Deep Glamour: At the Intersection of Imagination & Desire

DG Q&A: Joan Kron

Joan Kron epitomizes substance with style--a combination she has turned into a remarkable career in journalism. Over the years, she has brought style to The Wall Street Journal (originating the fashion beat), The New York Times (helping to create the Home section), and Clay Felker's New York magazine (covering design). Since 1991, she's been the contributing editor-at-large for Allure, where she covers plastic surgery, the subject of her 1998 book Lift: Wanting, Fearing, and Having a Facelift, a must for anyone contemplating a cosmetic procedure. Her work displays a keen intellect, a great knowledge of both art and social science, and an unusual ability to talk shop with surgeons. We're honored that she agreed to share her thoughts with DG.

DG: In the 1980s. you wrote about interiors and the meanings people attach to their homes. What's changed since then? Have people become more house-obsessed, or do we just have more cable makeover shows? 

JK: People still care deeply about their homes—as a refuge, a status symbol, and identity device.  But the rash of less-pretentious home magazines and home-design cable shows has made the younger generations more self-assured about their taste. I see much less  “fear of furnishing,” a condition I identified in Home-Psych, my 1983 book. The pendulum has swung in the other direction, toward taste self-confidence, encouraged by some dreadful design solutions (sorry if that sounds judgmental) on home makeover shows: If you have a jigsaw machine from Home Depot, what better use for it than making empty picture frames for wall décor? Home Depot, shade warehouses, paint stores with designers on staff, Bed, Bath and Beyond, Pottery Barn, Design Within Reach, etc, are all enablers. Taste arbiters are out and DIY (with patterns we can copy) is in.

I also see a decline in traditional gender roles in home decoration. Husbands are often taking charge. I have young neighbors who are renovating, and the husband, a financier who never heard of Mario Buatta or Dorothy Draper, is making almost all the design decisions. Needless to say, media rooms and large TVs play a bigger role when men are in charge. Aside from Williams-Sonoma Home catalogue, one of the biggest design inspirations today is hotel design. Instead of What Happens in Vegas  T-shirts, vacationers are bringing back decorating ideas. Forget stealing towels. Now, if they sleep well out of town, they’re buying the beds from their hotels. 

DG: Celebrities with bad plastic surgery are so well known that it sometimes seems as if plastic surgery never makes people look better. Can you give us some famous examples of good plastic surgery? 

JK: Ironically, good plastic surgery is invisible…there’s lots of it, but naming names would be an invasion of privacy. Take it from me, however: Almost everyone in Hollywood, TV, and politics (except possibly Madeleine Albright) has had some cosmetic enhancement—and they do it quietly and frequently.

DG: Is acknowledging that you've had plastic surgery antithetical to glamour? 

JK: Absolutely—that’s an admission that one’s beauty is neither natural nor effortless.

DG: In January, you had a very public 80th birthday party, and you've been equally public about having had three facelifts. How do you respond to people who say they believe in "aging gracefully"? 

JK: How one ages is a choice. It’s no different from deciding how often to have a manicure or a haircut. As someone who covers plastic surgery, I feel a responsibility  to be truthful, since most people lie. I joke that I prefer to “age dis-gracefully.”  I don’t see getting rid of my double chin as a moral issue. Some people say they’ve earned their wrinkles, but frankly I don’t care to wear my emotional resume on my face. There is no such thing as natural. I cut and dye my hair, I wear lipstick. I shape my eyebrows. I have no illusions about becoming  a  beauty object.  But why should I give up and look like Yoda, or Jane Wyatt when she left the sanctuary  in Lost Horizon (rent the movie) if I don’t have to? The technology is available. I don’t want to look bizarre, so I  don’t ask for extreme procedures. And I draw the line--for myself--at lip-filling injections. They look so phony on someone my age. I hope I don’t look “done” but if someone  thinks I do, I find it preferable to looking  “undone.” Now could you all stop staring at my face.

The DG Dozen

1) How do you define glamour?

Glamour is enchanting superiority. It appears effortless (even though it’s not) and beyond the reach of mortals.

Big Yellow Rock To Fetch 10 Mil.

A vivid canary diamond, weighing 102.56 carats, is expected to bring around $10 million in a Hong Kong auction. Sotheby's says it's the largest fancy colored stone they've ever sold. Set with white diamonds, the pendent can be also worn as a brooch, which makes it practical, as well as slightly ostentatious. It's not exactly a triumph of the jeweler's art.

Paul Newman: Grit and Grace

David Thompson, writing in the Guardian, argues that the late Paul Newman was best in those roles that expressed his own ambivalence about the movies. Playing  Fast Eddie Felson in The Hustler, Newman got an Oscar nomination

The film was done with grit and no glamour, as well as a lot of hard-learned pool, and Felson was a knife to scrape away Newman's jammy smile.

But Thompson tries too hard to convince us that Newman was immune to glamour and its trappings, writing:

He was absurdly popular as a young man, and then waited or endured until that had worn off, and he could face all the abiding tests of honesty without glamour or celebrity to divert him.

Newman was never more honest than when driving Indy cars, and open wheel racing is about a glamorous as it gets.  He was 70 when he won at Daytona.  Lime Rock Park owner Skip Barber said of him:

He liked to win. He thought of himself as an uncoordinated guy, a stumbler a little bit, but in a car he was really graceful. 'Graceful' is not a word that a lot of people associate with car racing, but there sure are guys that are more fluid and smoother than others, and he was good.

(photo from Michael Manning)

True Blood: Glamour Me, Glamour You

Are you trying to glamour me?
                                               --Sookie, episode 103, Mine

Alan Ball's new series for HBO, True Blood, is sort of Buffy meets Black Snake Moan, as imagined by the love child of Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams. It's steamy down there on the bayou.

Television without Pity has the best recaps.

Vampires glamour their prey by a sort of hypnosis method, or something like that--it's an inexact science.
Our heroine, Sookie, is  immune, but not to the  other charms or a certain vampire.

DIY Political Imagery

Browsing through Zazzle, the site we use to create and sell DG merchandise, is an interesting way to get a look at grassroots political enthusiasms, pro and con. OCTOBER 2 UPDATE: Zazzle is running a VP debate-day sale, $1 off on political stuff, enter promocode DEBATEDEALS2.

Who gets the lipstick vote?

Obama: Savior or Antichrist?

Browse more here:

Glam or Spam? Ring-a-ding-ding

Fantastic! Readers loved the "parlor on the Nautilus" ceiling fan. Made by Minka-Aire, the Gyro is very popular with people who want feel cool, while recalling the sweaty days before air conditioning.

Do you all approve of the pretty, pretty princess ring?

Playfully regal? Or leave it to the beagle?

No matter how you vote, I can guarantee that the name of the creator will horrify all fashionable folk. Trust me.

Diaries of a Groomzilla, Part 2

When we last saw Groomzilla, the California Supreme Court had sent him flashing back to his mother's wedding memories and pondering how he, too, might now plan a Big Day worthy of being memorialized in oil paint. But will his oh-so-practical fiancé cooperate?

Groomzillas are allergic to reason, at least insofar as it comes to a budget for their wedding day.

My beloved fiancé is cheap.  Extremely cheap.  Clothes are worn until they have holes, cars are driven until the doors fall off (literally), and weddings are opportunities for demonstrating one's command of thriftiness.  Going into our wedding, then, I steeled my nerves and braced for battle.

The first debate came when we discussed (what else?) what we planned to wear.  My fiancé announced that both of us have ample wardrobe options in our closets, and it simply made no sense to buy something new.  A few hours later, after the EMT delivered a few hundred volts through the paddles on my chest, I began my not-so-secret campaign to inspire him to new sartorial heights.

Phase One:  the strategically-placed men's fashion magazines.  This came to a crashing halt during a conversation through the closed door of a bathroom as we got ready for work.

Fiancé:  "Honey, why did you put a Post-It flag on this ridiculous picture of the Etro man in the orange jacket?"

Groomzilla:  "It is caramel, not orange, and it's not ridiculous, and I think I want to wear it to the wedding."

Fiancé  "Velvet?  Seriously?  Don't you already own a suit?"

Groomzilla:  "I refuse to look like a peasant at my own wedding!"

Fiancé  "Sorry, Ma Joad, but no Etro."

Note that in the Groomzilla universe, there are no shades of grey:  we move quickly from glamazon to peasant, and the crazy train does not stop anywhere along the way (say, at Banana Republic).

Phase Two:  the rational negotiation.  Two glasses of vino into a low-key evening, I agreed to sit with my fiancé as he raided our closets to assemble some wardrobe options that he felt were tasteful, fashionable and appropriate for our nuptials.  I sat cross-legged on the floor and opined like a fashion swami flown in from India to enlighten the masses.  My pithy responses were as follows:

"I hate that."

"What about that says 'Fall wedding' to you?"

"That makes me look fat."

"That makes you look fat."

"That won't photograph well."

"That looks old."  (Note that this responses applies, generally, to all clothing that does not still have the price tag on it.)

And thus Phase Two ended in a stalemate.  Defeated, my fiance agreed one Saturday morning to make an appearance at the Barneys Hangar Sale at Barker Airport (the worst-kept and most wonderful secret to staying fashionable in Los Angeles on a "budget," as upwardly mobile yuppies define "budget" in respect of $900 Dolce shoes marked down to the fire sale price of $300).

Phase Three:  cave in.

Within minutes of scanning the racks at Barneys, I began a long-term love affair with an 80%-off Dolce and Gabbana tuxedo.  The moment of my triumph was sudden and intense.  (I imagine that this is what Rapture would feel like if I believed in such things, with 30,000 damned souls left standing outside Ross Dress for Less as God's chosen ascended to heaven in perfectly-polished Prada shoes.)  Hanging before me was a Groomzilla's perfect suit - Autumnal yet ripe for year-round repurposing, fashion-forward yet elegant, and blissfully inexpensive to the Groomzilla who hours before had contemplated kidnapping Vera Wang and forcing her to rethink menswear immediately. 

Perhaps it was the look of glee in my eyes that made my adorable cheap fiancé agree to a $600 suit splurge, or maybe it was the sheer exhaustion of dealing with my endless whining about the whole affair.  Regardless, I emerged with my perfect new outfit...and shoes....and a tie....and a Band of Outsiders suit for my fiancé....with shoes....and a tie...and a pair of Zegna linen pants for a hypothetical garden party that will likely never happen.

As we loaded the spoils of war into my trunk, my fiance turned to me and said, "Happy, baby?"  I gave him a peck on the cheek and said, "Yes, I am."

"But we still need to decide about those invitiations..."

To be continued next Thursday...

DG Interview with Carol Alt: "The moment you walk out into the public you have an image."

In her new novel, This Year's Model ’80s supermodel Carol Alt tells the story of a nice Jersey girl named Melody Ann who is waiting tables and planning for college one day and modeling for magazine spreads the next. It's a story not unlike Alt’s own, but updated to the era--and for the audience--of America’s Next Top Model. Alt will be signing books tomorrow evening, Thursday, September 25, at 7:00 at the Westwood Borders and will be appearing at the West Hollywood Book Fair on Sunday. DG caught up with her by phone Wednesday morning, as she started a busy day in L.A.

Q: Writing a novel is a big change from writing about raw foods [the subject of Alt's previous books]. How did this come about?

A: Two things happened more or less simultaneously. My agent Laura Dail came to me and said, “Whenever I sit with you, whenever we talk, you tell the funniest stories, you have me rolling in the aisles. You should really write a book.”

Then I was sitting with an agent friend of mine and he said, “Carol, you can’t believe what’s happening in the industry. The girls come in, they maybe last one seasons. They’ll do some shows, they’ll make a little money, and then they’re gone.”

I said, “What has changed so drastically? My career has lasted 30 years. What could happen to cut a career down from the possibility of 30 years to one season?”

He said, “They don’t have any history, they don’t have any connection to the business, they don’t know of any girls who came before. They have no role models. They have no business models. They come in and they think if they sleep around, if they do a lot of drugs, if they party a lot, if they’re out and people see them, they’ll get jobs faster than the agents they’re signed to. They burn out really quickly, they look bad fast, and they’re used up.”

These girls are reading magazine articles that make it look like all the girls who made it to the top are huge partiers, did a lot of drugs. All these mothers, all these girls, they stop me on the street. I can’t tell you how many people give me their resumes: "Can you please give this to your agent? Can you help us?" They have no clue how to go about this business. I thought, It’s time for a book that’s speaking to these girls. It’s not my finger wagging at them. It’s in a voice that’s young and hip. I wrote about what I knew about the modeling industry from my career and updated it to today, made it more relevant.

Q: You’re running a cover-girl contest for your second novel. What is the second book about?

A: The second book is still the same character. We’re following her. You see this character moving on and becoming a force in the business.

A career has stages. When I was starting out, I’d go to a photographer who wasn’t well known, or I’d get a catalog job. Then all of a sudden you’re working for a bigger name. Or with catalogs, you go from Spiegels or Butterick to Lord & Taylor or Bloomingdale’s. As this is happening, your agent is going, “Oh my God, you got a job with Bloomingdale’s!”

I remember this girl I worked with at some low-end catalog place said, “We’re friends and we hang out, but ultimately you’ll move on. Your agents won’t let us work together by next year.” I said, “No, I’ll make them let us work together.” I was naïve enough to think I’m making a client. The agency had other plans, which were to move me on to other jobs to build my popularity and desirability in the market. The agent is telling you that: “Oh my God, you got Versace! Vogue just booked you!” It’s not Mademoiselle--for me it was Mademoiselle, today it would be it’s not Glamour, it’s not teen books, it’s Vogue. You as a character are moving forward. Then comes a point where you’re no longer a new face.

The one thing in this business that I can’t stress enough is that you never really feel successful. You are every day needing to get a job. It’s not like you get this fabulous job and it’s going to carry you through for the next ten years. That job lasts three days, and you still need to get your next job. Because if you don’t have your next job, you’re forgotten about almost immediately--back then, and now. There’s this constant need to always work.

Q: You have a passage where your protagonist “officially retires” Melody Ann Croft and says, “I am Mac, even after hours.” Is a model ever off stage?

DG Q & A: Nancy Rommelmann

Nancy Rommelmann is a writer's writer.  She somehow manages to combine the sharpest investigative scalpel with a compassionate heart, whether she's writing about a case of Munchhausen's by proxy, literary frauds, or the life of a movie star and her mom.   

Over at her blog, readers are voting on her author photo, but we went with the classic. 

DG: As a writer, you've seen both sides of glamour--the seedy and the soaring. How does that proximity affect your perception of glamour or the glamorous?

NR: As a writer, I am always trying to look past what’s presented to the intent, and I think glamour is all about intent. The most glamorous person I recall from my childhood in New York City in the late 60s/early 70s – besides my mother, who wore Emilio Pucci and paper dresses and skintight silver pantsuits with Pop-Art sunglasses, her long black hair professionally wrap-set each week on West 57^th Street – was a mad woman who used to wander the streets of Brooklyn Heights at night, but who, in her absolutely impeccable 1940s gowns and platinum up-do was for all the world as haunting and gorgeous and glamorous as Vivian Leigh. And the woman was mad! Seriously mad. But she had dressed with deliberation, and as she passed would stare into my eyes as though she were bequeathing me “the” secret. Clearly, if I am recalling her 30 years later, she was.

DG: And as a woman, you're pretty glamorous yourself? Or has domestic life in Portland given you a different perspective? What about having a daughter--can you advise her on glamour?

NR: When I arrived in Portland, I quickly met another LA-transplant, a TV writer named Jill Cargaman, with whom I made a pact: each time we saw each other, we’d be showing cleavage and/or nipple; wearing mascara, and, preferably, drinking cocktails, a pledge that inspired her to write the following ode:

No matter who wears Birkenstocks 
Or fleece-y garb and limp dull locks 
I'm clinging fast to my state of bliss 
What Portland calls "Midlife Crisis": 
My make-up thick, my hair a'blown 
My cleavage bared, my "rise" too low 
I'm proud to front my style and class  
(Although I'm freezing off my ass!)

Was I bereft when she hightailed it back to LA? Oh yeah. But aside from occasionally putting on my husband’s fleece jacket in the house when it’s cold, I don’t dress like a typical Portland gal. Not that I don’t appreciate what can be done with a sturdy build, a no-fuss haircut, and a bicycle, but it’s not for me. I like to dress – even if it’s in jeans and a t-shirt, which it often is – as though when I step outside, I might run into, say, William Langewiesche or Javier Bardem; I want to be ready. I want to look good. As long as my boobs have bounce, they will occasionally be the featured player in the ensemble. I want my husband to slip his hand around my waist because the waist, you see, is asking to be embraced. For me, glamour is about the frisson of being connected to that spot, that moment; to paving the way for that moment to come.

I once wrote: “About a decade after a woman gives birth to a girl, she begins to know exponentially and unequivocally less about fashion than her daughter.” When my daughter was 12, she rolled her eyes as my '80s Lurex blouse with the ruche sleeves; now, at 18, she wears it. I will freely admit she’s so easy in her skin, so curious and inventive, that she can make anything look good. Because she’s a budding designer she pays a lot of attention to clothes, and so I find myself looking to her for ideas, whether it’s what pair of jeans to buy (“Oh, mom, god, not those”) or which dress to wear to a party, and she’s pretty much never wrong.

Is Nobody More Glamorous than Angelina? Is There Hope for Obama?

You have less than a week to vote in DG's Poll of the Month for September, over there in the right-hand column. (Scroll down.)

Love in Black Launched by Creed: Jackie O-inspired

Style.com is reporting that Creed will introduce a new fragrance based on elements of Jackie Kennedy Onassis's life and style:

Virginia cedar, reminiscent of where she rode her beloved horses; night-blooming wildflowers from the Greek isle where she wed Aristotle Onassis; irises from Florence, a city that she visited frequently; and French blackcurrant, evocative of her heritage and passion for things Gallic.

Considering she wore Guerlain's Jicky and a number of others, none of which were "violet-Oriental" as Love in Black is said to be, this could be a mis-reading of her persona. Still, her hsuband once described her as fey,  one meaning of which is marked by death.  Goth Jackie.

Scented Salamander has a long poetic review.  Fans of Luca Turin's reviews can wade through a PDF of his blog to glean his views on other Creed scents.

J. Crew Advertising Curiously Reminiscent of Something Else...

J. Crew = Gossip Girl. And you know what Gossip Girl equals.

Martha Stewart Mash-up: Whatever, Indeed!

If you're not  watching Whatever, Martha!, you're hopeless, to be frank.  This  Fine Living series is the mashed up version of old Martha Stewart shows --MST3K for the silver-polish set.  It's  hosted by Stewart's daughter, Alexis, and her radio-mate, Jennifer Koppelman Hutt.  Andrew Goldman's  piece in NY mag has the whole saga, with the best quotes I've read in ages, from Alexis Stewart  on  various topics, including her mother's deal at Sirius radio:

I said if they would hire Howard Stern, then they would hire a felon.

Rachel Ray:

She’s annoying, and she eats shit out of a can.

and Nina Garcia:

Pretending to know everything about beauty, meanwhile looking like this weird chinless monster.

Must set Tivo:  Tuesday nights.

But be warned:  the show isn't everyone's cuppa. 

UK Seeks to Strip Cigarettes of Glamour

In the UK,  tobacco companies are panicking at the prospect of "plain packet" laws that would require cigarettes to be sold in plain boxes, without logos, graphics or color.  Denis Campbell writes in The Observer:

The Health Department recently closed its consultation on a raft of measures to reduce the number of smokers even further, which has fallen to 22 per cent of the adult population. They include plain packaging, banning cigarettes from public displays in shops, outlawing packs of 10 and getting rid of vending machines.

Evidently, the packaging entices smokers to buy premium brands. But what if this legislation has a reverse effect? Jewelers might bring back the elegant cigarette case, like the Fabergé item here.  You just know Bette Davis had something similar.

And That Wetsuit Shows She Has No Waist

In late 2002, the NYT's Lynette Holloway speculated that Jennifer Lopez's ubiquity might hurt her: "Her popularity has dangers, the main one being overexposure. And Ms. Lopez's attempt to branch out from her hip-hip roots is gathering whispers that she could be spreading herself too thin." Sure enough, the combination of way too many tabloid stories and a disastrous movie flop seriously damaged her image. It didn't help that she could never decide just what that image was: glamour queen or Jenny from the block?

She finally chose the former. Since her appearance in Vogue Living's inaugural issue two years ago, I've watched as Lopez steadily rebuilt her public persona, in large measure by revealing herself more selectively. (The Vogue Living cover wasn't the beginning of that rebuilding, just the first example I noticed. I'd love to see a more-complete chronicle and strategic analysis.) "I'm in a different phase right now," she told Glamour in 2005. "I'm not everywhere." Someone apparently told her that glamour requires a little mystery.

In that light, it was interesting to see photos last week of a palid and very ordinary looking J-Lo as she completed a Malibu charity triathlon--an impressive athletic feat, but one that requires the kind of exertion that really messes up your hair and makeup. I guess keeping the photographers away wasn't an option. Or it's more evidence that supermom glamour is the trendiest kind.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

The post office has released a new stamp, honoring Bette Davis. But a certain once-glamorous, and once-ubiquitous, artifact appears to be missing.

More comparisons here, here, and here. Great book on the lost glamour of smoking here.

Quotable: Simon Doonan on The Beautiful People

"Like Flaubert’s antiheroine, we saw glamour and modish excitement in the faraway and only boredom and dreariness in the here and now. In Reading, our industrial hometown, there was no shortage of dreary here and now.
We fed our fantasies and illusions by reading endless drivel about the Beautiful People in my mother’s glossy magazines. These effortlessly stylish trendsetters owned sprawling palazzos in Rome and ultragroovy pied-à-terres in Chelsea. They slept in six-foot circular beds covered with black satin sheets and white Persian cats. The Beautiful People were thin and gorgeous, and they had lots and lots and lots of thick hair, and their lives seemed to be about a hundred million times more fabulous than Biddie’s life and mine combined. They did not work much, they had buckets and buckets of money, which they spent on things like champagne and caftans and trips to Morocco to buy caftans."

--Simon Doonan, Nasty: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints, soon to be republished with the much better title The Beautiful People: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints

Diaries of a Groomzilla, Part 1

When the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, it unleashed a monster. This is the story of Groomzilla, who is planning an October 25 wedding.

I am a groomzilla, and like the bridezilla sisters who paved the way before me, I take no responsibility for my actions.  I blame my mother Jacquelyn.

Growing up in my suburban Southern home, there were three sacred objects for which every visitor learned to quickly feign respect:  the big pink hurricane lamp, atop the big yellow baby grand piano, beneath the larger-than-life oil painting of my mother on her wedding day.  For twenty-five years, my mother's likeness held court in a formal sitting room that doubled as a museum of 1970s wedding glamour. 

My mother wore a white long-sleeved, form-fitting satin gown, long auburn hair spilling over her shoulders from beneath a simple lace veil.  The painting was done in New York by a mail-order company that blew up wedding photos and converted them into oils on canvas before placing them in ornate, gold-and-ivory rococo frames with a built-in display light.  From her Madonna-like vantage point in the sitting room, Bridal Jacquelyn stood guard over the locked cabinet containing the unused wedding china, the pristine wedding silver, the never-unfolded wedding linens, and multiple volumes of wedding photos chronicling the golden age of frosted lipstick.  Once a year, everything came out to be re-organized and cleaned:  stemware, silverware, memories of "your bastard father," and the apocryphal story about when the rehearsal dinner reached a dramatic climax as the waiters brought out "the amazing European ice cream – strawberry – that everyone raved about."  (For the record, it was just Häagen-Dazs, but I never let my mother know that by the late 1990s this was hardly on par with Beyonce flying in flowers from Thailand.)

As an adult, I can laugh at the charming but tasteless spectacle of Bridal Jacquelyn's Museum of Pre-Divorce Splendor.  However, no matter how many hours of HGTV and Style Network I clock as a modern homosexual consumer, I will never shake the lessons learned in the shadow of the big gilded picture frame:  (1) your wedding day will always be your best memory, (2) you should spare no expense in the tacky crap you buy for your wedding, and (3) a bride is the ultimate glamazon diva, if only for a fleeting afternoon.  At the age of eleven I decided that one day, I would be memorialized in oil….though hopefully not in a dress, since my gay survivor narrative was to read a little more British aristocrat chic than plucky drag queen bildungsroman.

Fast-forward to the present day.  I am twenty-nine, an attorney in a fast-paced megafirm, living in 1100 square feet of gentrified bliss, with enough mortgage and student loan debt to warrant my own government bailout.  The California Supreme Court has affirmed my right to a wedding registry at Neiman Marcus, but it feels a bit like an unfunded mandate.  How can I plan a day worthy of memorializing in oil paint before the November election?  Where is my gay reparations check to help me afford a stylist, a calligrapher, an artisinal cheesemaker, three albino virgins with a harp, a glitter-and-rainbow machine, a team of midget aerialists on wires to simulate Baroque puti, a Valentino gown for my mother-in-law, a liposcuptor and a phalanx of angry queens with clipboards and headsets shouting at their minions, "Damnit, Bruce, I said 'CUE THE CHAMPAGNE FOUNTAIN!'  The champagne fountain was supposed to begin bubbling BEFORE the albinos started Canon in D!" 

This, then, is my groomzilla story:  How can I simultaneously meet the expectations of glamour coming from a society that fetishizes gay style, live up to the childhood memories of my mother's wedding, and operate within the constraints of my budget, schedule, and fiancé's patience?

Next Thursday:  Groomzilla convinces his fiancé that couture expires faster than fruit flies, and the sweet smell of retail is in the air outside the wedding chapel.

Glam or Spam? Cool Off

Readers voted against the red chairs. Designed by Pierre Paulin in 1966 for Artifort, the Concorde chairs graced the first-class Concorde departure lounge at JFK. Concorde might have been noisy but it looked great. Years ago, I flew out of Dulles on a press trip on the supersonic plane. At one point, looking out my tiny window, I could see the curvature of the earth at Mach 2. That's glamour.

Moving on, what's the verdict on today's offer?

Steampunk chic, à la Captain Nemo?

Or 20,000 Leagues Under Bad Taste?

The Glamour of Touring

When I think of glamour. I think Italian. Italian just about everything: suits, shirts, wine, boots, motorcycles, scooters, ties, opera singers, socks, movie stars, purses, beaches, sunglasses, cities with canals, and... cars. Cars cars cars.  The Italians are king of the glamorous car.

Here's a test. Picture a glamorous Italian car in your mind, and then answer these questions (mine are in italics):

• What color is it?   [RED ]
• What would it feel like to run your hands over its body?  [CURVACEOUS ]
• Who is sitting inside of it?  [ A GLAMOROUS COUPLE, DRESSED TO KILL ]

The notion of Italian design being red, curvy, and glamorous has much to do with the success of Italian coachmakers during the '50s and '60s.  By creating bespoke bodies for the most expensive cars of the period, these groups of designers and craftsmen created an aesthetic which was at once intensely emotional yet not grossly decadent, for it was rooted in the world of races such as the Mille Miglia, where light weight and slippery shapes meant speed and handling.  My favorite coachbuilder from the period is Carrozzeria Touring, for two reasons.

First, the brand name, and the way the brand name looks in the flesh.  Here's a snap I took of a Touring badge at the Pebble Beach Concours a few years ago:

Look at that badge.  The wings, the crown, the blue "T", the scroll, and the allusion to the home city of Milan.  Sotto voce, it says "made in Italy" with all that goes with the phrase.  And then there's the "Superleggera" script above it.  This was a masterstroke of branding:  Touring developed a way of constructing car bodies that saved weight and hence added speed.  Over time this method of construction -- "super light" -- became as big as the master brand of Touring, to the point where it required equal billing on the panel of a car.  I love the way the phrase rolls off the tongue, as well as the way its idiosyncratic cursive font is rendered here in polished metal.  So elegant, unique, and beautiful, it positively oozes glamour.  To ride in a car with a Superleggera body is to inhabit the world of a James Bond or a Sophia Loren.

And then there are the car bodies of Touring.  More than just machines for transportation, Touring created one-off pieces of sculpture that by all rights should have a spot in the Hirshhorn.  And so strong was the Touring aesthetic and what it could do for an individual automotive marque that even non-Italian makes got in on the action, too.  Here are three of my favorite Touring-bodied cars, one Italian, one English, and one Spanish:

• the Ferrari 166 MM Touring Le Mans Berlinetta
• the Aston Martin DB5 (Mr. Bond, your Touring-bodied car is waiting...)
• the Pegaso Thrill

What beautiful cars.  Especially the Thrill, which is the car pictured in the photo at the top of this post.

The era of Touring is over.  The pendulum has swung, and I'd wager that the next decade will be one of extreme rationalism, as "pure" shapes such as the Mercedes-Benz Bionic win in a market looking for extreme efficiency and minimal carbon footprints.  As such, they're the right solutions for the time.  I'm excited by the new Chevy Volt, and I see the need for the football-shaped Prius, but they're not glamorous.  I'm more than a little sad to see the passion go.  Red cars with curvy bodies whooshing their nattily-clad occupants through the night, well, that was glamour.

DeepGlamour Style

The items shown are just examples. You can choose your own colors, shirt styles, and fit.

Do These Jeans Make My Butt Look Refined?

Zafu.com, the site where I finally found jeans that fit (OK, I also had a personal consultation from their fit experts while researching this article), now has a style quiz. It seems like a good diagnostic--but they haven't yet integrated it with their fit advice. What kinds of jeans fit someone with an extreme hourglass figure who's "mostly Style Purist and partly Refined Classic"? Not Baby Phat, I'd wager.

What does your style say about you?

My Result: Style Purist

Your bold, sophisticated sense of style always gets you noticed. Daring and inventive, you love to create your own looks that hit a classic note with an edge. You are an enthusiastic yet hard driving friend on a shopping trip. Efficient, assertive and very persuasive, your advice is hard to ignore. When you see what you want you know it in a minute, but you'd rather leave a store (or 10 stores) with nothing than settle for something that's just too cute or mundane.

What are you? Find out and get style tips and trends too!
Click here

D G Q&A: Karina Longworth

Film writer and critic Karina Longworth blogs at Spout, was a founder of Cinematical  and can also be found here.  She frequently writes about film, new media and popular culture.  Longworth's informed, thoughtful, skeptical and funny as hell.  Seen at left, she's doing her famed Linda Blair imitation.   

Naturally, DG was thrilled when she agreed to answer our questions.

DG: Do movies today even try to depict glamour? Do they succeed? 

KL:We're in a weird point in terms of Hollywood glamour. In general pop culture about 15 years ago there was a big backlash to the "overdoneness" of the 80s, and the result is that most of today's big female stars (Reese, Cameron, Drew, Kate Winslett, Kate Hudson) have a kind of tomboy practicality to their personas that goes against what the fantasy of old Hollywood glamor was all about. Its all about being endearingly frazzled and relatable. The sort of exception to this is Angie Jolie, but even though she always rocks an other-worldly attainability that is reminiscent of the great old world stars, she's most successful in dominatrix action hero mode, and films which try to cast her as a "regular" woman can seem laughable.

DG: You're a film critic--is it as glamorous as it sounds? Screenings, festivals, parties--it's not just a job, is it? C'mon, spill.

KL: Actually, my past life working in restaurants and gourmet stores was probably more glamorous on a day to day basis---now, I work from home, staring at screens trying to be clever all day, rarely leaving the house when I'm not traveling. But I DO get to travel quite a bit, and even in this age of cookiecutter hotels and air travel nightmares, there is a scrappy glamour to life out of a suitcase that j enjoy. I'm not particularly good at real life, so dividing my waking hours between airports, screening rooms and sponsored receptions really works for me.

The DG Dozen
1) How do you define glamour?
KL: Glamour isn't interesting unless it's done with a wink, and most women today are too self-consious to be able to have a sense of humor about it. My current conception of glamour involves a keen familiarity with the following: square-tipped red nails (which I can't pull off), the dominatrix boots Cher wears under her dowdy old maid skirt in Moonstruck (ditto), Palm Springs, baroquely garnished bloody marys, early-Playboy style tanlines, the "fuck you" behind the eyes of a Barbara Stanwyck or Nina Simone.

2) Who or what is your glamorous icon?
KL: It's cliché, but I still can't get over Louise Brooks. And Anna Karina. Also, Sara Diaz, the girlfriend of filmmaker Azazel Jacobs and the star of his movie "The GoodTimes Kid", has the most amazing sense of style.   

3) Is glamour a luxury or a necessity?
KL:I would think of it more as a curse.

4) Favorite glamorous movie?
KL: An impossible question to answer considering my line of work, but I love anything like Baby Face, where a gal without breeding is suddenly encrusted with jewels, but her shifty morals and low birth class can't be obscured

Marriott Sells Escape

Marriott built its brand on reliability--the same hotel room, regardless of where you were staying. A few years ago,  the company finally joined the age of aesthetics with an update that injected a bit more style and personalization into room design. Even so, the chain isn't known for its glamour. Nobody dreams of a vacation at the Marriott. The hotels are merely places to sleep in between meetings or, on occasion, sight-seeing.

Its ads, however, sell Marriott as an escape. On the web, ads like this one (appearing in various versions on The Washington Post's site) pitch not the hotels but their rewards program. The good old Marriott is a means to an end: It will transport you to a tropical paradise. Rewards programs are almost as common as in-room televisions, but that's not the point. This common feature provides an excuse for seductive imagery and, Marriott can hope, some glamour-by-association.

This TV ad for Marriott's Courtyard properties again turns a standard business-hotel feature--free wi-fi--into an image of escape. It's a throwback to the wireless glamour of the late '90s, with all those images of people typing on laptops at the beach. These days, however, no one confuses connection with vacation, which may explain why even as the walls of the hotel disappear, our hero keeps his desk chair. If you want a hammock, you'll have to cash in those reward points.

More Windmill Glamour

Nothing says "the future" like wind-powered paper manufacturing.

Explanation here, for those who missed it the first time.

Laura Bennett: SuperMom

In keeping with the whole Superhero, mother of many theme that's so popular this fall,  Laura Bennett of Project Runway fame, anticipated the trend when she did a TV spot for Saturn.

Bennett's a fan favorite, and ivillage snapped her up, but the superhero comic strip there morphed into something else, Case Clothed. A recent episode asks:

How can you dress for playtime at the park without looking like you stepped straight out of a sporting goods store?

The most up-to-date answer is "You don't! Grab the kids, your plaid jacket and your gun! Everyone into the woods!"

Bennett, alone of all her sex and the other one, too, has not issued a statement on Sarah Palin.

S&M Voter Appeal

Here's Jessica Alba in a David LaChappelle-directed ad for DeclareYourself.com, an ostensibly nonpartisan campaign to encourage people 18 to 29 to vote. (I say "ostensibly" because it's funded by big-shot liberal activist Norman Lear and—call me crazy—doesn't seem aimed at potential McCain voters).

"If you don't register and vote and make a difference, and hopefully change the bad things that are happening in our country, you are essentially just binding and muzzling yourself," Alba told People.

What's less glamorous: the bondage imagery or the dingbat diction?

Editor's Note

We've made it easier to comment on DG posts. You no longer need a TypeKey account, though you do need to provide your email address.

And don't forget to check out the Quick Links column in the center of this page. We update it daily.

Hot Girl on Girl Action: Missing in The Women

The Women, a remake of the 1939 classic George Cukor film has opened, finally, after 14 years of development. And the consensus seems to be, Why?

John Hartl, Seattle Times:

There's an irritating self-consciousness about this update, in which one character claims that relationships need more work in the 21st century while another exclaims, "What is this, some kind of 1930s movie?" By the time it's over, you may wish it were.

Kenneth Turan, LA Times:

Never particularly believable, the story quickly unravels into schematic contrivance and wish-fulfillment fantasy.

Colin Covert, Mpls Star-Tribune:

Still playing winsome girlishness as she edges toward 50, the cosmetically enhanced Ryan clucks over the decision by her mother (Candice Bergen) to have a face-lift. For Ryan to speak in support of natural beauty through her famously collagen-inflated lips gives the message an ironic twist.

You know things are bad when Peter Travers can't say anything nice:

Think Sex and the City without the sex.

The Baltimore Sun's Michael Sragow  repeats this line, but has a very thoughtful take on the film:

English wrongheadedly updates the film by replacing catty negative stereotypes with equally shallow and less-funny positive stereotypes.

But Mary Elizabeth Williams, in Salon, seems to miss the point of the whole thing:

The weirdest element of the film, though, isn't its fevered pitch. It's that these smart, successful, got-your-back best pals don't even notice they're living in a dystopian nightmare where men are invisible.

Where to begin? Clare Booth Luce's play was mounted with the novelty of an all-female cast, and the 1939 film, adapted by Anita Loos and punched up by an uncredited F. Scott Fitzgerald and David Ogden Stewart, featured every big name actress in town--Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, and a couple dozen others.  No men. (Salon's readers point this out, but then the discussion dwindles.)

Diane English, with backing by Dove (making this production the biggest product placement vehicle ever) and Mick Jagger, who could have cast the whole thing from the ranks of his ex-es, stepped in to direct after James Brooks dropped out. Despite having a very successful television career, English had trouble getting distribution, and long story short, finally shot the film last summer in a little over a month.  With no rehearsal time, she got the principals together for a big sleepover bonding session at her house on Martha's Vineyard.  Since Sex and the City did so well,  execs figured the film might catch some of that chick-flick B.O .mojo and threw more money at promotion.

So why is today's film less successful? Have times changed so greatly? I think one reason is that  the '39 film's actresses  were such distinct types: Norma Shearer was the perfect wife, Joan Crawford was the  shameless, sexy gal on the make.

Today's stars just aren't as iconic, in either looks, public personas or film choices. A few years back, Annette Benning could have played the scheming hottie (Eva Mendes), but now she's most often seen as someone's addled mother, and will be playing Helen Thomas. That's a career trajectory that the old studio moguls would have stopped cold. (Crawford didn't start playing lonely loonie ladies until she was nearly 60.) Variety is necessary for an artist, but consistency  makes a movie star. 

When anyone can buy lingerie or a full mani/pedi/facial treatment at nearly any mall, the glamour of the situations in the film don't translate well into the present.  Instead of waiting out her divorce decree at a dude ranch, sipping cocktails , Mary and her pals go to an rustic spa and smoke dope.

To echo Sragow, The First Wives Club is a very funny slapstick update, and Friends with Money laid out female friendships in a more subtle, but killing way.  Hop on to Netflix and stay home.

S. Cary Welch, Scholar and Wit, Dead at 80

Stuart Cary Welch,  a scholar of Islamic and Indian art, has died at age 80. From the NYT obituary:

At his death, Mr. Welch was curator emeritus of Islamic and Later Indian art at the Harvard Art Museum. From 1979 to 1987, he was also special consultant in charge of the department of Islamic art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Mr. Welch’s accomplishments were all the more noteworthy because  he was entirely self-taught.

Mr. Welch was a friend of my father-in-law since they were at St. Paul's School together and thus a constant in my married life. He'd been everywhere, knew everyone, was a guest of maharajahs and sheikhs and diplomats. Never stuffy, sometimes snobby, he was an endless source of good humor,  silly jokes and a keen observer of all the little incongruities that abound in daily life. My children vividly recall his lively description of a unlikely visit to an IHOP, told in his own accent-- a sort of New England prep-school drawl that placed a strong emphasis on initial syllables only to die away by the end of the word:

"The-e-ey call it the INTernational HOuse of Pancakes and the menu PROMised BELGian waffles, but there was NOTHing BELGian about those waffles as far as I could tell!"

Oh, he was just delightful--interested in everything and able to convey that delight to everyone around him. He and Mrs. Welch were great friends with the film making team of Ishmail Merchant and James Ivory, and appear in a party scene in Le Divorce, looking entirely like themselves.

Everyone who knew him will miss him dreadfully. A memorial at Harvard is planned, and donations may be made to the Harvard Art Museum.

TSA Screeners Get New Uniforms; All Else Remains the Same

With a startling want of tact, yesterday the Transportation Security Administration unveiled their new uniforms.  (Insert obligatory lipstick/pig quip here.) The Chicago Tribune explains:

The goal is to give screeners a more professional appearance and establish a greater air of authority, in an effort to command respect from travelers.

Amy Alkon is skeptical. Personally, I think that while clothes maketh the man, the man (or rather The Man) had better be able to back it up. While working for A Current Affair, I got pulled out of line on a regular basis. My least favorite encounter was the Salt Lake City granny who hand-inspected my La Perla underwire bra--while I was wearing it. Traveling with a press pass and a Fox News ID card, I felt that somehow I'd be the least likely terrorist on the flight, but she explained that she had to consider the possibility while waving through multiple wives in prairie skirts and a woman in a burqua. Point taken--or maybe she just really loved lingerie.

The TSA site show off the new duds with a virtual model named Spinning Jeremy, who's equipped with a high-quality tie. I feel safer already.

"Terror Is Glamour"

In 2006, Salman Rushdie gave an interview to Der Spiegel in which he was asked about the causes of terrorism. After first demurring, he suggested a few: "a misconceived sense of mission," a "herd mentality," the desire to become "a historic figure," an attraction to violence, and--shocking the interview--glamour.

Q: Do you seriously mean that terrorism is glamorous?

A: Yes. Terror is glamour -- not only, but also. I am firmly convinced that there’s something like a fascination with death among suicide bombers. Many are influenced by the misdirected image of a kind of magic that is inherent in these insane acts. The suicide bomber's imagination leads him to believe in a brilliant act of heroism, when in fact he is simply blowing himself up pointlessly and taking other peoples lives.

To someone who thinks "glamour" means movie stars and designer dresses, the idea that terrorism is glamorous sounds bizarre. But Rushdie is wise to the deeper meaning of glamour, as a form of magic and persuasion. Glamour is in the audience's eyes, and the phenomenon long preceded Hollywood. Jihadi terrorism in fact combines two ancient forms of glamour--the martial and the religious--with the modern promise of media celebrity.

WFC Winter Garden: Then and Now

The World Financial Center, located directly across from the WTC complex  in lower Manhattan, featured a 3-story domed glass atrium, the Winter Garden.  On September 11, 2001,  this structure collapsed  in the attack.  The resident palm trees smothered in the dust and debris.

Today, the Winter Garden has been restored and while the new palms aren't quite as tall, the space continues to host free concerts and  performances.

Brian  Dubés excellent New York Daily Photo has a stunning night  shot of Ground Zero.

Quotable: Joan DeJean on French Perfume

"Remember those classic fragrances with wonderfully evocative names: Jolie Madame, or Soir de Paris, Evening in Paris? They held out the promise of all the elegance of the chic Parisienne, all the glamour and romance of Parisian nightlife, distilled and captured in a bottle, like a genie ready to pop out and work its magic. The look of Paris and the essence of style, all for sale in a little violet blue flacon. How would the modern perfume industry have marketed its mythical scents without the mystique of Paris to back them up?"

--Joan DeJean, The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafes, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour

I Want One

This one even matches the site.

Glam or Spam? Take a Seat

Last week's candidate, the lizard lips clutch, by Lulu Guinness, was viewed with disfavor by 59% of voters. I think it would have been more successful in a darker red suede, as kissing snakeskin makes my skin crawl.

Sexy seating? Or are they a little too reminiscent of hours of tedious waiting?

More Sarah Palin Photoshop Fun: Poster Repurposed

Sarah Palin supporters did a little Photoshopping of their own, and repurposed the classic WWII poster, often called  Rosie the Riveter.

That original poster was created by J. Howard Miller for Westinghouse's War Production, in 1942, from  a photo of Geraldine Boyle, a  Michigan factory worker. (And with  government-commissioned works, the poster is in the public domain.)

Rosie was also a 1943 Saturday Evening Post cover, painted by Norman Rockwell. The original sold for nearly$5 mil. in 2002. His Rosie is a little more classical in her proportions, and she's crushing a copy of Mein Kampf under her work boot.

Richmond, California turned a former Kaiser Shipyard into a memorial honoring American women and their contributions to the war effort. Connie Field directed a wonderful documentary on the same subject, as well.

Both the poster and the magazine cover were inspired by a popular song by by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb:

 

All In a Name

The "It" outfit in Sudan this Ramadan is nowhere to be found. According to Agence-France Presse, Sudanese women shopping for holiday finery are eagerly hunting for the "Ocampo," a supposedly gorgeous new tob (a.k.a. toub, toab), the sari-like traditional garment of Northern Sudan. But nobody seems to have seen the hot new design. The real lure is the brand name--after Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the International Criminal Court prosecutor who has charged Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir with war crimes.

The shopping frenzy doesn't seem to be political. Rather, suggests the AFP's Jennie Matthew, the draw is the lure of the illicit. The only thing more glamorous than a must-have you can't find is one whose name you can only say in whispers.

(This photo is not of women in the AFP article.)

Fins de Siècle

David Hall, a Washington journalist, is  proprietor of the remarkable and entertaining Plan59.com, an archive of mid-20th-century ads and illustrations, and Shorpy.com, a photoblog of images from the first half of the 20th century. Both sites not only preserve and comment on historical images but also offer high-quality reproductions for sale. (I'm a satisfied customer.) With this post, we welcome Dave to the DG blogging roster as an occasional contributor on historical images.--VP

Next month the U.S. Postal Service releases "50s Fins and Chrome," its second issue in the "America on the Move" series. Intentionally or not the release marks, 50 years down the road, the apotheosis of the tailfin, an automotive styling fad whose literal peak (and figurative nadir) was reached with the unveiling of Detroit's 1959 models in the fall of 1958.

All five stamps feature illustrations by legendary automotive artist Art Fitzpatrick, who at age 89 is still firing on all cylinders. "Fitz" and his collaborator, the late Van Kaufman, made their name illustrating cars for General Motors, in a partnership that spanned three decades. While none of the five selections is a car painted at the time by AF/VK, they are all notably finny.

First in the lineup is a red 1957 Chrysler 300C, one of the best-looking cars ever to wear a tailfin. (The green Chrysler New Yorker at the top  of this post -- proclaimed "the most glamorous car in a generation" in the 1957 sales brochure -- was painted by Larry Baranovic.) Virgil Exner's pared-down, wedge-shaped "Forward Look" designs won the entire Chrysler line a big increase in market share and sounded the death knell for the Detroit Gothic era at General Motors, where Harley Earl's rounded, chrome-encrusted chariots were coming to the end of the road.

Kim Jong Il: Alive, Robust in Art

Taking a leaf from Generalissmo Franco's political playbook, North Korean semi-strongman Kim Jong Il might be sick, might be dead, might be stuffed.  He missed the country's 60th anniversary parade, leading to increased message traffic at Langley, no doubt.

But he's got the strength of 10,000 tigers, if the official art of North Korea is accurate. In fact, the whole country is good looking, strong, brave and energetic beyond belief.

North Korean posters are ubiquitous, with strong graphics, bold colors and relentless cheery exhortations, inviting the passer-by to join in:

LET'S EXTENSIVELY RAISE GOATS IN ALL FAMILIES! (Los Angeles is on board with this.)

LET'S LIVE AND WORK IN THE SPIRIT AND VIGOR OF THE PERIOD OF THE GREAT POST-WAR CHOLLIMA UPSURGE!

David Heather is the foremost authority on these posters, writing:

As important tools in the mobilization of the masses, posters have to have an instantaneous impact on the viewers' understanding and their desire to act upon this understanding. Their message has to be accessible, clear and direct; informative and explanatory, as well as exhortative. The link between contemplation and action is crucial.

The stylization of the figures turns them into instant icons--almost too perfect to be real, but as familiar pop singers in the West. The soldier, the scientist, the farmer are remote, benevolent and courageous, and urge the viewer to forget petty everyday cares and join them in the adventure of building North Korea.

Drab to Glam: Wallace & Gromit Go Up-Market

Claymation icons Wallace and Gromit, while delightful, haven't been considered exactly fashion-forward. British retailer Harvey Nichols enlisted the help of London ad agency  DDB and voila! the boys are spiffy.

Watch the video of the shoot here .

(Wallace is wearing Alexander McQueen, Armani and Dolce & Gabbana.  Gromit's sporting Paul Smith, although I doubt seriously that anyone actually sewed anything.)

Elsewhere in cartoon news, Cathy Horyn referenced an old favorite:

if you wondered who went for Saint Laurent’s patent leather platform booties — they would look adorable on Minnie Mouse if she carried a whip

In what might be a related development, talk show host Ellen DeGeneres is the latest Cover Girl model,  bringing even more meaning to the phrase "lipstick lesbian".  Rich lipstick etc.

DG Q &A: Jackie Danicki

Sharing her thoughts on glamour is Jackie Danicki, the director of marketing for Qik, the live mobile streaming video platform. She's also the proto-type of the earlier adapter, having been in on every tech innovation since the whole thing began. And she blogs with Hillary Johnson at Jack & Hill, a beauty blog with wit, style and a post (by Hillary) about Sarah Palin that had the regulars reeling.

Who better to help us navigate the corridors of tech while seeking glamour?

DG: You cover two seemingly unrelated worlds--beauty and high tech. Glamour in both places? Or do you just ignore the lack?

JD: I didn't realize until you asked me this that I've cultivated a deep appreciation for those spaces where glamour is surplus to requirements. There is something pressured and thrilling about a
context in which utilitarianism is the purest form of beauty; charm and pulchritude might get you funded, but your technology still has to work. The contrast with our workaday version of glamour, all tans, hair products and French manicures (which I like, by the way) is stimulating.

DG: Has the internet made glamour more accessible? Or is accessible glamour a contradiction in terms?

JD: We always hear how the internet has "democratized" everything - politics, media, entertainment. I disagree, and don't think that we should settle for democratization anyway, but the internet is a scarcity killer at its core, and has definitely done a good job of killing the scarcity of the instruments of glamour. Whether actual glamour is being achieved in many places is up for debate. Ludwig von Mises wrote that "The luxury of today is the necessity of tomorrow," but I don't think glamour is as fluid as luxury. What was alluring and charming 100 years ago would probably work today, too.

The DG Dozen

1) How do you define glamour?
JD: For me, it's a level of allure and beauty that is striking for being so exceptional. It's a cliche, but glamour can no more be bought than class.

2) Who or what is your glamorous icon?
JD: Nigella Lawson. She's a bit sluttish in her personal and domestic upkeep, all those cupcakes and homemade graham crackers notwithstanding, but is as glamourous with unwashed, tangled hair and no makeup as she is in a Vivienne Westwood corset gown and stilettos.

3) Is glamour a luxury or a necessity?
JD: It's only glamour if you don't need it, but want it so much that it feels as if you do. Life does not owe us glamour, is not obliged to produce the exceptional; that is what makes glamour itself so remarkable.

4) Favorite glamorous movie?

JD: I'm probably the only person who will say The Breakfast Club. It made a huge impression on me as a little girl (I was six when the film came out). Here you had two (ostensibly) teenage girls, one with bright red hair and freckles, one who was a complete mess. The redhead is scorching hot in classic riding boots and knee-length skirt. The pseudo-Goth turns pretty with the help of a hairbrush, a headband, and mascara. It definitely made me think that glamour was not the exclusive domain of the Rita Hayworths of the world.

Buff, Wax, Seal: Surface Integrity

With this post, DG welcomes our newest blogger, Diego Rodriguez, whose official bio is here. Diego, whom I first met at IDEO, is a brilliant designer, an insightful observer, and a real car nut. He'll be posting roughly once a week. We're delighted to add him to the DG team.--VP

I was quite taken by the photo of Cate Blanchett posted by Virginia last week.  As Virginia noted, it is difficult to resist the luminous beauty of Blanchett's skin, the perfect set of her hair, the exacting cut of her dress, and the just-so positioning of her jewelry.  She is a stunning vision of beauty, and to gaze at her is to give one's brain and heart a brief respite from the troubles of the world. 

Such is the power of surface integrity.  Physical aesthetics are a prime factor in the divination of glamour -- we find it in exceptional surfaces.  The smoothest skin, the glossiest hair, the deepest paint, the shiniest piece of chrome.  While in in reality no planar surface is truly flat, and no glossy finish is truly smooth, our eyes love to feast upon surfaces which are markedly more beautiful than the norm. Blanchett's skin is notable for its lack of imperfections, and that integrity is the foundation of her glamour. 

Let's shift our focus from organic skin to the skin of our extended mechanical selves, our cars.  I don't know about you, but I simply don't have the time or money to indulge in hand-washing my car, even though I cringe each time I take it to the machine washer.  Though it emerges cleaner, I know that the integrity of the paint has been degraded by thousands of microscratches created by rotating brushes and sponges, and each of those scratches slightly diminishes the overall gloss of the paint job.  Hence, when I pull up to the traffic circle of my local Ritz-Carlton (an infrequent event), my potential for a big arrival is greatly diminished, because dull paint is like dry skin: not so glamorous.  I'm still waiting for the valets to park my car up in the front of the hotel, but they never do...

Enter one pearlescent white Lamborghini Gallardo.  What if you had the time and money to strive for Blanchett-like levels of  surface integrity in the paint job of your car?  What would it take to make it so?   At what price glamour?  The owner of said Lamborghini (with only 1,000 miles on the odo, by the way) decided that the value of glamour was worth 55 man-hours of cleaning, polishing, buffing, masking, and sanding.

Here's what it takes to make a nominally perfect Lambo truly glamorous:

Dear WSJ, A Style Magazine Doesn't Have To Be Superficial

The most impressive thing about the WSJ's new magazine, WSJ., is that it includes a feature called "Running Alaska," on the workout habits of one Sarah Palin, introduced to presumably unfamiliar readers as "the state's youngest governor ever, and the first woman to hold state office." The feature, like many in the magazine, is a single page long and relies heavily on a redacted interview. Absent Palinmania, the piece would be as dull and dutiful as most of the rest of the magazine, which came wrapped with Saturday's paper.

As a lifelong WSJ fan, I had high hopes for the magazine. The Journal is a great newspaper, intelligently written and edited for smart people. Its style coverage, whether oriented toward business or culture, is as good as the rest of the paper. But the magazine isn't. Good ideas--the evolution of "lifestyle" identities for jewelry, for instance--are executed in a superficial way, while good writers are wasted. Architecture critic Alastair Gordon, who wrote the terrific book Naked Airport, is given a six whole paragraphs to tell us about a house. The most substantive piece, perhaps because it could have run on the real WSJ's front page, is a feature on how cruise lines are luxing up their accommodations and separating the big spenders from the riff-raff. (Good historical photos, too.) On the whole, however, the magazine just isn't smart enough.

"We wanted to produce more than a catalog of things to buy," EIC Tina Gaudoin told a press conference, according to Matt Haber, reporting for the NY Observer. That much they managed. Unlike the NYT's various "T" magazines, this one didn't make me want to buy a thing. Worse (and also unlike "T"), it also didn't tempt me to clip any articles.

Quite a contrast to another WSJ venture in magazine journalism: the single prototype issue of The Wall Street Journal Magazine, published the summer of 1981, when I was an intern in the WSJ's now-defunct Philadelphia bureau. Consider some contrasts:

Sarah Palin Style: MSM Floods the Zone

Please let this end soon. The media's fascination, horrified and other, with Sarah Palin's clothing, hair, eyewear, and shoes, is fast approaching not just sensory overload, but overcurrent.

Jodi Kantor in the NYT:

The governor, thin to begin with, began an elaborate game of fashion-assisted camouflage. When Vogue photographed her, five months pregnant, for a profile in January, she hid in a big green parka.

Because who wears a parka in Alaska in January? Omigod. When was the last time you saw someone visibly knocked up in Vogue?

Lauren Beckham Falcone on her hair  in the Boston Herald:

“It’s about 20 years out of date,” said Boston stylist Mario Russo of the Alaska governor’s ’do. “Which goes to show how off she might be on current events.”

Because the outside of your head indicates the inside. Or vice versa. Or something.  And Boston is all about hair.

Elizabeth Snead in the distastefully named Dish Rag at the LAT:

Let's hope pregnant teenage daughters aren't the next big craze Sarah inspires.

The commenters, unusual for the LAT, seem to think this is a cheap shot.

The London Times fashion team weighs in:

Remember those Utopian Donna Karan ads in olden times featuring a glamorous woman being sworn in ’neath the stars ’n’ stripes? SP does.

Oooh--I remember those. Donna must be freaking out. Who dreamed anyone would take those seriously?

And in a simile that's the ultimate compliment for any woman, AdAge quotes Harvard's John Quelch:

McCain has put a red Chevy Camaro in the garage next to his truck.

Thanks honey--do these rims make me look fat?

Glamour Editor Named Most-Powerful by Forbes

Forbes announced their picks for Most Powerful Fashion Editor, and it's not you-know-who.  Cindy Lieves, EIC of Glamour (no relation) gets the crown and the sash, with Wintour tying for number two with Elle's Robbie Myers. Conspicuous by her absence in the top tier is Kim France, much mocked EIC  of love-it-or-hate-it Lucky.  Slideshow here.

Glamour has a paid circulation of 2.4 million, but the web traffic has jumped over  100%, to 862,708 monthly, in the past year.   That's not a huge number, but it's way ahead of the competition. Style.com, Conde's Nast's nod to the web, dropped by 23%.  Fashion books don't get the web, as Lauren Sherman explained:

Founding editor Kim France's  Lucky, the magazine about shopping that launched with strong buzz in December 2000, has seen a 7.8% decrease in ad revenue for the first half of 2008, while its circulation numbers have remained virtually flat. Granted, the Web site saw a 40% increase from the previous year--but that only came to 145,448 unique users for 2008--a paltry number compared to the online visitors of other magazines that made our list.

DG hopes and prays we do better than 145,000 uniques by this time next year.

Vogue is aspirational, Glamour attainable, but where's the art? Where's the fantasy, the inspiration  and the drama?  WHERE'S THE...GLAMOUR?

This is a subject that deserves a longer post, and readers--what do you think? What do you want from a fashion magazine? Send us your thoughts or comment below.

Blister-Block Can't Help You Here

Five-inch stilettos made of bronze and copper. The hinged straps fasten with matching padlocks. Size 7. Price: $1,200. Explanation and more photos here.

Assuming your shoes are more reasonable than these, I now have a solution to the chafing problem that's easier to find--and cheaper--than Blister-Block. It's called FootGlide. For the past few days, I've been using a sample they sent me after reading this post, with good results.

Sarah Palin and Cowgirl Glamour

A couple of years ago, when I was still living in Dallas, I drove over to Fort Worth to see a costume exhibit at the National Cowgirl Museum. I grew up east of the Mississippi and as much as I love the American West, I'm a dedicated urbanite. So I'd never seen, or even thought about, cowgirls. When I heard the word, I thought of people like  like this. (It could be worse.) I expected the museum to be stupid.

It wasn't. In stark contrast to the ridiculous Women's Museum in Dallas, which (the one time I visited it) featured a strange combination of populist kitsch and social-constructionist feminist dogma, the Cowgirl Museum showcased women of no-nonsense character, pioneer (and pioneering) achievement, physical daring, and unapologetic femininity. Full of inspiring role models, the museum presented a piece of feminist history that gets left out of the city-oriented accounts most of us learn. There's a reason Wyoming was the first state to let women vote and that the first female Supreme Court justice (a member of the Cowgirl Hall of Fame) came from Arizona. The thinly populated western frontier couldn't afford to waste women's talents (though Arizona and New Mexico were among the last states to give married women full property rights).

This all came back to me when I heard Sarah Palin's convention speech and thought about how so many smart--but parochially "cosmopolitan"--people miss the enormous appeal of her persona. She may have wrangled fish rather than cattle, but she shares the cowgirl tradition.

UPDATE: Alex Massie has further thoughts. And for more Sarah Palin stories, check out Quick Links at the top of our middle column.

And Now For Some Words--and Discounts--From Our Sponsors

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L'Occitane is offering free shipping on any two great-smelling Aromachologie products, as well as free gifts with purchases of $25 or $65.

Alaskans Line Up For a Whiff of Ivana--Sarah Palin on Glamour

Sarah Palin, a commercial fisherman from Wasilla, told her husband on Tuesday she was driving to Anchorage to shop at Costco. Instead, she headed straight for Ivana.

And there, at J.C. Penney's cosmetic department, was Ivana, the former Mrs. Donald Trump, sitting at a table next to a photograph of herself. She wore a light-colored pantsuit and pink fingernail polish. Her blonde hair was coiffed in a bouffant French twist.

"We want to see Ivana," said Palin, who admittedly smells like salmon for a large part of the summer, "because we are so desperate in Alaska for any semblance of glamour and culture.

The Anchorage Daily News, April 3, 1996