Deep Glamour: At the Intersection of Imagination & Desire

Cocktail Time? Invoke The Liquid Muse

Deep Glamour's week of food ends with a guest post from The Liquid Muse*. A well-made cocktail is a touch of luxury at any time, and taking the time to master the basics pays off handsomely at happy hour.

When creating a new drink recipe – with or without alcohol, I take to the kitchen. Chopping fruits and muddling herbs can be messy business, so it’s good to have a sink handy. Not to mention a fridge stocked with fresh, organic produce, and a stovetop for cooking up a batch of simple syrup.

What is simple syrup, you ask? Well, I’m glad you did because it is an integral ingredient in many cocktails. It is a sweetening agent. Simple syrup is essentially ‘sugar water.’ Some people make their simple syrups with a 1:1 ratio (1 part sugar to 1 part water). Personally, I prefer a 2:1 ratio (2 parts sugar to 1 part water) because the syrup is a little thicker and gives the drink a bit more texture. Just remember to go easy on the quantity you use – more than 1 ounce is usually too much!

Basic instructions to make simple syrup:

Dissolve 2 cups of sugar into 1 cup of water in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Once bubbling, reduce heat, let simmer for a couple of minutes. Then cool and store in a jar in the refrigerator.

Now, here is the fun thing about creating syrups – it is really easy to get creative and bring extra flavor and pizzazz to your cocktails by sprucing up the syrup. For example, make ginger-infused simple syrup by following the recipe above, but add a 1” long piece of peeled fresh ginger for extra zing. Want to make rose-infused simple syrup? Go to a Middle Eastern market or gourmet store and buy potable rose water. Use that instead of plain water in the simple syrup recipe, and voila – a lovely smelling and tasting addition to a champagne cocktail or vodka martini.

Take things one-step further and brew some fresh herbal tea… peppermint, for example. Now use 1/2 cup of that with 1 cup of sugar and your Mint Julep can have an extra “je ne sais crois” on Derby Day. Fruit flavored herbal teas (lemon, orange, raspberry) are interesting to experiment with, too.

Recently, I’ve started on wine syrups. Yep, the result of 1/2 cup of Cabernet Sauvignon and 1 cup of sugar had magical results in one of my latest cocktail creations. (Check The Liquid Muse in April to see a DIY video of that drink called the Ginger Sun.) My next forays in oenological adventures will be with Chardonnay and Moscatel varietals.

The point I’m trying to make is that a great cocktail can only be as interesting as what you put in it. So put on your thinking cap and have fun. The cocktail hour can start at any time of the day, in any room of the house – particularly the kitchen – and render sweet satisfaction.

*Who is The Liquid Muse? With over 17 years of experience in the hospitality industry, lifestyle writer and mixologist Natalie Bovis-Nelsen keeps an eye on drink trends around the world. She designs signature cocktails for celebrity-studded events, teaches cocktail classes around the U.S. and has shaken-and-stirred audiences on TV and radio shows. Natalie consults for beverage companies, and is a pioneer in bringing high-end mixology philosophies to nonalcoholic cocktails, too.

Her highly acclaimed book Preggatinis: Mixology for the Mom-to-be features more than 75 of her original recipes designed with the fun-loving preggie party girl in mind, and was named one of about.com’s top ten cocktail books of 2008.

DG Contest: Win Glowelle and Sip Your Way to Beauty

Cleopatra was said to dissolve pearls in wine to make a tonic for her complexion, which seems a bit extreme. What if the pearl didn't completely dissolve? Did she chew the crunchy bits? 

The modern version, Glowelle from Nestle, contains antioxidants, vitamins, and botanical & fruit extracts, is easy to digest, and helps  delay aging by hydrating the skin. Two flavors are offered--Natural Pomegranate Lychee and Natural Raspberry Jasmine.

Win a 3 month supply  by being the first reader to email me (kate at deepglamour dot net) with the correct name of the city where Nestle S.A. is headquartered.

Charles Perry Defines Real Luxury Foods--Look for the Worm

Deep Glamour asked food scholar/bon vivant Charles Perry about the good old days, when peacock on the menu was the sure sign of a glamorous meal.  He's making his blog debut here.

What’s a luxury ingredient? Something there’s not much of, for starters. Ancient Roman epicures went for ingredients that required a lot of animals to be offed, such as larks’ tongues and sows’ wombs (which were stuffed like sausages). Black truffles have even more luxury value today than they had before WWI, because the fighting destroyed a lot of oak forests where the truffle flourished.

But human beings have small minds and mean to use them, so they have always counterfeited the expensive stuff. In medieval Baghdad, the ingredient that was always in short supply was marrow, so there were recipes on how to fake it if you didn’t have enough marrow bones for your party (here’s the secret: brains or spleen mixed with kidney fat, cooked together in a tube to give it the right shape). Today, we don’t care at all about marrow, unless we’re having osso buco.

In medieval Europe, the aristos claimed a monopoly on wild game and ferociously punished any ordinary person who poached one of the duke’s deer. So game acquired aristocratic connotations there, and European cookbooks still give recipes for pork dressed to mimic wild boar and imitation venison made from beef.

These days, particularly in areas without a long growing season, the great luxury ingredient is “fresh, local, organic” produce. Watch for it to be faked too. In John Brunner’s 1972 dystopic novel The Sheep Look Up, the company with a monopoly on all the organic produce in the world is damningly discovered to be putting fake worm holes in fruits and vegetables so people will think they’re organic. 

Real insect damage. That's going to be next truffles.

Perry left the LAT in May 2008, is working on his latest book, Partying Like It's 1399, and was interviewed by Superchef.

Fresh, Clean, & Local: The New American Restaurant Glamour

Kit Pollard, long time reader, first time guest blogger, contributes to DG's Week of Food.

When Don Draper takes his wife and clients to dinner, it’s cocktail attire at Lutece, shorthand for glamour in 1960s New York. Dinner at Lutece was all mousseline of pike in lobster cream sauce and beef Wellington – heavy, fancy, heady, certainly French – and nothing you would try at home.  

So what’s today’s equivalent? When the big clients come calling, or the Don Draper of today (does he exist?) needs to placate a ladyfriend, which hotspot is on speed dial? Is it Momofuku Ko, a place creative but so small that a reservation is next to impossible? A four-star powerhouse helmed by somebody so famous his name gets the Madonna treatment? (Think Daniel, Jean-Georges, Morimoto.) Or is it most impressive to make the trek out to Blue Hill at Stone Barns, where “fresh, clean, local, American flavors” (TM Top Chef “cheftestants”) are so fresh and clean and local that they’re culled from the farm on the property? 

These are the places that represent the new American restaurant ideals. As diverse as they are, they’ve got at least one thing in common: it’s unlikely that their customers are polished to the standards of Betty and Don Draper or the maitre’d at Lutece in 1963. These days, it seems like jeans are de rigeur for dinner at even the poshest places. In Baltimore, where I live, there are only two restaurants left that require men to wear jackets. Neither one is the kind of place you’d take a date you wanted to impress – unless, of course, that date was your grandmother. In which case, she’d probably be very impressed, indeed. 

So what is the new definition of restaurant glamour? Does “glamour” even still exist in the restaurant world or did Kitchen Confidential ruin it by revealing the profane man behind the curtain? 

Call me optimistic, but I think the glamorous meal is still within reach. It might have evolved a little since 1963 (and believe me, I mourn the passing of the Betty Draper wardrobe), but maybe the food has taken center stage over the attire worn while eating it. Much like an haute couture gown, food that is aspirational (think a tasting menu at Per Se, a private table at the Inn at Little Washington, or a culinary adventure at El Bulli) is the new definition of culinary glamour. 

That said, even the most fabulous food has become more democratic over the past decade. It might still take 18 months to get a reservation at The French Laundry, where the prices are not for the faint of pocketbook, but the food’s been demystified. You can always buy the book and make it at home. 

And these days it really is all about the food. Décor, service, the notion of a celebrity behind the grill (or at least behind the concept) – they add to the experience, of course. But as foodie culture has exploded, so has the idea that the food comes first. The most fabulous food these days is creative and “authentic” all at once. 

Sure, it’s nice to get a great see-and-be-seen table, but you’re more likely to impress your clients with your stories of tapas bar-hopping in San Sebastien than with your pull at the hostess stand. Food today gets glamorous when the story behind it is full of history and people and, hopefully, a little drama. 

Last week, Kate and I emailed a little about food and glamour. She said to me, “Remember when caviar was glamorous? And now it’s marrow bones.” The definition of culinary glamour has evolved from mother-of-pearl spoons daintily dishing up the food of Russian royalty to imitating early man, lustily, and probably messily, digging marrow out of the bones.  

Betty Draper’s chiffon and silk wouldn’t have stood a chance against the pleasures of marrow…luckily, my trusty Seven jeans do.

Kit Pollard blogs at Mango and Ginger.

The Glamour of Arrival

Observing this year's Oscar entrances, the WaPost's Amy Argetsinger writes that the red-carpet arrivals have become more central to stars' identities than the performances those arrivals supposedly honor:

"So the ritual of arriving somewhere -- of lighting up a place with their sheer presence, all that tragically underused charisma -- that's the performance these days."

Advertising imagery confirms her observation. Here are two ads that invite us to picture ourselves as stars. They show us pretty people in fine clothes but, above all, they suggest that we imagine ourselves as arriving some place special and being photographed as we do. The glamour of contemporary celebrity appeals less to the longing for beauty or riches--this isn't the Depression, no matter what the papers say--than to the desire for admiration, adulation, and love: the yearning to be recognized as important. Wouldn’t it be great to be like that?

DG Q & A: The Foodinista

Deep Glamour's favoring a food-themed week, and to kick it off, we've subjected mystery blogger, The Foodinista, to our questions.

DG: How and when and why did chefs become glamorous? Didn't they used to be faintly comic--like Chef Boyardee?

TF: I would argue that Chef Boyardee has a certain chic about him. He can pull off a toque like nobody's business. But probably Julia Child started the ball rolling by bringing French fare into our homes in the 60s. From there, I would say the Food Network took it to the next level, turning chefs like Mario into gods. I have no other explanation for the popularity of Crocs in this country.

DG: Are some foods inherently more glamourous than others, or is it all in presentation?

TF: It depends on your definition of glamour. Caviar is an obvious association with "glamour" simply because it is expensive and rare. I love caviar. But I also think a perfectly roasted chicken at a dinner party makes much more of a statement about good taste, and there are few things as elegant as a simple glass bowl filled with lemons. Aesthetically speaking, I'll take farmers markets over Fendi any day.

DG:  Has all the emphasis in media on professional cooking intimidated home cooks?

TF: My prediction is that we're about to see a backlash to the celebrity chef phenomenon. I think we've stopped caring, or at least I have. We're much more interested in neighborhood restaurants where the chef is actually in there cooking honest, unpretentious, beautiful food. And it's the kind of food we're cooking at home now more than ever—much more focused on ingredients than showmanship. I would argue this shift away from fussy food wrought with laborious technique has empowered the home chef. We realize now that we don't have to spend five hours cooking in order to have people over to dinner. In fact, all the better if one is able to prepare a fast, easy and satisfying meal and spend time chatting with friends and family instead of hiding behind the scenes fretting over a sauce.

The DG Dozen

1) How do you define glamour? Or what makes someone or something glamorous?

Glamour is an inherent quality that makes someone or something more attractive.

2) Who or what is your glamorous icon? Charlotte Gainsbourg.

3) Is glamour a luxury or a necessity? Glamour is a necessary luxury.

4) Favorite glamorous movie? Darling.

5) What  was your most glamorous moment? I'd love to say something romantic about sailing into the harbor at Portofino, but in reality I was on a tourist ferry not a yacht, so let's go with the first time I met Tom Ford—such a snapshot in time, which now seems so frivolous and far away during this very real recession. It was one of those  magical L.A. evenings in the garden behind the Chateau. He commented on a white linen Chanel camelia I had pinned to an old denim jacket. We were at party for Stella McCartney, sipping vodka cocktails, and I was a huge fan of Ford's at the time. Patrick McMullan was snapping photos. Everyone looked gorgeous, and the lighting was perfect. It was such a great party.

6) Favorite glamorous object ? A string of pearls my parents gave me for my 16^th birthday. I love to wear them with t-shirts.

7) Most glamorous place? The balcony of a lakefront suite at the Villa d'Este during a thunderstorm on Lake Como, where my husband and I spent our honeymoon. We ended up in a hot tub with Michael Bolton, which sort of dulled the patina.

8) Most glamorous job? Michelle Obama's.

9) Something or someone that other people find glamorous and you don't?

Juicy Couture

10)  Something or someone that you find glamorous whose glamour is unrecognized?
Nancy Silverton. You will find her on any given night at Mozza—manning the pizza oven or the mozzarella bar—dressed to the nines in Marni, blood red lipstick and a simple apron. She somehow remains graceful under any amount of pressure.

11)Can glamour survive? People will always want to see a prettier version of themselves, which is why, for better or worse, we look to glossies and celluloid for escape instead of in the mirror. Conversely, reality television makes us feel better about looking in the mirror after having leafed through the latest issue of Vogue. It's a balancing act.

12) Is glamour something you're born with? Grace is something you're born with, and it certainly lends authenticity to glamour in a way that oversized sunglasses cannot.

EITHER/OR 

1)Angelina Jolie or Cate Blanchett? Cate Blanchett
 2)Paris or Venice? Paris for fashion/Venice Ghetto for food
3) New York or Los Angeles? Los Angeles
4) Princess Diana or Princess Grace? Grace
5)Tokyo or Kyoto? Kyoto
6) Boots or stilettos? Stilettos
 7) Art Deco or Art Nouveau? Deco
8) Jaguar or Astin Martin? Aston Martin
9) Armani or Versace? Neither
10) Diana Vreeland or Anna Wintour? DV
11) Champagne or single malt? Champagne
1960s or 1980s? 60s
Diamonds or pearls? Pearls
Kate Moss or Naomi Campbell? Kate
Sean Connery or Daniel Craig? Sean Connery

Behind the Scenes of Hollywood Style

 With the Oscars this Sunday, I thought Dallas photographer Mark Oristano's work might get you in the mood for the old glamour of yesteryear, when studios matched stars up on the red carpet and picked out their Oscar gowns. Believe it or not, there was a time before the professional freelance stylist.

From Dana Thomas's Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster:

"Stylists are a relatively new phenomenon in fashion. Orginally, stylists worked as fashon editors, dressing-- or "styling"-- models for fashon shoots for magazines or catalogs. But as the number of formal affairs exploded in the 1990s, from the Oscars and a few premieres to an avalanche of paparazzi-line red-carpet events, stylists saw the birth of a new niche: dressing celebrities. Stylists went freelance and starting signing up movie, television and music stars."

But Thomas goes further, explaining the timeline of the once and future stylist.

In the 1950s, following the advent of television and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling known as the Hollywood Anti-Trust Case that forced studios to sell off their theatre chains, the industry suffered a financial slump and changed the way business was done. Actors and technical staff--including costumers--were gradually released from their studio contracts; many costume departments were shut down. To make matters worse, films began to take on a more realistic tone, with actors in more everyday, normal clothes--no ermine-trimmed peignoirs or sequin siren gowns required. By the mid-1960s, movie costume designers were nearly an extinct breed...

With no more Edith Head or Helen Rose or Jean Louis to provide glamorous wardrobes gratis, stars were forced to shop themselves for premieres and award shows, including the Oscars.

So at Oscar time, as Thomas writes, stars criss-crossed Rodeo Drive looking for their gowns. "The problem was most stars didn't have cultivated taste and they didn't have the studio costumers to guide them anymore."

Then, disastrously, the stars decided that they could design their own outfits. See: Demi Moore in bike shorts and a gold capey-skirty thing in 1989 and Kim Basinger in 1990 in her futuristic a-bomb gown (also see 1989, when Jodie Foster wears a baby-blue prom dress with a giant butt-bow, plucked from a Milan shop window).

Enter Armani, who decides he wants stars wearing his clothes. After seeing poor Jodie Foster in her taffeta, Armani's director of entertainment industry communications, Wanda McDaniel, contacted Foster and offered to dress her in Armani for the 1990 ceremony when she'd be presenting. McDaniel also dressed Michelle Pfeiffer that year and, writes Thomas:

The next morning Women's Wear Daily ran the headline: "The Agony and the Ecstasy." Under it were two pictures: Kim Basinger in a freakish self-designed one-sleeved white number, and luminous Pfeiffer in her understated, utterly tasteful Armani... Women's Wear Daily dubbed it the Armani Awards...more important, it gave Americans a glamour they could actually imagine wearing.

Ah, but back to Oristano. His clients want the studio-conceived glamour, the kind that Edith Head could whip up and immortalize in a Hitchcock film, so he's got his own stylist on call to give his clients make-up treatment and costume consultations.

Says the photographer, "I've always been a huge fan of the photos of George Hurrell, the photographer who set the pace in the 30's and 40's in Hollywood.

I've also studied with Michael Grecco, who is one of the top portrait photographers working today. He got me interested in using the same kind of 'hot' lights that Hurrell used. I just kept fooling around until I got it right."

Oristano's prices range from $695 to $1295, depending on the complexity of the shot, makeup, wardrobe, etc., which is actually a steal if you think about it. Rachel Zoe, stylist to the stars and trademarker of such original and household phrases of "I die" and "Bananas!", costs thousands of dollars per day.

[Kim Basinger and Jodie Foster photos by Flickr user Alan Light under Creative Commons license.]

Get a Bollywood Butt

With all the Oscar buzz around Slumdog Millionaire, it's not surprising that all things Indian are hotter than vindaloo. (See? I can write cheesy woman's magazine copy, too!)

My faves are Hemalayaa's workout videos, Bollywood Booty, Bollywood Burn and so on. There's an abs one, but it's not called Delhi Belly, alas.

The bhangra beat is infectious at first, and then so annoying you could scream. Go ahead! Screaming works the diaphragm like nothing else.

Quattrocento Glamour

This lovely lady is thought to be Simonetta Vespucci, the most beautiful woman in Renaissance Florence. Like many of his contemporaries, Botticelli had a major crush on la bella Simonetta--and he immortalized her, or versions of her, in many of his paintings.

This painting, officially known as Young Woman in Mythological Guise, is not meant as a realistic portrait. In his introduction to a 2001 exhibition at the National Gallery, David Alan Brown wrote that the image recalls a verse from Petrarch: 

Breeze that surrounds those blond and curling locks, that makes them move...and scatters the sweet gold, then gathers it in lovely knots recurling....

The abundant, gravity-defying, partially braided, partially down hair was highly suggestive in its day. The pearls--remember, this is long before the cultured variety--would be worth a fortune. (Check out the pearls threaded through the braids outlining her bust.) The pearls woven through her hair create a net called a vespaio, or wasp nest, and are usually taken to refer to the Vespucci name. But, for all the clues, she remains a mystery. Maybe she's Simonetta; maybe she's an imaginary creature. Maybe she's a mixture of the two.

All in all, she's the picture of quattrocento glamour.

And yet when I saw her as I read through the catalog for the National Gallery exhibit (Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo's Ginevra de' Benci and Renaissance Portraits of Women), I kept doing double takes. She seemed so familiar, like one of today's famous faces. Look below the fold and tell me if you agree.

Portrait of the Blogger as an Old Bat

John Singer Sargent famously described a portrait as a " likeness with something funny about the mouth". Today's NYT has a piece about people and their portraits, and judging by the examples shown, these subjects would have been lucky if the mouth was the only funny thing.

Don Bachardy is shown with his scary clown version of actress Natalie Schafer, best known as Mrs. Thruston Howell III or Lovey on Gillian's Island. Since she's dead, who knows if she she liked the portrait or not--but as Bachardy's got it,  her heirs might not crazy about it. Bachardy's a real artist, with a real point of view, and if you're looking to be immortalized and flattered, he might not be your best choice.

I'm guessing that those who chose to be painted by gazillionairess Margie Perenchio must have hoped that they'd look well, perhaps better than in real life. She painted Salma Hayek (and produced Frida), and I can only hope Hayek was polite about it. Look at that right hand--it's the size of a small dog.

Perenchio charges $12,000 for a portrait, but graciously allowed Les Moonves to make a donation to a charity instead. She worked from a photograph for her rendition of Moonves and his wife, Julie Chen. If this was my portrait, I'd hang it at Goodwill.

Mentioned but not shown is the work of Maxine Smith, who like Perechino is married to a media mogul.There's a lot of Matisse there, but real heart as well.

Also not shown, which is a real pity, is a portrait of George Hamilton by Ralph Wolfe Cowan. Now, that's a portrait. 

Recently, I've had my own portrait done. My daughter captured me in a characteristic pose. Look how cleverly she avoided the whole question of the mouth.

Metropolitan Glamour

And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there.... Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will. 

--Ezra Pound, "Patria Mia," New Age, September 18, 1912

Taken in 1932, Berenice Abbott's "Nightview" is one of 60 iconic New York photos in this exhibition at the Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe. (Check out the link to see more.)

The exhibit's most glamorous shots are from the 1930s and '40s, when New York was the symbol of American modernity, and many of them are night views, with windows bright with promise. These aren't realistic photos of city streets but abstracted, suggestive portraits that spark the imagination.

In his brilliant book Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies James Sanders points out that the New York of classic movies--the city of penthouses and jazz clubs--was a glamorous composite created by homesick New York writers exiled in Hollywood:

The city they were creating was not just the one they were remembering, however romantically. The writers were, after all, professional imaginers, and it was an imaginary city they were bringing into being. It would be animated not only by the memory of what once had happened there, but by all the things that could have happened, or should have happened. To memory was added imagination, and it would be these two potent faculties that would animate the dream city and give it special force and flavor....
If the real New York had many tall buildings, it had plenty of low ones as well, especially in its outer boroughs and residential districts. But the dream city would seem to be all vertical, every scene playing in a penthouse, on a terrace, in a rooftop nightclub, every window looking onto a view of rising towers.

Every scene. The mythic city, the dream city, the city of imagination is less a place of stories than a series of scenes--static shots into which the audience members can project their own longings. The glamour of the setting lingers in memory after the particulars of plots and characters fade, encouraging the audience to imagine their own stories in that glamorous version of Metropolis.

The most powerful cinematic image of the mythic city, Sanders suggests, is thus not a glamorized version of the real New York but a fully imaginary shot: the Emerald City of Oz.

Dorothy and her friends indeed stand transfixed—but not by aesthetic pleasure. In that gleaming skyline, they see the fulfillment of their dreams. In that place, perhaps only in that place, will each find the special thing he or she is looking for. These towers will somehow change their lives.
This is what makes the view so powerful, so moving. From a distance, the skyline is everything they could have imagined, and more. Soaring, glistening, grand but comprehensible, its upward leap precisely mirrors the feeling in their hearts. Its very improbability—all those slender, dizzying towers, bundled tightly together, cresting ad the center—simply adds to its impact. For how could their lives be truly transformed, after all, in a place of ordinary appearance? Magical events call for magical settings.
Through a kind of urban grace, the skyline of New York—in one sense simply the overscaled product of technology and real estate—became the locus of one of the most potent collective emotional experiences in the life of America. Into Manhattan’s towers were focused the hopes and dreams of millions, until the very girders and facades were permeated and charged with a sense of human possibility, as the skyline’s own skyward aspirations became fused with the personal yearnings of millions. The dream city, even in this most unworldly of guises, lets us share that transactive spark.

Next Up: 13th Amendment Jeans

Does This Barbie Make Me Look Fat?

Happy birthday, Barbie! The hot, plastic blonde has turned 50 and was feted with her own fashion show at NY Fashion Week. (It took me a minute or two, but I do believe that is a real human model in the link's photo, not a giant Barbie doll. Uncanny, though!)

Ah yes, but if you watched the vid of the fashion show and thought, those dresses are great but Barbie was much more buxom than the runway models, maybe you need to be introduced to the newest Barbie... Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Barbie.

The cheerleader has smaller bosoms, skinnier legs, a more vapid stare (perhaps hunger?), and hip bones that portrude from her frame. In other words--she's just like a real model! AT LAST!

Unfortunately, the wet rags over at Commercial Free Childhood don't agree. They have given the   new Barbie their TOADY award saying:

"The Barbie Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Doll teaches girls   to focus on their appearance, to aspire to an eating-disordered body, and to play at being sexy before they’re even capable of understanding what sexy means."

Look guys, I think we all need to see the silver lining on this new cheerleader Barbie. A) She's obviously overcome a lot of physical limitations to be able to stand--let alone dance!-- on those bird legs, so good for her! and B) she's somehow still got energy even after the tape worm has ravaged her once hourglass figure. Poor girl. She's obviously in the special needs category, let's leave her alone.

Or not:

"In collaboration with the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, Mattel created a Barbie Doll that makes standard Barbie look like a clerk at Wal-Mart. Complete with toothpick legs and shorts that don’t qualify as shorts on several levels, Cowboy cheerleader Barbie will surely inspire thousands – perhaps millions – of little girls to vomit their cafeteria pizza so they’re still sexy in their P.E. shorts."

Well, there's one thing she's good at-- Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Barbie made the real NY fashion models look fat, for that alone she definitely deserves an award!  Congrats!

How Old Am I in Department Store Years?

Having just celebrated a birthday, I started thinking about how people measure the passage of time.  Some Great Plains tribes referred to certain periods by natural phenomena--the Year of the Falling Stars or the Year of the Spotted Sickness. When I lived in the District of Columbia, people thought in terms of the Carter administration or the first Reagan term. I mark the passage of time by the existence of department stores.

 When I first moved to Los Angeles, I. Magnin, Bullocks, the Broadway, Robinson's, the May Co., Neiman-Marcus, and Saks were bustling. There was even an Orbachs. Federated Department Stores owned Magnins and Bullocks, but ran them as separate enterprises, with Bullocks Wilshire as the flagship store.  I favored it for china, linens and baby clothes.  The Broadway and the May Co. stores featured mass market merchandise, but were good for staples, and Robinson's was somewhere slightly higher on the retail ladder. Most chains also had outlet stores, and Robinson's had an especially good furniture sale.

In Pasadena, the I. Magnin store was a tiny jewel box, and the halls by the ladies room were lined with portraits of the Rose Queens and their Courts. The Bullocks store on Lake boasted a tea room, a children's hair salon, and classic MCM style--when it opened in 1947, it was The Store of Tomorrow.

Seemingly overnight, these stores got bought and sold and closed and reopened as Robinson-May or  Macy's. Bullocks Wilshire was looted in the Rodney King riots, and never recovered--I went to the close-out sales and saw Hancock Park matrons in tears. Bloomingdales moved into Southern California, Nordstom and Barneys New York opened nationally, and the old familiar names and stores vanished. 

In some cases, the actual buildings were adapted for other uses--the May Co. on Wilshire is part of LACMA, Bullocks Wilshire's art deco masterpiece now houses the Southwestern School of Law (and you can buy a model here), the Pasadena BW is Macy's, and Target inhabits Robinson's old digs on Colorado Blvd. Macy's just shut their downtown store at Citicorp Plaza.

These stores were part of my past--where I ordered my wedding invitations (Neimans, employee discount), bought my son's layette (Robinsons),  took my  children for haircuts (Pasadena Bullocks), scored sale rack coups (Armani suit marked down 75% at  Magnins), and returned fashion errors (all of the above). But even though I'd spent many hours wandering through their floors, I've ceased to mourn these former friends. Now, I just don't let myself get attached to any retailer--I shop online.

(Thanks to reader Kit Pollard, whose comment inspired this post.)

Open Letter to Mary Schapiro, Chair of the SEC

I'd been struck by a story about the new chair of the SEC --Mary Schapiro, a DC lawyer who's been the head of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, not because I'm so fascinated by finance but because I used to date her husband. I read the piece out loud at the breakfast table, and my ever-practical husband pointed out that even if I'd managed to snag the guy, it would have been highly unlikely that I'd have her job today. He was right-- I did have a little Walter-ette Mitty vision of myself in a Prada suit and an Hermes bag, swearing to keep stockbrokers honest

I'd gone out with Chas a long time ago in DC, but going out is a euphemism as we never went anywhere. I worked at the Smithsonian, in a job that was well suited for someone with a generous trust fund (i.e., not me), and he was in law school and clerking for a tiny stipend. He favored a retro preppy style, had deep blue eyes and a slight stammer. I favored tequila over white wine coolers, high heeled slingbacks over Jacques Cohen espadrilles, and having late-night fun over everything else. My southern housemate, Margaret, once remarked that she couldn't imagine what he saw in me. Her boyfriend, a recent Annapolis grad, gave me a sidelong glance--he knew exactly what the guy saw in me.  In Washington, in the late 70s, I could have been considered a walk on the wild side.

The only real date-date that I recall was an evening that should have clued me in to how wildly unsuited I was to the life of a Beltway lawyer. He asked me to go to the Messiah Singalong at the Kennedy Center--an annual event attended by people I considered to be older than dirt. Little did I realize that the senior partners of his firm were very keen on the activity. At 22, I had few ambitions besides a pair of suede boots at Garfinkels.

I managed to costume myself as a kindergarten teacher in a grey jumper, and we went, we sang, and then we went to an egg-nog party at a fellow clerk's apartment. The hostess, who had a raging crush on Chas,  was too polite to be bitchy to me, so instead tried to engage me in conversation about what she thought would be a favorite subject--Chas. Perversely, I opted to talk to a silver-haired guy who'd brought a bottle of scotch. We got on like a house afire.

On the way home, Chas was raving about my hither-to-unseen social skills. He'd been very impressed that I had managed to hold the attention of a big-deal Undersecretary of Something or Other. Too tipsy to be tactful, I pointed out that the Undersecretary was chiefly interested in getting into my underthings. Why else does anyone talk to a 22 year old girl?  He was a little shocked. He hoped I hadn't been inappropriate.  I pointed out that inappropriate seemed pretty interesting to him. He stopped calling soon after.

The last time I saw him , Chas was recovering from surgery. He'd had a bout of testicular cancer, and naturally, I wanted to see the scar. "Don't be so prissy," I told him. "I've seen you naked about 1,000 times."  So he dropped trou, I made sympathetic noises, and as he zipped up, he said "Don't tell Mary."

And I didn't. Until now.

Does the Same Rule Apply to Furniture?

Cathy Horyn thinks it's bad that Michelle Obama works with a mere retailer, rather than individual designers, to develop her wardrobe as first lady:

Designers should have direct access to the first lady, and not have their work and ideas put through the filter of a retailer.

Yes, I'm sure they'd love direct access--as would a lot of other people. But there's a tradeoff: You can either have one or two designers with direct access or a lot of different designers edited by a specialist who isn't also trying to be a public figure.

Besides, nobody applies that standard to furniture designers or upholstery fabric designers. Everyone thinks it's perfectly normal for the Obamas to employ an interior designer to make the White House suit their style. Maybe we need a "designer" term for stylists--costume designers for playing yourself.

As for the photo, that's no stylist. That's an Interior Department official, wrapping the first lady in an Indian shawl.

"Dr. Zarkov, Have the Robot Fetch My Zeppelin"

A great title and a great poster for this April 18 lecture, sponsored by the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles.

Can Buses Be Glamorous After All?

I've always said that every form of transportation has been glamorous, except buses. But Todd Lappin at Telstar Logistics has posted this image, scanned from The Big Book of Real Trucks (1950), and made me reconsider the bus exception to the glamorous transportation rule.

 

DG Caption Contest! Paris Hilton Shopping in BH

Go on! You know you want to. Leave your caption suggestions in the comments below and I promise to reward you.  Try to keep it clean.

Valentines, Schmalentines--Celebrate Come to Your Senses Day!

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. Heartscandyflowersinappropriatelingerie.  Or lack thereof.

Come to Your Senses Day is February 15th, and could possibly be the most important date in the history of human romantic interaction. The brainchild of writers Liz Dubelman and Barbara Davilman, CYSD events include readings from their new anthology, What Was I Thinking?: 58 Bad Boyfriend Stories at bookstores around the country.

My own essay (page 41) isn't about a boyfriend, but an even more intimate relationship--my hair colorist. Ex.

Contributers include Maira Kalman, Francesca Lia Block, Carrie Fisher, Claudia Handler, Rachel Resnick, Bonnie Bruckheimer and a bunch of other top-drawer women writers.

For my money, Patricia Marx has the best essay, but I won't spoil the surprise.

In Los Angeles, join us at 2 pm at the Borders at 1360 Westwood Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90024.

Is It Demeaning to Talk About Michelle Obama's Clothes?

 

In Thursday's WaPost, Jeanne McManus makes the case that it's perfectly all right to talk about Michelle Obama's clothes.

How to say this: I enjoy reading about Michelle Obama's clothes. I like to know what she's wearing, appreciate details about her shoes and gloves, wonder where she got her necklace. When she shows up at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, I'm not distracted from her message by being simultaneously informed that she is in a slate-gray suit.

Is it right about here that other women start throwing shoes at me?

In the stunning image of Michelle Obama, a woman of substance and of style (in this case, attention-getting, Vogue-worthy style), it is apparent that in Washington we don't always do a good job of acknowledging those two sides of the same woman -- or of allowing them to coexist. Hawk-eyed consumers of mainstream media are ready to pounce anytime a reporter covering Mrs. Obama goes off message and writes about her clothes.

You should read the whole article, which as of this writing has garnered 299 reader comments (many of them idiotic partisan rants of various flavors, as is the custom in such forums) and is the sixth most viewed article.

It reminds me of the short but strange discussion that broke out on Brad DeLong's econ blog after he ran a picture of me and someone asked about my shoes. In liberal-intellectual land, there still seems to be a prevailing notion that women of substance--or liberal women of substance, as opposed to libertarians like me--pay no attention to fashion. That makes Michelle Obama a problem.

But, as I noted in The Substance of Style, the opposition of style and substance isn't the historical or anthropological norm. It's a post-Victorian WASP hangup. To take one relevant exception: African Americans have, since slave days, realized that style can be not just a source of great personal pleasure but a public assertion of dignity and personal worth. It's probably no accident that two of the country's most eminent and intellectual fashion correspondents, the WaPost's Robin Givhan and the WSJ's Teri Agins, are African American. I was Givhan's contemporary at Princeton and, believe me, no intellectually respectable white girl would have admitted to being interested in clothes. We were still living in the shoe-throwing culture McManus writes about--the same culture that left Hillary Clinton unable to cope with her hair.

Besides, if it's silly to talk about Michelle Obama's clothes, it's a lot sillier to talk about Barack Obama's hoops skills. Just think of fashion as sports for women.

Check out The Black Snob's smart-and-pretty Michelle Obama fashion retrospective, from which I stole the photo above. It's a year old, but still good. (More recently, she had a good rant on the NAACP's historically clueless crusade against "poofy dresses.")

Is 35 the Ideal Age?

The ads for Isaac Mizrahi's new line for Liz Claiborne feature women, only one of them a professional model, whose ages range from 19 to 68. What they have in common, reports the NYT's Stephanie Rosenbloom,

is what the company’s executives call “perpetual 35-ness.” In other words, the notion that in most women’s minds (if not their bodies) they are all 35. That is the age, Mr. Mizrahi said, when women are “perfectly ripe”: old enough to feel independent and confident, but not so old that they feel, er, old.

What do you think? Is 35 the perfect age? Was it the perfect age 10 or 20 years ago? Do ideal ages vary in different parts of the country? When we lived in Dallas, we often remarked that women seemed to aspire to look a bit older than they do in L.A.--not old, mind you, and probably not even 35, but older.

One of the "models" is movie blogger Karina Longworth, interviewed by DG here.

Constructing Glamour: The Sequel

Thanks to everyone who commented on my original Constructing Glamour post with the Toni Frissell photos. These two were the favorites, both among commenters and people I happened to talk to.

Glamour exists in the audience's mind, so there's no right or wrong answer. But I believe the evening shot on the right is by far the most compelling of the group.

As the comments made clear, having a pretty model in a luxurious outfit isn't enough to create the magical quality called glamour. Glamour must invite the viewer into a special world, one that holds the promise of escape and transformation. In both these photos, the model seems to be in such a world. In both, she appears graceful and self-contained, also qualities that create glamour.

But the lighting in the evening shot adds drama and mystery. In the daylight shot, the dress looks heavy and a bit dull and wrinkled. In the evening shot, it glistens, and its weight is less obvious, enhancing the model's grace. As commenter Irene noted, the photo's glamour comes in part from the allure of light and shine. That allure is not just glitz, however. Shadow and contrast are just as important. To see the shimmer of the dress, you need the shadows. Similarly, the distant obelisk is more compelling in the evening shot. In contrast to the flat form in the daytime, light and shadow play on the shaft as it rises from the trees, and its tip glints with just a spot of light.

As commenter DMC noted, in the daytime shot the model does have an appealingly confident "queen of her empire" quality. I prefer the more contemplative evening shot, with its active hands and hint of yearning. But what really makes the difference between the two is not the central figure but the background: the enticingly illuminated monument, lights on the opposite shore, and a barely seen boat sculling along the river. (You have to look at the large version of the shot to see it.) The scene shimmers with possibility.

Best Blog You're not Reading: Carrie Fisher

Celebrity blogs can be so ehhh.  If they're not just promotional, they're dull or insane or both.  Falling into a category all her own, Carrie Fisher blogs about her family, her friends, and her foibles and frankly, she's fabulous.  I can't believe she's giving away all this writing for free. 

NAACP's Image Awards Tonight

The NAACP celebrates its 100th anniversary today and their 40th Annual Image Awards will be televised tonight on FOX.  The awards' stated mission is to celebrate

 the outstanding achievements and performances of people of color in the arts (motion picture, television, recording, and literature), as well as those individuals or groups who promote social justice through their creative endeavors.

It's that second clause that evaded Defamer when the blog questioned Dakota Fanning's nomination. I vaguely understand the frustration of my African-American friends when they have to keep schooling dim white people. But then, I've been taken for black myself.

Years ago, I worked on a pilot for HBO featuring Ice-T as a talk show host, discussing issues of the day.  My job was to create sequences of movie clips to introduce each section, compiled from Blacksploitation films, classics of Black cinema, et cetera.  Very fun job-- I got paid to watch Petey Wheatstraw, the Devil's Son-in-law, and thus know the Rudy Ray Moore oeuvre inside and out.  My AP and I were the only white people on the staff.

The sequences fell into various categories--Pimps and Hos, Slick Rides, and my personal favorite We Just Talk That Way To Fool Y'all--and were pretty damn funny, if I say so myself. EP Carl Craig dragged me along to present these to the execs at HBO. Presentation commences, most of us fall about the place laughing, and the suits try to look amused, but are clearly mystified and/or horrified. Some, most, all of those film clips were profane, rude and crude. That's why they're funny.

I take my little VHS tape and leave. Back in the office, Carl tells me that one of the VPs was shocked that I could have come up with these outrageous montages, as (exact quote) "She doesn't look very street." Carl's instant rejoiner was "Street? Kate's white!"

And thus my rep as a down-with-it sistah was destroyed even before it got traction. Of course, everyone else in the office thought his mistake was hilarious and yet another example of the cluelessness of white people.

And after 100 years of the NAACP's hard work,  ignorance still stumbles  along.  

She Doesn't Look a Day Over 22--Barbie Turns 50

Barbie turns 50, and the fashion world applauds.  Of course, the downside of being a popular plaything is that you can't lie about anything--your age, your measurements, or your stock performance.  She'll make her catwalk debut on Saturday at NYC's Fashion Week, wearing designs from a bevy of top designers.

Nicole Miller envisions her in a checkerboard trapeze dress.

  Mattel and Assouline have published a lavish book in honor of the event, and the iconic cover photo was taken my next-door neighbor, Przemek Domanski, who says she's one of his favorite models.

Dark Side of Glamour Exposed by Mark Ebner

Anyone who's intrigued by the ugly side of Hollywood, and really, that's everyone I know, will want to dip into Mark Ebner's new book, Six Degrees of Paris Hilton: Inside the Sex Tapes, Scandals, and Shakedowns of the New Hollywood.

Jerry Stahl, who's taken a couple of walks on the wild side himself, blurbs:

Most terrifying of all -- the story is true, and Ebner tells it with a ferocity and heart that will have readers panting and forgetting to wash or eat until they've clawed their way to the end.

But, then, some people will use any excuse to avoid showering.

Lowlife scum like Tara Reid, Joe Francis, and Darnell Riley populate the book, and Ebner's investigative skills leave no hot pillow un-turned.

Ebner signs in person tonight at Book Soup. 

Hello Kitty Couture

What sort of couture does Hello Kitty inspire?

Here are two of 31 answers from an eBay auction, ending February 19. It's sponsored by M.A.C. to benefit the Museum at FIT (one of my favorites). The dress on the left is by Tadashi Shoji, the one on the right by Catherine Malandrino. Check out the rest here.

Smooth Wrinkles with higher BMI

Deep Glamour readers Olivia N., Meredith W. and Michele G. are the winners of Wei King's chestnut collection skincare (we were deluged with emails, and so picked the first three from different time zones.) Thanks to everyone who entered.

But, if scientists at Case Western Reserve U. are telling the truth, I probably should have sent out packets of snickerdoodles and deep-fried Snickers.  A study of twins showed that a few extra pounds smooths out the wrinkles, and makes you look younger, at least after 40.   A casual glance around any mall proves this to be true--all those skinny Minnies have lines and crinkles where their well-padded sisters have smooth cheeks and foreheads.   Of course, smoking and tanning will age the skin, and the study also found that treating depression with medications will make you look older.

So, what's a lady to do? If you don't smoke, go to the beach and/or eat full-fat ice cream, you could get depressed, take Prozac and look just as haggard as if you'd done all those bad things in the first place.   Fat and happy seems to be the way to eternal youth.  Tell Oprah to calm down.

Any Shoppers Out There?

Do DG readers shop? Or do you just read? (We love you either way.) How about shopping for things to read? Or reading about shopping?

We're still looking for entries in our contest to win a copy of Confessions of a Shopaholic signed by author Sophie Kinsella, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and actors Krysten Ritter and Hugh Dancy.

Share your favorite shopping experiences--good, bad, or dangerous--in the comments below. We'll send the autographed copy of Confessions of a Shopaholic to the person whose story we like best. (Not interested in that book? We'll send you a signed copy of The Substance of Style instead. No home is complete without one.)

The contest is just a hook. What we really want are your stories.

Special Offer from Smashbox: Save $25 on $100

I get a zillion of these promotions from would-be advertisers and usually pass. (DG readers aren't big enough shoppers to justify the visual clutter.) But this one seems like an unusually good deal, and I do like Smashbox products. So I decided to share it.

Win Wei East Chestnut Skin Care Collection

Deep Glamour readers are invited to win a selection of skin care products from Wei East's Chestnut collection.  Your complexion is the first thing to succumb to the pressures of late nights, stress, and winter weather, and Chinese chestnut extracts are known to have restorative powers.

 I've tried the eye treatment, thanks to Brittany Cabera, and found it very pleasant--a very light honey scent, which is nice, and while it's too soon to tell if I'm looking years younger,  I'd certainly keep using it. 

Please email me at kate@deepglamour.net with the Latin name for Chinese chestnut, and the collection is yours.  Be sure to include your  address, and good luck!

Mama M.I.A.

The minute M.I.A. stepped out on to the stage at last night's Grammys, Facebook status updates and Tweets blew up. The rapper performed nine months pregnant (her baby was actually due that day) and she was truly outrageous, wearing an crazy, see-through mesh polka-dotted number and tennis shoes and bouncing around like a teen after too much pizza and ice cream. (Check out the number here.) It was kinda awesome.

(Here she is on the red carpet before the show.)

You've come a long way baby!  When Demi Moore posed nude at 7 months for Vanity Fair in 1991, magazines were pulled from shelves and some covered them up with paper bags as if they were porn.

Pregnancy has, until very recent history, been something women concealed. Hello Grace Kelly hiding her belly with her Hermès  bag.

Ironically, after M.I.A., I switched over to Masterpiece Theatre where a character was talking of her daughter's impending confinement. I do believe the Grammys would've given Victorian ladies the vapors.

The actual process of labor and delivery were very important to aristocratic families of the Victorian era. Many would travel to London weeks before to stay with friends throughout the final few weeks. The purpose of this journey, called going to town....The house had to be prepared very specifically to accommodate the pregnant woman and her husband, friends, family, the doctor and his team of medical attendants. Not all women actually made the trip to London or to an alternate location to deliver, and therefore many rearranged all of the rooms and furniture in their own house to prepare for weeks of confinement. Confinement was the term used to describe the last few weeks of pregnancy that were spent in the bed of a specially prepared house. (work cited: Lewis, Judith S. In the Family Way: Childbearing in the British Aristocracy, 1760-1860 . Rutgers University Press. New Brunswick, NJ, 1986.)

Confinement?! Heck no! Today a cottage industry has popped up around outfitting and photographing pregnant brides-- and not necessarily in blousy, drapey dresses, but belly-hugging designs that celebrate the baby-to-be.

I think the next wave of feminist empowerment is not with words but with images. M.I.A. did her own version of "going to town" last night and it was at once shocking and amazing. (Check out some of the comments, "She should be ashamed for being so disgusting.")

If a woman, hours away from giving birth, can perform alongside the boys and manage to bring down the house, I'd say we just made strides in breaking down another image of the more delicate sex.




 

Rachida Dati--Out of Power, Out of Photos?

 In Stalinist times, politicans who fell out of favor were eliminated by various methods, and photographs of them were usually altered or destroyed.  Today,  an astute observer can usually pinpoint the moment a public figure is on his or her on the way out--the lighting gets harsher, the camera angles less flattering, and photo editors crop the image for maximum ugly.

Case in point--Rachida Dati, the French politician.  Last June, she was a dead ringer for gamine actress Audrey Tatou.   

Then she had a baby, and was back at work  (and in the headlines) in record time, looking chic and happy.

And now she's out of her job as Minister of Justice, and she looks a little like Gladys Kravitz.

The moral here is don't piss off your boss's wife.

Naming the Octuplets, Collector's Edition (Beanie Babies?)

Nadya Suleman, the mother of the octuplets, is reported as favoring names from the Old Testament.  Her mother, who's got the patent on passive-aggressive communication, told Us magazine:

the girls' names sound nice but are "pretty unusual."

 Baal-zephon? Zaacai? Habazinaiah? Gomer? More unusual than Mormon names?

As of now, the little miracles are known as Baby A, Baby B, and so on, all the way to H.  Baby name sites are abuzz with the possiblities for the 6 boys and 2 girls.

Mega-family, the Duggars, opted for the  same first initial for all offspring, which makes monogrammed hand-me-down  easy, but lacks imagination.

The Texas octuplets were given traditional Nigerian  names, as if they weren't unusual enough.

David Carter, thinking ahead, suggests Suleman get cracking on registering those domain names.

Choosing a child name is an act so fraught with social anxiety. The Salon Table Talk board regularly castigates any name deemed to be uneek and kre8tive, and they went on for days about the Palins.  The forums at Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing are very fun to read.

I think she should stick with the ABC theme, and call that last little bugger, Hellzapoppin.

Idle thought--now that Michelle Obama put the kibosh on Sasha and Malia dolls,  why doesn't Ty come out with Octuplet Beanie Babies? Collect 'em, swap 'em, trade 'em with your friends.

Glamorous Gifts: DG Does Valentine's Day

Ah, Valentine's Day, holiday of anticipation and angst. For some, it's a delightful excuse for public displays of affection, for others a form of emotional blackmail--a demand for loot. Some of us simply ignore the occasion while others go all out. Regardless of your attitude toward the holiday, it does present an opportunity to contemplate the meanings and forms of modern-day love tokens.

To give readers some Valentine's Day inspiration, we asked DG contributors and friends to suggest gifts for male and female Valentines. Their ideas range from "a bodice-ripper in a bottle" to a Pixar classic.

Kate Coe

For a woman: ANGEL ROSE For Women By THIERRY MUGLER eau de parfum

A variation on the original Angel, this scent combines both ethereal romance and earthy lust--as Bois de Jasmine says

 earthy undertones that... produce the shocking effect of mud on a white evening dress

It's a bodice-ripper in a bottle. 

For a man: Garmin nüvi 760 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Automobile Navigator

Besides solving all the tedious discussions about asking directions, the Garmin GPS routes your beloved around traffic snarls, gives him directions for shopping, restaurants, and florists, stores photos, and offers a choice of voices with sexy accents. Rev his engine.

Kate Coe is DG's chief correspondent.

Joan DeJean

For anyone, male or female, who loves 19th-century opera, I'd suggest a horizon-opening gift that combines passion and glamour: one of the phenomenal recent recordings of early opera.

1. Anything recorded by Fabio Biondi; my top pick would be Vivaldi's Bajazet.

2. Handel's sexiest opera, Giulio Cesare. The DVD of the Glyndebourne production features the greatest production numbers in recent opera history.

Joan DeJean, a professor of French literature at Penn,  is the author of The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafes, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour. She was interviewed by DG here.

Groomzilla

Groomzilla doesn't believe in separate gifts for men and women! Of course, this is largely because I try to pass off women's perfume as cologne and Coach purses as unisex carry-alls, but motives aside, boyfriends and girlfriends alike get only one recommendation this Valentine's Day: WALL-E on DVD.

The kid in all of us loves a good Pixar flick, and this Oscar-nominated film has a secret life as the best love story to come out of Hollywood in years. It might seem strange that an animated eco-fable starring an anthropomorphic trash compactor would get one in a romantic frame of mind, but I guarantee that this is the must-watch DVD for a cozy Valentine's night in.

Groomzilla is the nom de plume of a newlywed Los Angeles attorney who chronicled his adventures in gay wedding planning in a series of DG posts.

Kate Hahn

FOR WOMEN:

A Hermès silk scarf. So glamorous that American actress-turned-Monaco-princess Grace Kelly reportedly used one as a sling for her broken arm back in the Fifties. Audrey and Jackie adored them. SJP and Madonna do too. The intricately patterned French-milled silk squares were first produced in 1927 and are hand-screened in Lyons. Choose a versatile 36” X 36” size in classic Hermes orange or a top Pantone trend color for Spring 2009: bright blue, lavender or lemon. Spread your Valentine love to the rest of the world with the Offrandes d’un Jour pattern. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Indian charity CRY (Child Rights and You). The website’s “playtime with your scarf” is a how-to guide for 20 ways to fold: bohemian turban, prim neckerchief, sexy halter. Each method reveals different aspects of the overall pattern, so you decide how much you want to expose. Hermes.com or check vintage stores. $350-375.

Songes Eau de Toilette by French perfumer Annick Goutal. The actual color is a fiery reddish-gold. Officially a floral/oriental blend. Inspired by Annick Goutal’s daughter Camille’s romantic trip to the island of Mauritius. Sensual, sunny, rich, real.

FOR MEN:

A man should do everything with ease and grace. That includes commuting and making playlists. Give him a portable GPS navigator with real-time traffic navigation info and an iTunes tagger that lets him tag songs he hears on the radio so he can buy them on iTunes later. According to Consumer Reports both features will be available on the Dual Electronics’ NavAtlas XNAV43HD, which will retail for $280 when it goes on sale in late March or early April (give your guy a TK note). Bond has probably had one since 1975.

And speaking of the 70s, how about a little retro pornography? Our household is a fan of Playboy: Redheads, a collection of photographs the magazine published from the 1950s-1970s. If you’re a fan of blondes and brunettes too, you can get the three-volume boxed set. The prints are sometimes more kitsch than erotic (think girl with beehive eagerly awaiting her chess opponent while perched on a shag carpet) but the lack of cosmetic surgery enhancements and the BP (before-Photoshop) era absence of digital retouching makes these fantasy women seem like they just might be attainable. Which is somehow sexier.

Joan Kron

Women don't want vacuum cleaners and mixmasters for valentines day. They want tokens of love. So for her I suggest he buy the largest South Sea pearl stud earrings he can afford--black or white--simple ones, no fancy filigree trimmings. If he can afford two sets, he should get one black and one white. Then she can wear them in split sets-- black on one ear, white on the other. Amazon has them from $149 to $7500.

Men like more technical things, so for him, I suggest a Kindle downloaded with free sample chapters of every book you think might interest him or --if you want to make him over--books that will make him a better conversationalist. [Editor's note: Amazon will release a new version of the Kindle on February 9.]

If he can't afford much, he can buy her a set of polyester ivory satin sheets and pillowcases. The sheets may be too slippery for daily use but satin pillowcases are great for postponing facial wrinkles and preserving hairdos. Do not buy the red ones--the color rubs off.

Another of my favorite gifts for women is a luxurious, washable silk jacquard kimono from Dreamsacks, $110, in baby pink and many other colors. They have them short too. They are great for traveling, because they come in a little pouch and fold up small, and they feel very glam for swanning around the house.

Joan Kron, contributing editor at large for Allure, was interviewed by DG here.

Joanne McNeil

Gift idea for a man: Android Alien Blue Dial Mens Watch

This watch is made for a stylish but slightly nerdy guy who travels a lot. He will always know what time it is wherever you are.

Gift idea for a woman: Bialetti Moka Express Stovetop Espresso Maker

Valentine's Day on a weekend means breakfast in bed! The Bialetti moka pot is as easy to brew as a drip coffee maker. Plus, it looks adorable on the stovetop. The 6-cup version is the perfect size for two.

Joanne McNeil blogs at The Tomorrow Museum and was interviewed by DG here.

Paige Phelps

I'm afraid I'm one of those party poopers who hates Valentine's Day. Maybe it has something to do with my junior high's Val-O-Gram program. For $.50 you could buy a friend a pink carnation, for $1.00, you could send a red carnation to the boy/girl of your dreams. What ended up happening is the popular girls would then roam the hallways with armfuls of flowers while the rest of us hid behind our locker doors, silently weeping. Screw you, Valentine's Day! What have you ever done for me?!?

I Hate Valentine's Day

The ultimate melancholy music man (please note song "I Will Never Marry.")

But, hey, let's get real here. Sometimes V-Day is really about gettin' a little something, something. To that end, why not surprise her with some AUTHENTIC Love Liquid from Kama Sutra Bedside Box Lover's Toolkit? The "handcrafted antique replica" box will look great next to your Precious Moments figurines and the kiddoes will never know! Special request, though, if you buy this, will you please report back on what the feather in the hacky-sack looking thing is? Inquiring minds....

Paige Phelps is a Dallas-based journalist and regular DG contributor.

Virginia Postrel

A good present, for Valentine's Day or any other occasion, should be something tailored to the recipient, which makes generic assignments like this (and, yes, I'm the one who cooked it up) rather peculiar. We at DG can only hope that there's enough variety on our list to suit a wide range of sweethearts.

That said, something sensual is always good. So how about the oh-so-strokable Apple iPod touch, suitable for either sex? Personalize it with photos or a playlist of shared favorite songs.

Also, remember that you are giving the gift to your lover, not yourself. Don't put a bow on an effort at reform and expect a big thank you kiss. Take it from a blissfully married football widow, nothing says "I love you" like NFL films. He'll think of you every time he hears John Fucenda.

Similarly, if you're the type of guy to grouse about the silly impracticality of perishable flowers, surprise her with a big bouquet. (If you're sending it long-distance, I highly recommend Proflowers, either via the Amazon link here or their own website.)

Virginia Postrel is DG's editor-in-chief and a columnist for The Atlantic. She's writing a book on glamour for The Free Press.

Nancy Rommelman

While I am not exactly sure why it's happened or whether I deserve it, my husband has lately started doing something wonderful for me in the morning as I lie in bed, and that is bring me a cup of hot coffee. And every morning, as I nestle a little deeper into the pillows, I say, "Thank you, baby," and he says, "Of course." Twelve years, and this new sweetness. Mm.

Nancy Rommelman is a journalist and blogger. She was interviewed by DG here.

Regina Walton

This one was difficult for me. I consulted a good friend, and his feeling was the same as mine. I'm not as big on "stuff" as I am on things that are thoughtful but also are something a couple can experience together.

So I'm running with this idea: an indulgent bath experience set up and managed by a woman's significant other.  I really find indulgent bath and body care products completely irresistible. Maybe you won't share a bath but why not? Ideally, I see this as the woman getting treated to a spa experience at home.

Don't just pick any set. Know what her favorite fragrance type is: citrus, fruity, floral, earthy and go from there. For example, for me, it's floral scents with lavender or freesia being my first choices.

However, don't go too cheap. If the spa sets are too cheap then the fragrance is synthetic and I don't like those smells. They lack depth to me. In contrast, natural scents are just divine, so I'd recommend L'Occitane's products chosen and put together. That's much more personal too. Comparatively speaking, L'Occitane is pricey, but the products are worth it and last much longer. I've still got essential oils I bought in Paris years ago, as well as just now getting to the bottom of a bottle of L'Occitane's lavender body milk I bought back in 2005. With quality products a little really last you a long time.

There are also some good bath sets out there that are cheaper than L'Occitane, though I do think the pre-assembled ones lack that personal touch. I searched for "spa-in-a-basket" and this is the page that came up on Amazon.

For him:

It depends on the man. We've got techies, foodies, sports nuts, music nuts, etc. Of course, most guys are a combination. So let me pick one: the foodie (yes, I'm basing this one on experience.) So if it's a foodie you've got, then hopefully, you know what food he likes. Get a cookbook for a cuisine that's his favorite and simply make him an awesome meal.

Also, just like the spa sets you can get a set of foodie items that he enjoys. Again, the best tactic is to choose from things you know he likes. But in a pinch this can help you sort through some categories.

Regina Walton is a Seoul-based journalist and blogger. She interviewed fashionista Diane Pernet for DG.

50 Years Ago Today: Buddy Holly Remembered

Fifty years ago today, a plane carrying Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson) to a concert crashed in an Iowa field. Barry Mazor, in the WSJ, writes about newly released Buddy Holly CDs. That'll Be the Day was Holly's first #1 record.

A Little Cheap Cyber-Popularity

When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote Bernice Bobs Her Hair, about the transformation of a lumpen cousin from Eau Claire into a belle with a wicked line of party patter, social success was visible--if there was a line of men waiting to cut in and dance with a girl, she was popular.  Now,  Facebook friends and Twitter followers and other social media rosters fill the same function. Or do they?

Recently, I'd unwittingly conducted an experiment in measuring my own popularity and name recognition.  An zealous underling updated my Facebook profile by sending out friend requests to everyone in my combined address books.  I went from some 200 friends to nearly 600--with only 6 people sending me "who the hell are you?" emails.  I figure this is probably about half of the recipients of the request, which isn't a bad average. Still, I'm a wallflower compared to Andrew Breitbart who's got 2,300  friends, or Arianna Huffington with nearly 4,958. (Virginia Postrel  has some 700, and her own devotee group, but then she's a person of charm and substance. I'm just chatty.)

Facebook has a 5000 limit, and some experts think that hitting the magic number doesn't mean much.  The average user has 100 friends, and I did notice, not that this proves anything, that people who had very few friends or were concerned about privacy, were the people who wanted  reassurance that I wasn't a spam-bot.  I accept everyone's friend requests--being a Facebook pal doesn't mean I'm having you over for birthday cake.   Slate's Farhad Manjoo was a little more blunt--get on the bus, Gus--

Nobody avoids meeting people in real life by escaping to the Web.

If anything,  the opposite is true for me--the more F'bookers I know, the more places I go.  What about you, DG readers?  Leave a comment, scoot me an email, or find me on.... Facebook.

Springsteen Superbowl Smash

Yesterday's Superbowl halftime show by Bruce Springsteen didn't impress Todd Martens at the LA Times, but it's a hit with just about everyone else.  Fans of the Boss expect a lot of clowning and by-play at his concerts, and he and Steven Van Zandt did all their usual shtick, capped by Springsteen announcing "I'm going to Disneyland" at the end, just like all MVPs but Martens thought it was a plug for ABC/Disney.

Slate's Stephen Metcalfe (who likes Bruce, cuz he's a fellow depressive) felt Springsteen didn't capture the mood of the country. That the Superbowl hired some extras to clap and cheer bothers him too.  Jobs are getting slashed and he's complaining about people getting work?

Metcalfe thinks Springsteen is an "odd ball favorite", which is news to the rest of us who've been fans since the early days. Metcalfe might have been in middle school when he first heard the music, but I saw Bruce at the Guthrie Theater in 1975, and he didn't look all that odd to me, my friends or the rest of the world.  We thought he looked sexy, dangerous and cool.

Bruce Springsteen isn't an unlikely rock nerd-god, dragged unwillingly into the spot light. He's an entertainer, and he throws himself into the act. That's what you're supposed to do, remember?  And I promise, this is the only Bible verse I'll ever quote here:

Whatever thy hand finds to do; do it with all thy might.
                                                                                                  Ecclesiastes 9:10

                                                                    B-R-U-U-U-U-C-E!

End of Oscars Promises to be Smasheroo! Credit Crawl Updates!

The Oscars are in a world of hurt if the producers' big idea is coming attractions. Michael Cieply reports:

Producers of the show — to be hosted by Hugh Jackman and broadcast Feb. 22 on ABC — are even trying to liven up the proceedings by asking studios and others to provide scenes from future films, according to a request sent to various companies last month.

The idea, if the clips prove watchable, is for Mr. Jackman to sign off the broadcast with fresh 10-second snippets of two dozen new movies, to run on a split screen with the end credits.

At last a reason to watch til the end! Or at least to Tivo and skip ahead. Somehow gimmicks for the end of the show seem wrong-headed. What about the other 80-odd minutes?

Actually, I think the Academy needs to dream up some new categories and dump some old ones. A Best Trailer award makes more sense than Documentary Short Subject, doesn't it? Everyone watches trailers and doc. shorts are seen by half-dozens. And why not Best Ad Campaign? Best Appearance by a Commercial Product? Outstanding Achievement in Viral Marketing? 

I'm just trying to help.

Bing! It's Groundhog Day All Over Again!

Groundhog Day is one of those films that I'm always willing to watch--even if it's already started. I'm especially fond of Bill Murray's scene with character actor Steven Tobolowsky, playing Needle-nose Ned Ryerson, insurance salesman. Stanley Fish named it one of the 10 Best American Movies, which strikes me as a sign of Prof. Fish needing to get out more, and readers agreed. I don't care about the sweetness in the movie--sweetness, schmeetness, I'm here for the laughs. Bing!