Two days before Christmas downtown in San Francisco. Pigeons and people are both ready to appreciate this rare recent few days of sun. I was early for my time to meet Mabel Watson Payne, so on an impulse I went into Barney's to look at a scarf for my daughter (because I very much liked the sample – I think it was Lanvin– that I saw in one of the Barney's windows) but the pattern I liked (an intense tropical pastiche) was only available as a shawl – and an accessory of such voluminousness combined with such splashiness would only succeed in summoning up Scarlett O'Hara, or so it seemed to me.