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Retro Chick with quite a Shtick
By Beth Gillin
New York – She’s a domestic diva with something extra
– and we don’t just mean a snappy theme song that urges,
“Put down the iron and pick up a drink.”
Brini Maxwell, sunny dispenser of household tips, hostess of her own
half-hour show on the Style network, is a throwback to a gracious
age when women wore floral aprons and welcomed husbands home from
the rat race with a cold drink and a cocktail weenie.
She’s a living symbol of the martini culture so popular now
with consumers, especially the young and hip. Could she, in fact,
be the next Martha Stewart?
On The Brini Maxwell Show Fridays at 10 p.m. she instructs viewers
in the lost arts of terrarium misting, furniture distressing and other
homemaking skills circa 1950 to 1980. Whether freezing rose petals
in ice cubes to perk up a summer highball, or converting an umbrella
skeleton into a drying rack for her dainties, Brini’s manner
is soothing, even hypnotic.
But beneath the gracious facade, something’s askew. She’s
a tad too feminine – like her role model, Sue Anne Nevins, the
cheery but deeply neurotic Happy Homemaker played by Betty White in
the 1970’s Mary Tyler Moore Show.
“I happened upon The Brini Maxwell Show by accident and sat
there in open-mouthed wonder,” a chat-room visitor named Charles
wrote recently at the Web site Getting It (www.gettingit.com)
“Brini is sort of like a car crash,” agreed another visitor,
JoAnn, “You don’t really want to look, but you just can’t
take you eyes off it.”
Brini’s wardrobe murmurs Donna Reed (‘50s and ‘60s
TV mom), when it isn’t purring Angie Dickinson. Her set, with
its pottery lamps, shag rug and Barcelona chairs, is stuck in midcentury.
But her message is up-to-date.
“You can create a fabulous existence on a shoestring,”
says Brini (rhymes with teeny), fluttering thick eyelashes that appear
to be made of mink. “All you need is some creativity and a sense
of wonder.”
On an outing in the city’s Chelsea neighborhood, she’s
a vision of citrus hues in a vintage Bonnie Cashin jacket of lime,
lemon, orange and pink plaid, color-coordinated beaded earrings and
flower pin, and severely pointed yellow shoes that, yes, hurt her
feet. “But look at those kitten heels – aren’t they
adorable?” she asks. Her blond pageboy is perfectly arranged,
her makeup understated.
So it seems almost rude to bring up the persistent reports that she’s
not an actual woman, but a performer named Ben Sander. Brini sets
the record straight.
“I am a woman,” she declares. “But the man who created
me isn’t.
“Now hush, don’t tell the network,” she whispers
conspiratorially. “I won’t get maternity leave.”
Brini (short for Sabrina) describes herself as a single girl trying
to make it in the big city, like Marlo Thomas’ Anne Marie in
the 1960’s sitcom That Girl. Brini shares her apartment with
Sander, but she never runs into him.
“I come back home, and he’s left the place a mess,”
Brini says, with a tilt of her head and a dimpled smile. “I
have to pick up after him and clean his dirty dishes.” She doesn’t
mind, because, “Isn’t that what we do for our men?”
Since the show went national in late January, she has received hundreds
of laudatory e-mails, Brini says ordering a lunch of salad, macaroni
and cheese, and Duncan Hines chocolate cake at the retro restaurant
Elmo.
Now 34 – “pick an age and stick with it, I always say,”
she chirps – Brini had been toiling in relative obscurity since
1998, the year her show first appeared on Manhattan public-access
television.
Last year, an executive with Termite Productions, home with morning
sickness, happened upon Brini while channel-surfing and was, like
so many before her, mesmerized. Termite brought the show to E! Entertainment,
which owns Style.
So now Brini is making plans for a second season, juggling offers
to write etiquette and decorating columns, working with a literary
agent on a book proposal, and pondering a product line.
This is, after all, a perfect Brini moment, a time when the recent
past looks a whole lot better than the anxious present.
Collectors are hunting down ceramic poodles, glossy magazines are
awash in midcentury-modern decor. Designers are dressing young women
in the ruffled print dresses Harriet Nelson (see “Reed, Donna”)
wore while vacuuming.
“Consumer culture mirrors society,” says Dan Howard, an
expert in marketing and consumer behavior at Southern Methodist University’s
Cox School of Business. “I’m convinced that the wave of
conservatism in fashion and furniture, in attitudes and beliefs, is
a function of what occurred in the larger culture following 9/11.
“Consumers in all countries, not just America, feel threatened.
They’re looking for what makes them less fearful. Their needs
are nostalgic, reflecting back to safer times, more secure times,
and better economic times,” Howard says.
Brini’s is not the only show tapping into that longing.
Home and Garden Television’s Hey Remember! (Sundays at 10 p.m.)
extols the merits of pink flamingos, eight-track tape players and
Naugahyde. Next month, the network presents That ‘50’s
Home, an hour special hosted by Frankie Avalon.
For Brini, the mid-1900’s was “a fascinating time for
interior and industrial design. We looked forward to the future with
great anticipation, and our surroundings reflected that. And the economy
was very good. Imagine! Mr. Brady was able to support the whole bunch
on one income.”
Her goal is to preserve the artifacts and attitude of the era, and
she pursues it with missionary zeal.
She recently went on the Conan O’Brien Show to teach him how
to eat fondue. “He was like a child” she sighs. “Acting
up. What can you do?”
She perservers, convinced that “if you present useful information
in a humorous way, people will watch and remember.”
“I like to use my personality to create a gracious and welcoming
hospitality,” Brini says in a lilting voice that suggests Mrs.
Cleaver on uppers.
“Etiquette is just a desire to make people more comfortable,
in stark contrast to so much of what is going on in the world today.”
Her smile is both sincere and subversive. “I aspire to be the
kind of person you’d like to have in your living room,”
Brini Maxwell says.
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