red” she laughed at my simplistic maleness and corrected me that it was actually “rose” or “raspberry”.  All I know is that her lips looked red to me and I love it when she vamps it up.

The waitress brought our food.  My wife and I consumed our eggs and bacon in the tranquil silence of each other’s company while chatting about the daily humdrum of life.  People occupying nearby tables observed an average-looking guy having breakfast with an extremely attractive woman in a long leather coat, and that was my appraisal of the situation as well.  

One lucky guy was with the woman of his dreams.

I continued to stare at her the entire time, hoping to capture every shining nuance of how resplendent she looked in her leather coat.  My wife had been doing aerobics consistently and vigorously for the past several months and succeeded at sculpting her typically good figure to voluptuous perfection.  Needless to say, she looked better than ever in her leather coat and I could not have been more proud to be her husband.  

Supple, fitted black lambskin gleamed smoothly over the prominent fullness of her bosom and scooped in breathtakingly about her sleek hourglass torso.  Rippling panels of leather parted around her knee as she crossed her legs and flowed to her ankles, almost brushing the floor.  Her calves were sheathed in silky nylons and the sparkling silver, open-toe stiletto heels on her feet hinted that we had been out somewhere the night before as a romantic couple; not as parents.

My wife’s lambskin maxi coat was called the Belle Epoque and was offered by Danier in their line of leather fashion from fall 2003 to winter 2004.  The garment was certainly appropriately named in my opinion as it represented a pinnacle of the “beautiful age” when leather coats flourished in women’s fashion.  Sadly, that era was in decline, and as much pleasure as my wife intentionally gave me by wearing her spectacular leather coat for our date, my gratification was tainted with bittersweet nostalgia.  When we got home she would unbutton her coat, slip it off, and hang it in the closet.  And I did not know if or when she might put it on again.

Continued at http://lctdadrms.blogspot.com/p/requiem-for-belle-epoque-by-cuirbouilli_8.html