What would the Murphys have said? Today I spotted a new line of children's clothes - it's new to me, anyway - in GAP on Queen Street West. It's called Villa America and has a sort of retro look to it. By all accounts Gerald and Sara Murphy were a gracious couple - their patience when dealing with F. Scott Fitzgerald's drunken antics was legendary - but what would they have made of a clothing store naming kids' shirts and shorts after their beloved home in Cap d'Antibes on the French Riviera?
Of course, GAP has a perfect right to market its children's clothes under whatever name it choses or licenses. But didn't anyone in GAP's head office do any homework? The Murphys had three children. Their two sons died in childhood, Baoth in 1935 and Patrick in 1937. Isn't naming a clothing line after the boys' childhood home in questionable taste? I think it is. Honoria Murphy died in 1998.
Gerald and Sara's fame rests on their generosity, in the 1920s, to such talents as Fitzgerald, Picasso, Cole Porter, Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Dorothy Parker, Fernand Léger, Jean Cocteau and many others, and being the models for American swells Dick and Nicole Diver in Fitzgerald's novel Tender is the Night. GAP's fame rests on its smart casual clothing - yes, I shop there occasionally and bought a tee shirt from the Queen Street store today - and the new styles it offers every season. So let's hope that when next summer rolls around GAP's Villa America line will have a new name too.
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