DAISY SUMMERFIELD'S STYLE

For someone whose idea of style even in 1959 is to change her first name and stick matching cardboard daisies on her luggage, Daisy Summerfield comes a long way in a short time. You'll like her from the start though, this wide-eyed Midwesterner whose commonest phrase is "thank you very much" though she can be icy enough to a salesman who tries to pick her up on the train. The change begins when Daisy, on her way to fashion design school in New York though she really longs to be an artist, coolly decides to switch luggage with Daphne Steven, a sandals and peasant blouse type she sees on the train reading Art and Reality and embodying for Daisy the very essence of creativity. Daisy's first move on arrival at the Buxton Hotel for Women is to withdraw from the fashion school, and a piece of walnut and some tools in Daphne's suitcase starts her out in wood carving; later she turns to clay, forming little figures depicting Astonishment, Happiness, etc., and rigged up with baby buttons and thread so that "you can move their arms as you look into their faces." During her first year in New York Daisy makes no friends and goes nowhere but the Greek luncheonette, book store and art supply shop, but her excitement in planning out her figures and getting them right, her yearning and searching for a revolving pedestal on wheels for carving in her room, her delight with her own room and her new sculpture books provide all the ups and downs we need. In the end Daphne reappears, happy with her elegant new wardrobe and with her fiance Alan Kodaly who promises enthusiastically to show Daisy's work to his gallery-owning father. It's a proper fairy tale ending, confirming for the skeptical that Daisy is an artist indeed—but by then it couldn't be dearer that the real joy is all in the getting there.