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It was 2020, just before the pandemic began.
Rosemary Woodruff Leary in Colombia circa mid-1970
My twins werent yet a year old and I was still recovering from the experience.
I was still coming back to myself and searching for this new person in the racks of clothes.
Then I saw it.
Rosemary Leary, bottom left, sings with her husband, Timothy Leary, during the recording of “Give Peace a Chance” by John Lennon and Yoko Ono at the Bed-In for Peace in Montreal in 1969.
I didnt know they were opium poppiesonly that the dress was wild, free, and elegant.
The brand wasRodebjer, a Swedish company, known for its office-ready bohemian looks.
But I couldnt get that dress out of my head.
Timothy and Rosemary Leary’s passport photos taken in Algeria in 1970.
I found it again online, thentraced ittoRodebjers resort 2020 collection.
Many of the clothes had capes or winged sleeves, as if ready for flight.
I had never heard of her.
Rosemary Woodruff Leary in Sicily, circa 1972-1973
Allen Ginsberg called her the Acid Queen.
(He lost.)
She called herself his computer.
She kept his secrets and made his dinners.
After helping him escape, the two went underground.
And this is where her story stopped.
From this point forward, Rosemary had disappeared from the historical record.
She wasnt a typical hippie, Rodebjer later told me.
She had some strictness to herself in a way I loved.
I saw something similar.
I was already fascinated by altered states, by the search for transcendence.
Now, I wanted to understand what drove people like Rosemary toward flights of liberation and self-erasure.
Could one truly seek groundlessness and remain anchored at the same time?
She was no cliche hippie.
There was no tie-dye (or if there was, it was artfully incorporated).
Instead, her style was chameleonic, reflecting the shifting currents of her life.
At Millbrook, she sewed her own dresses from the communal clothing heaphomespun yet always elegant.
She made a man into a myth.
Clothing, for her, was both armor and expression, a tool for survival and subversion.
Disguises, too, became a means of reinvention.
Her clothes helped to amplify, obscure, and protect her throughout space and time.
Those clothes were enchanted.
Shopping with her, one poet friend wrote, was like hunting for the magic object.
It wasnt the original poppy dress that I had fallen in love with.
I still didnt have room for that in my life.
And every now and then I will wear it at the beach with my three children.
