Friday, March 6, 2015

Togete* (for Together*)

I was watching Togetherness the other night, a couples-oriented dramedy on HBO. I also happen to be an inveterate credits watcher and was duly rewarded in this habit when I spied the name of the show's costume designer: Mynka Draper. Perfect! Edith Head had a great name too, but not quite as on the nose, so to speak, as this one is. Draper's got one of those nomen est omen names, the kind that puts you in mind of the possessor's profession—although I doubt she's known for swaddling her clients in politically incorrect furs. I attempted to figure out if this was her given name or a behind-the-stage name, if you will, but all I could determine (thanks to the New York Times) was that her "alternate name" is Minka Draper, which only makes it that much better. Our typo today turned up ten times in OhioLINK (about half of which look like early variant spellings, some records noting this fact with a "sic"), and 149 times in WorldCat.

(Mink coat, DDR, 1954, posted February 26, 2011, Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

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