A Fan’s Notes
Julia Reed February 6th, 2010When the New Orleans Saints won the game that sent them to the Super Bowl, I was sitting in a bar, alone in the Napa Valley, surrounded by people drinking wine and nibbling at cheese plates and not paying a bit of attention to the activities on the screen that were making me increasingly crazy. Finally, some Green Bay fans pulling for the Saints showed up, and I switched to beer instead of wine, and when the game was over I was jumping up and down like the crazed cheerleader I never was and hugging total strangers.
Anyone who knows me well would have been amazed by this scene. Ordinarily I’d have been the disinterested snob comparing the relative merits of the chardonnay and chevre. In junior high, I went to every football game—everybody did—it’s just that my best friend and I hung out beneath the bleachers, not in them, waiting on the long-haired boys to show up, the ones not allowed on the team.
But now, like everyone else in my adopted hometown I am a woman possessed of Saints fever. There’s no way not to be rooting for this team, who were so bad for so long that fans wore paper bags over their heads. It used to be the long-suffering Saints supporters who were heroic; now it’s the hard-working, inspired, and completely inspirational players in black and gold. In Miami, they will be carrying the entire city on their backs, and win or lose, the joy in New Orleans will still be palpable. It has been less than five years since Katrina devastated the city and the Superdome itself was a grim symbol of death and disaster. Now the Dome has been superbly refurbished and the Saints themselves are a symbol of a rebuilt, energized, united New Orleans. No wonder the trumpeter Kermit Ruffins got a gold fleur de lis tattooed on his chest. As my friend the chef John Besh says, “New Orleans has no place for people who are lukewarm. You are either with us or against us. More than any place else, this city is made up of people who want to be here.”
It is also a city where it is increasingly easy to dress—there are only two colors in New Orleans right now, black and gold. My friend and neighbor Olivia Manning, wife of Archie and mother of Peyton and Eli, will of course be rooting for her son, Colts quarterback Peyton, during the Super Bowl. But Olivia is a class act and last week she gave a raucous Saints party for all her female friends. Every one of us, from the very chic Rita Benson LeBlanc, vice president and part owner of the Saints, to Mimi Bowen, owner of Taigan’s own Mimi, came decked in some combination of Saints colors. Rita was a vision in low-key black and butterscotch cashmere and Mimi was toting one her Ted Rossi jeweled gold snakeskin clutches. There were gold leather mini-skirts, gladiator style gold cuffs, gold lame and gold sequins. If I’d been thinking ahead, I would have ordered a pair of Charlotte Olympia leopard print lace-up booties and a Melissa Joy amber cuff from Forty-Five Ten. I have not yet gone as far as my buddy Kermit, but I have been sporting quite a few heavy gold chains from Mimi in my own décolletage.
And as soon as the game is over, Saints fever will give way to Mardi Gras Madness and new colors will be added to the local palette: gold, green, and purple. I am now sick I didn’t order the purple Alexander McQueen dress I saw last season; however, I do have no less than three pairs of purple satin Manolos. Conveniently, my engagement ring is an emerald.
Still, I need to augment my new New Orleans-centric wardrobe in time for next year’s back-to-back seasons of football and carnival so I’m planning ahead. During fashion week I’ll be watching the runways for black and gold, purple (or perhaps a slightly more sedate aubergine) and green. I am a full-fledged fan now, not to mention a fully invested citizen of my increasingly fair city, and these are my true colors.
Elusive Find: Oyster Roll
