Grey Gardens isn't the type of documentary I would seek out to watch but there's so much subculture of this film that things just keep jumping out at me.  Couple years ago I saw a parody of Grey Gardens by Documentary Now!  It was so funny but shocking and ridiculous at the same time I really didn't get any part of it and I think I barely finished the short episode.

Most recently, I found an amazing youtube channel that did a "fave film fashion" episode on Grey Gardens.  It talked about the fashion style of little Edie, her life beyond the documentary and how in fact she was quite fashion forward. It sort of spurred my interest again so I rented the HBO movie under the same title to see if I can make it through the whole film.  The movie was much easier to watch and made some linear sense to me, but to be honest I thought it was incredibly sad.

Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange were so fabulous in the film.  If you alternate between the actual documentary and the movie, it's a bit hard to tell them apart.  

The documentary itself was the last thing I watched because quite honestly, it was not so easy to watch, kind of like seeing a train wreck that's scary but you can't help but look.  

The squalor state of Grey Gardens reminds me of Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, where time stopped after a certain point and nothing but decay took place.  I suppose if you live with some form of mental illness and then having been taken cared of all your life, when all help is suddenly taken away things could really happen this way.

There is a website selling the exact same replica brooch as the one little Edie famously wore in the documentary, for a pretty hefty price of course.  I find this fashion statement interesting and there must be quite a following of Grey Gardens for someone to make a business out of it.

I did however recently found this vintage brooch that satisfied my Grey Gardens fascination, it's about 4 inches tall and some of the elements reminds me of little Edie's famous brooch in Grey Gardens.  In fact, I think it would look quite good pinned to a scarf.  The wheat shaped leaves and the little bow holding the flower and the rhinestones... it just looked like they could be designed by the same person.