Deep Glamour: At the Intersection of Imagination & Desire

Glamour, Horror, and Windmills

The priceless online comic xkcd picks up some DG themes:

Dolls for Grown-Ups: Escape, Transformation, and Desire

I've long been fascinated by the culture of dolls for adults: Who collects them, and why? What longings does their obvious glamour appeal to?

Little girls may like dolls because they yearn to grow up, but adults are wishing for something else. Some of the appeal is not that different from that of fashion magazines--beautiful faces and beautiful clothes and the pleasures of imagining yourself in them. (Jason Wu, who designed Michelle Obama's inaugural gown, is best known as a doll designer.) Some comes from having the doll you always dreamed of as a child. Some comes from having the child you always dreamed of in a doll.

But the appeal is not always that simple. Take Delilah Noir, whose website describes her as "Honor Student by Day, Shadowy Siren by Night." Here's a bit of her backstory:

Sometimes, I would just like to forget about the future and dream. A world without rules, structure, and pressure...

Yeah, freedom to be me....just for a little while.

The night excites me. There is something about the darkness that stirs my soul. I can't explain it. The street lights are lit, the stars peek out and the rays of the moon glow through a cloudy sky. I find comfort in the embrace of a buzzing city night.

The cool air that bites at my heels makes me want to dance. Stiletto lace ups are my passion. Corsets and coattails are only some of the clothes stashed away in the back of my closet. Red velvet, black lace, purple silk take my breath away....

I admit to finding this Gothic Lolita positioning a little kinky and assuming that she'd appeal to the sexual fantasies of those turned on by school uniforms. But, as is so often the case, the desire she appeals to is not the desire to possess her but the desire to (momentarily at least) be her. Her glamour, like glamour in general, is all about escape and transformation--made quite explicit in her self-description.

Collectors identify with her dual nature. This banker-by-day-jewelry-designer-by night says she reminds him of himself, while this doll collector comments:

She makes me think of that side of me I never explored as a young person, because I was just too scared to. But it was always there. It’s still there, that darker side, but I know where it inevitably leads, and I don’t want to go there. So, I chose the light and the Lord where I know I’ll always be safe. But I admire young Delilah for exploring the freedom and excitement of the night - if only for a little while. She seems to be a girl who knows her time there will be limited, which is a good thing, for to linger in the night too long would mean eventually getting sucked into it to the point of no return. And that’s just some thoughts about the duality of man this doll brings to mind.

This post on dolls as therapy picks up the idea of projection in another way. For adults (and possibly for children as well), playing with dolls can take you out of yourself, allowing you to escape the troubles of the moment by focusing on an imagined other person whose desires you can fulfill. It's an escapism based on empathy.

Translators Wanted for TED Talk on Glamour

Anyone interested in translating my TED talk on glamour into any language other than English? TED is launching a translation Wiki, via dotSub.com, and soliciting speakers to seed the site with translations. They provide an English-language transcript. If you're interested, please email me at virginia-at-deepglamour.net for details.

Music and Spells: Borrowing Glamour from Classical Music

Not all classical music has ‘glamour’, but some does. In her book Dance with the Music Elizabeth Sawyer has a chapter on choosing music suitable to choreograph for ballet. She writes:

One matter on which most writers seem to agree is that music for the theater must have the quality of glamour. This being defined as ‘magic, enchantment; delusive or alluring beauty or charm’, that view seems reasonable.

Sawyer also talks about an indefinable something called “atmosphere.” Although she can’t define theatrical atmosphere in music, she names pairs of composers whose music in general has or does not have theatrical atmosphere. Among others, she says that Monteverdi’s music generally has it, Palestrina’s does not. Similarly, Weber but not Beethoven; Tchaikovsky but not Brahms.

Her perceptions are valid, and since the second composer in each pairing is undeniably great, it shows, as she writes, that “the presence or absence of glamour does not, in itself, determine the worth of a piece of music.”

Sawyer is not saying that some music is glamorous because of its association with glamorous venues or performers, but rather that some pieces of music have qualities that make them intrinsically glamorous. (I would add the caveat that this can only be true of the music is performed well.) And if a piece of music can have the qualities of “glamour” and “atmosphere,” then these qualities can be borrowed by other media, such as dance, film, and even advertising.

If we think of glamour in the older sense in which it was synonymous with a magic “spell,” then some classical music has the ability to immediately cast a spell, whereas other music builds its effect more slowly as it unfolds. In film, as in the theater, immediacy is important, so film makers typically choose music that has atmosphere, especially for emotional moments. In many films where there are sequences of images with no dialogue, borrowing the magic, the glamour, of particular passages of classical music has been crucial to the final effect .

One work that has been used many times in films is “O Fortuna”, the opening movement of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. Like most composers whose music Sawyer feels has the quality of “atmosphere,” Orff wrote numerous works for the theater, and though written for the concert hall, Carmina Burana is undeniably theatrical.

You can see a video of “O Fortuna” performed in the concert hall here, with the incredibly dark text given in subtitles. The video below shows how a portion of the music was used in the 1981 film Excalibur. It’s a short excerpt, so I suggest watching it first with the sound off and then again with it on. Notice how remarkably different the emotional effect is when the music is added.

There is some glamour in the knights’ shining armor and their horses. But the music adds tremendous  emotion and atmosphere, as well as a sense of universality. The knights seem to represent all warriors who have ridden or marched into battle, and the elemental force of the music suggests that although the orchard they ride past will blossom again next spring, most of these knights will not live to see it.

I plan to talk about a few other examples of films using classical music in the next few weeks, and while doing so I will try to hint at why some music can cast such a powerful spell.

DG Promotion--Discount on Dirty Dancing Tickets

Dirty Dancing may never make any cineaste's list of best American films, but piffle to that.  Who doesn't  love the story of Baby and Johnny, brought together by mambo, torn apart by class warfare? And now--it's a musical!

Re-imagined for the stage by the original screenwriter, Dirty Dancing is an unprecedented live musical experience, exploding with heart-pounding music, breathtaking emotion and of course...dancin'!

Limited Engagement Begins May 8^th at Hollywood’s Historic Pantages Theatre

Deep Glamour readers and their friends can get a rockin' great discount (35%) on select seats  when they order tickets  through Ticketmaster with the special code GR35 .

(Thanks to Stacy at Allied Live for this offer, too.)

Vogue Decides Black Is Chic

André Leon Talley notwithstanding, Vogue is not a magazine known for showcasing black faces. They leave that sort of daring to the Italians.

Or at least they used to.

Judging from the May issue, it appears that Vogue has discovered black people. It's not just putting Michelle Obama on the cover--and even letting her wear her own clothes. This issue actually includes two black models among the nine on the gate-fold cover. Inside, there is, of course, a paean to the new administration's influence on Washington style, with a photo of social secretary (African-American) Desirée Rogers in Carolina Herrera, with  the reassurance that "For the best flowers, one still goes to Sue Bluford, who did all of Katharine Graham's arrangements." (Some things don't change, including the bold-faced names.)

Kanye West--you may have heard of him--gets a spread as the "man of the moment." Venus and Serena Williams are celebrated. And--most amazingly of all--there's a piece on Sam Fine, the "go-to makeup master for women of color," complete with tips and a plug for his new DVD (supposedly available at Amazon, but I can't find it. Try your luck and let me know if you have more success.) Here's one corner of the economy that seems to be getting some Obama stimulus.

Venues for Glamour

I suppose that one could choose to be glamorous anywhere. While staying in a B&B in Harlech, Wales, we dressed casually and asked where to find a good local pub. After telling us, our host recalled a Parisian couple that had come down from their rooms on a Saturday night, he wearing a tuxedo, and she an evening gown. When they asked, “Where is the nightlife?” he looked at them and said, “You’re it.” Then he explained the local customs, sent them to a local pub dressed as they were, and they had a great time.

The Kentucky Derby provides an opportunity to wear outrageously extravagant hats and drink during the day. Seeing photographs such as this one, I am reminded of Ovid's line in The Art of Love advising young men “to learn to know the places which the fair ones most do haunt.” Places where “they come to see and, more important still, to be seen.” And he mentions Roman horse races as one possible venue.

In large, reasonably fashionable cities, glamorous events are more of a possibility. Theater events, charitable events, perhaps some country club gatherings, and maybe even some night spots where you might feel comfortable dressed in relatively glamorous clothing. While living in New Orleans I was invited to observe the carnival ball of one of the Mardi Gras Krewes, an event so costumed and formal that a tuxedo was required to sit in the balcony and watch. In smaller cities and towns, dress is usually more casual, though in small fashionable cities like Santa Fe, there are more chances to dress up.

How do readers feel? Is an occasion or venue required in order to wear glamorous outfits? Or can touches of glamour be incorporated into more ordinary clothing? While in Breckenridge recently to ski, I noticed that young Japanese skiers were, on the whole, strikingly fashion conscious, and this was true of both young men and women as they were merely window shopping in town. No wonder Japan has become one of the world leaders in style.

[Photo courtesy of Flickr user Velo Steve under Creative Commons license.]

Is Econ the Anti-Glamour?

In the unlikely event that they remembered me (and my mediocre grades), my college economics professors would be, no doubt, thrilled to hear that I’ve finally developed an interest in their subject. Thanks to proponents of “pop economics” like Freakonomics authors (and bloggers) Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, these days I’m downright entertained by the discipline. The freaky duo and their pop peers apply economic principles to practical subjects – like baby naming – creating accessible, but academic, discussions of everyday problems.

Accessible, academic, and entertaining, but seriously lacking in the glamour department.

In fact, I think economics might just be the polar opposite of glamorous. Where glamour invokes mystery and seduction, econ seeks to compartmentalize, deconstruct and explain.

The differences between the two are readily apparent, even in their language. For example, compare this:

As my research agenda has turned lately to thinking more about business and how companies can maximize their profits, I’ve spent a lot of time pondering customer service.

With this:

Manolo says, the Manolo is not surprised by this story about the Zappos extraordinary customer service.

Those are the first sentences of blog posts by Freakonomic’s Levitt and the undeniably glamorous Manolo the Shoeblogger (interviewed by DG here). The subject of both posts is exactly the same: this tale of amazing customer service on behalf of online shoe retailer Zappos. Zappos sounds like a pretty impressive, well-run company - plus, shoes! - and both blogs regularly sing its praises, for exactly the same reasons. But in such a different way.

The Manolo’s opening sentence might be short and to the point, but its tone very quickly conveys that the blog as a whole is fun and funny and just a little bit exotic, sort of like a tongue-in-cheek romance novel (for more of that, and another Zappos link, check out this post). Levitt’s tone, on the other hand, is a combination of academic and businesslike – pure economist. And he’s one of the accessible ones!

This isn’t a criticism of the world’s economists, by the way. Not everybody can - or should - be a super-fantastic shoeblogger. But I can’t help but wonder if there’s somebody out there who has the capability to glam up economics. Of course, given the current state of the economy, glamorous intrigue and mystery might not be the recipe for recovery. Then again, it just might.

DG Contest: Win AminoGenesis Wrinkle Arrest Day Cream

It's DG's mission to keep readers looking marvelous.   Thanks to Katherine at KMR Communications,  one lucky reader will have even more assistance--by winning Wrinkle Arrest day cream.

Wrinkle Arrest is a new moisturizing day cream with SPF 18 and broad spectrum sun protection. Wrinkle Arrest contains the groundbreaking AminoGenesis DermaScyne formula which helps reduce the appearance of fine lines, wrinkles, discoloration and other signs of aging. These precursors help support proteins like collagen and elastin as well as many other key proteins found in the skin.

The American Academy of Dermatology has given the cream the AAD Seal of Recognition.

 Be the first to email me at kate AT deepglamour DOT net with your name and address and the cream is yours!

The Allure of Dreamscapes

Angelina Jolie fans may enjoy seeing her in the 1994 Meat Loaf video Rock’N’Roll Dreams Come Through. In it she plays a teenage runaway who wanders into a dreamscape industrial complex. (The first line of the song is “You can’t run away forever.”)

Meatloaf first appears as a singing head inside a juke box. When Jolie is menaced by two thugs, the jukebox explodes, freeing Meatloaf to save her. At first Jolie might seem the proverbial damsel in distress being saved by a knight, but Meatloaf is more a father figure who shows her the distress that her running away has caused others. The refrain of the song is:

There’s always something magic,
There’s always something new,
And when you really, really need it the most,
That’s when rock and dreams come through

Eventually Jolie is shown inside the jukebox, with music piped straight into her ears. She holds a crystal ball, suggesting acquired wisdom. Later an angel appears, hovering over the group that has gathered there.

At the end of the video Jolie walks through the gate of a suburban mansion, returning home. Despite the soft-focus photography, suburbia looks dull compared to the surreal world of the dream. But Jolie’s last-second smile suggests she has learned that she can use music to sometimes escape her ordinary existence by dreaming of a far more magical world.

Flowers, taste, and social gatherings

In his wonderful book Second Nature: A Gardener's Education, Michael Pollan writes about his move from a Manhattan apartment to five acres in Connecticut. In winter many gardeners spend time looking at flower and seed catalogs. Pollan’s musings on the social attitudes of these catalogs are priceless, as when he discusses the austere snobbery of the White Flower Farm in Connecticut and the colorful extravagance of Wayside Gardens in South Carolina. “If White Flower proposes a garden fit for Cabots and Lodges, Wayside has one Scarlett O’Hara would die for.”

The photography in each catalog is telling. In the Connecticut catalog, “flowers are always photographed at a discreet distance and several days before their peak.” Pollan writes that in contrast:

Wayside likes to photograph its flowers when they are in full bloom, wide open and almost past their peak—as in one of those Dutch still lifes where blossoms poise on the verge of shattering and decadence hovers in the wings. Wayside blooms press forward from their pages provocatively, many of them bursting free of their frames, almost as if from a bodice. The effect is frankly sensual, yet never quite garish—except, perhaps, to a Puritan.

The White Flower Farm emphasizes discrimination and taste, whereas in Wayside it is ancestry that matters— “who her daddy is,” as Pollan writes.

Rose hybridizers seem particularly prone to naming their roses after famous people, which can make for strange social gatherings. In one of our gardens we placed the demurely pink Queen Elizabeth in the same bed as the velvety red Ingrid Bergman, and flamboyantly orange-red Dolly Parton.

Other kinds of names are used as well. Iris and daylily hybridizers seem prone to metaphoric names like the white daylily “Sunday Gloves” and the dark iris “Satan’s Mistress.” Surely placing these close together would invite trouble.

In the future, I can imagine that a flower catalog might include roses named “Michelle Obama” and “Sarah Palin.” If so, I think only a fearless, bipartisan gardener would dare plant both of them.

[Photo of Ingrid Bergman rose courtesy of J. Jorge, whose Flickr sets are here.]

The Warhol Effect: From Edie Sedgwick to The Hills

Guest blogger Peter LiCalsi is a screenwriter in Los Angeles who has done work in production design and art direction. You can contact him at peterlicalsi-at-gmail.com.

One of my guilty pleasures is the "reality" show, The Hills, in which a cadre of vapid beautiful people (the millennial Bright Young Things, though not all that bright) are given the skeleton of scenes which loosely resemble events actually unfolding in their own lives, and improvise accordingly. We are meant to believe that the scenes played out are the actual lives of those stars, or personalities. What unfolds can be a banal and trite soap opera, but more often than not the scenes themselves are surreal and voyeuristic. The fourth wall is never broken, yet what remains--or rather, what is allowed to remain--are the awkward pauses, the stuttering, the bizarre locutions and facial gestures, the run-ons, and the fragments that are rife within, yes ... reality.

In film, the vérité technique has been used to great effect to illustrate that a subject needn't be editorialized to be compelling. Much of the most famous vérité work has sought to depict the mundane. The Hills, by contrast, uses a vérité lens to examine traditionally "glamorous" subjects. The young, beautiful, and affluent are seen in all their glory--attending nightclubs, buying expensive clothes, staying at resorts, and jet setting to Vegas one weekend, Cabo the next. Yet they are robbed of an essential element of glamour: grace. 

This combination of glamorous subject matter and graceless presentation is derivative of many of the films from Andy Warhol's Factory. Indeed, much of reality television seems to be Warhol's legacy: Warhol's famous “15 minutes of fame” idea is predicated on the notion that fame per se is a cultural commodity, with value independent of any deeper association. The rise of the reality show, the faux-reality show, YouTube, etc.--these owe a great deal to Warhol's insistence that simply focusing the eye toward a subject can imbue it with artistic and commercial value.

Among these, The Hills is quite special. It dispenses with the grace, eloquence, and comportment that are typically granted to attractive, affluent characters in western pop culture. In doing so it confirms, intentionally or not, Warhol's point that beauty validates itself indefinitely. And fame validates beauty eternally. Perhaps we miss the point when we agonize that Lauren, Audrina, Brody, and The Whole Sick Crew probably couldn't master long division, and are thus not worthy of mass adulation. They are works of art to be observed, nothing more--the descendants of the Campbell’s Soup Can.

 

More pointedly, it’s difficult to watch Warhol's Poor Little Rich Girl, the hour-long film of heiress Edie Sedgwick preparing for a party, musing on about her reckless spending habits, rock and roll, and fur coats, and not recognize some happenstance lineage to The Hills. Warhol expanded upon Keats's "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” making beauty an acceptable tenet of art after the deconstructionism of the previous half-century. The Hills is one of the many chapters in the battleground of glamour and reason, one that says we can have our cake and look at it too.

Matzah-riffic Kitchen

How cute  are these Passover oven mitts, hot-pot holders and even a kippah! Matzah-themed kitchen accessories at Ralphs.

You can also buy them online.

Image Creates Reality: The Persistence of Ruffs

This completely unauthorized and illicit photo (click for a larger view) is from an exhibit currently installed at the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence. With an evocative name that translates "The Medici: The Dream Returns," the show features life-size, and three-dimensional, versions of personages known only from their portraits. Recreated by Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave, the clothes are made not of silks and laces embroidered with gold but of paper and paint. (Good photos and a video in English are on her website here.)

Paper, says de Borchgrave, "is a very simple, undaunting material. There's not the same fear of ruining it as there is with cloth. I create a trompe-l'oeil, an illusion, as in painting, as is the Chapel of the Magi frescoed by Benozzo Gozzoli," the museum's signature work, whose portraits feature carefully rendered textiles.

Perhaps because its material is so scratchy and yet so light, the exhibit reminded me of an observation about the relationship between painting and fashion made by the brilliant fashion historian Anne Hollander in a 1991 essay published in The Idealizing Vision : The Art of Fashion Photography. Hollander wrote:

In the superior world of the painter, noble personages in all sorts of awkward gear were created and presented in a state of ideal dignity and refinement; and so a standard was set for perfect appearance that might be followed by the living originals, who could feel beautiful in their trappings instead of trapped. Consequently, still bigger lace ruffs and even thicker silk skirts might continue in vogue, even into the next generation, because Rubens and Van Dyck and their colleagues were at work rendering them glorious to see, wonderfully becoming, and apparently effortless to wear.

Of course, it's also possible that those people looked in their mirrors--or at each other--and wondered why they couldn't live up to those glamorous images. Could a little girl in a dirty world ever have a dress this white?

Stevie Nicks: Going Like Sixty in Style

Somehow Ruth La Ferla managed to write an entire piece about the enduring style of Stevie Nicks without ever resorting to the phrase "unmade bed".

Stevie once told a reporter that she saw a woman on the street, and wanted the same look:

So when I joined Fleetwood Mac and I had some money, I went to a lady and I said, I want you to make me a raggy chiffon skirt that looks sort of like an urchin on the wharves of London.

To be fair, La Ferla dubs her the anti-Madonna.

Lust to Dust: Jane Cosmetics Files for Chapt. 11

Mid-range, but raved-about, makeup brand Jane is filing for bankruptcy, which will be sad news for fans of the super-saturated colors.  Jane wasn't so hard to find as to be a cult brand, but gave a lot of punch for few bucks at the drugstore.

Makeup aficionados love to mourn the lost (and perfume freaks are even worse), and rightly so.  No high-priced brand can match the sprightly packaging of Yardley's Eau de London scent and makeup collections today-- I know a graphic artist who still has all those cute little china pots,  with  their shimmering contents are long departed.  Of course, the company abandoned Carnaby Street, and  fans abandoned them.  
That's Jean Shrimpton in the print ad--love that line Self-Realization, His Capitulation.

Love had Ali McGraw as a model, and a great eyeshadow --Lovelids, which came in an eyeball shaped container, which sounds creepy but it was cute, honest. 

What becomes of the discontinued, once was loved but now departed? The internet abounds with info.  You gotta shop around.

Potty Glamour

So there I was, minding my own business, flipping through the May issue of Food & Wine, when I saw this:

My thoughts, in chronological order:

1. A toilet in a train station. Interesting.  

2. Good for Kohler for committing to their campaign. Really committing.  

3. You know who else - besides, I suppose, Kohler's target audience - is fascinated by both trains and toilets? Two-year old boys.

All that aside, I actually do like this ad. It captures the glamorous appeal of the train, the excitement of travel and the romance of a long-gone era. Plus, I happen to be in the camp that believes that even an appliance as lowly as the toilet deserves top-quality design, so it works for me. I must be a part of that target audience.

But still. Glamour. Toilet. My inner Beavis just won't pipe down.

Princesses and PMS

 

Find more videos like this on AdGabber

The folks who brought us "Got Milk?" have new Spanish-language commercials putting a glamorous-to-little-girls spin on their product, with an animated commercial, featuring a sad princess rescued by a handsome prince bearing a magical glass of milk. When I first saw the press release, I assumed the fairy-tale pitch was designed to get kids to give up the juice and soda for something a little healthier. (Remember "builds strong bones and teeth"?)

But the ad is actually about PMS--a subject neither glamorous nor little girly. The press release helpfully informs us non-Spanish speakers that the tag line is, "The calcium in milk may reduce premenstrual symptoms. TOMA LECHE."

The commercial is pitched not to would-be Disney Princesses but to the telenovela crowd. In fact, the California Milk Producers Board is running a contest called "NO MORE DRAMA WITH TOMA LECHE," inviting Californians to "submit a Web Novela video no more than three minutes in length or a storyboard of no more than 15 illustrations showing how milk can help alleviate the symptoms of PMS. The submissions must be in Spanish or subtitled." Complete rules at the unbelievably slow-loading www.tomaleche.com.

Addendum: I am still looking for information about why little girls play princess. (Great comments on that original post.)

Sponge Bob Meets Sir Mix-a-Lot

Via AdGabber, which doesn't approve ("a porn director's wet dream....Here come the cause groups"), comes news of this bizarrely witty Burger King ad, which alters Sir Mix-A-Lot's paean to backsides so that it fits SpongeBob Square Pants. The "director's cut" is above. Here's the actual commercial:

I'm not in the Sponge Bob demographic, but I think the ad is fun and playful, not the sort of thing that conjures up phrases like "porn director" and "wet dream." Besides, I like anything that rewards Sir Mix-a-Lot for glamorizing big butts. 

Images as Role Models

In 431 the church declared the Holy Virgin the Mother of God, thus sanctioning the cult of Mary. Her popularity became staggering. In France alone more than a hundred churches and eighty cathedrals were raised in the name of Notre Dame, Our Lady, including the cathedrals of Paris, Chartres, Reims, and Amiens.

To counter the massive illiteracy of the Dark Ages, in the 6th century Pope Gregory the Great overruled the commandment forbidding the making of idols, declaring that "Painting can do for the illiterate what writing does for those who can read." To fill churches, cathedrals, and private chapels, hundreds of sculptures, frescoes, and paintings were commissioned of the Madonna and child. Many of these images are remarkably beautiful, typically showing us a serene young mother holding her clear-eyed young son. Images of Mary and her son became so widespread that when people had spiritual visions in this period, they most often saw the Virgin Mary.

Images of the Virgin Mother presented the church's two desired states for fertile women: either chaste virgins or married women bearing children. Celibacy was much championed in the Middle Ages. The church encouraged young women to remain permanently chaste by becoming a nun. The cult of courtly love that arose in France praised young women who remained unattainable, who steadfastly resisted the pleas of their wooers.

Unmarried women who failed to remain virginal until married were regarded as loose, immoral, and even sexually aggressive. Men supposedly feared that such seductresses would tempt them like the Biblical Salome, but many were fascinated by the ancient femme fatale archetype.

Hard and fast categories like virgin, mother, or immoral seductress are of little use to most contemporary women, and in modern culture images abound of women in multiple and varied roles. We see images of women as doctors, lawyers, writers, mothers, athletes, business owners, models, police officers, fire fighters, and fighter pilots.

One striking advertising image shows Danica Patrick's face split into the roles of race car driver and glamorous woman. In one case a helmet completely masks her identity--she seems a mysterious black knight. In the other case hairstyle and makeup create another kind of mask--she seems an unstoppable seductress. Neither image is false, but neither represents ordinary reality. Both are stylized, artful portrayals of a woman who has been successful as both a race car driver and model. Contemporary women can choose to play multiple and varied roles, and most no longer rely on patriarchal authorities in choosing which roles to pursue. For an individual woman, balancing the multiple roles that interest her can sometimes become one of the challenges of modern life.

[Detail of Filippo Lippi's Madonna and Child, Palazzo Medici Riccardi, photo by Virginia Postrel. Photo of Danica Patrick billboard courtesy of Luis Rodriguez Gonzalez (Spain), whose Flickr sets are here.]

How to Make a Ferrari Look Even More Glamorous

These two beauties are up for auction at RM Auctions' annual Ferrari: Leggenda e Passione auction, to be held May 17. On the left, we have the 1964 Ferrari 250 GT Berlinetta Lusso Competizione and on the right the 1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa (Pontoon Fender). Bellissime!

But as gorgeous as those studio portraits are, they aren't as glamorous as these two other shots, also from the auction's online catalog. The promise of a sleek automobile is not, after all, simply to look beautiful, but to take you somewhere. As Ferrari collector Ralph Lauren puts it, a car represents "an escape, or an entry into wonderful worlds." Escape requires a road, preferably one that looks like it goes somewhere exciting.

 Left: 1959 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder. Right: 1965 Ferrari 275 GTB/6C Competizione Berlinetta on the right.

One proof that California hasn't completely lost its glamour: Ferrari used that storied name for the new grand-touring convertible it introduced last year. This Michael Mann video illustrates where it might take you.

Watch a video of Ralph Lauren's Ferrari collection here. Here's a beautiful book on his car collection, which was featured in a 2005 exhibit at the Boston Museum of Fine Art.

[Photos: 1964 Ferrari 250 GT Berlinetta Lusso Competizione, Michael Zumbrunn; 1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa (Pontoon Fender), Darin Schnabel; 1965 Ferrari 275 GTB/6C Competizione Berlinetta, RM Auctions; 1959 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder (LWB),  Darin Schnabel. All courtesy of RM Auctions, used with permission, and not for reproduction.]

This Time With Feeling! Belgians Bop

If only everyday life was more like musical comedy! The Antwerp train station was the scene for a seemingly impromptu song and dance number. (Actually, a Dutch TV series is searching for the next Maria to star in The Sound of Music, but it's still festive and fun, and even a little touching.)

Here in LA, Union Station would be the perfect setting for You're the One That I Want from Grease.

Interior Design and the Lust for Licensing

This Reason.TV video pokes some serious fun at state laws requiring interior designers to be licensed in order to work or, more often, in order to call themselves "interior designers" rather than decorators. The attempt to justify such laws as consumer protections is lame. The video sums up the obvious motive behind them in a pithy quote: "You make more money if you have less competition." Ah...the glamour of restraint of trade.

Over the past decade or so of observing designers of all sorts, however, I've come to believe that there's more to the lust for licensing than pure economics. Designers crave respect--note the video's derisive references to throw pillows, even as it makes the case that good interior design requires talent and experience--and many imagine that a license will buy it for them: Hey, I'm a professional! Even if it doesn't, more money makes a nice consolation prize.

Hungary, Dali, and Bringing Back the Glamorous Mustache

In recent years, the mighty mustache, hero of the upper lip, has found itself more closely aligned with comical cops than with the esteemed mustachioed men of history. A symbol of both man’s virility (it takes some testosterone to grow all that hair) and attention to appearance, the mustache has been a matter for debate for thousands of years.

It's said (on quasi-reliable websites, at least) that in ancient Egypt, Pharaoh Teqikencola so disliked the concept that he forbade anyone under his rule from growing a mustache. Today, discussion is a little less dramatic and a lot more open but even among those who find mustaches sexy, they’re a little bit of a joke.

All mocking aside, mustaches have a rightful place in cultural and artistic history. In addition to the many thousands of stiff portraits that have been painted of gruff, mustachioed military men, the mustache has been a form of expression for artists themselves, from Rembrandt to Mark Twain to, maybe most famously, Salvador Dali. For Dali, whose mustache inspired its own book (the aptly named, Dali's Mustache), facial hair was one part branding tool and one part functional – he used it to paint. Genius or kind of gross? I can’t decide.

In today’s less mustache-centric society, at least one group is celebrating all things facial hair. Extremely Hungary, a year-long festival of Hungarian arts based in New York and Washington, D.C., is sponsoring “The Most Fabulous Mustache Growing Contest Ever.” Contestants must start clean-shaven (before photos are key) and beards are strictly forbidden. Sideburns and the use of mustache “product” are, however, allowed. The owner of the “most fabulous” mustache wins a roundtrip for two to Budapest. If you’re interested in entering, start growing. The deadline is in less than two weeks – April 13^th.

Yes, it’s still a little bit of a joke. But the reverence for Hungarian history, in all its mustachioed glory, is very real. And who knows: the contest could very well turn up Salvador’s rightful heir to the glamorous mustache throne.

[Cowboy mustache by Flickr user a4gpa under Creative Commons license.]

Trader Joe's--Everybody Sing!

Trader Joe's has spread nationwide, but those who don't know its charms, I present the non-commercial.

Glamour vs. Art? And at an Andy Warhol Exhibit!

I was amused to read that Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint Laurent's partner and keeper of his legacy, had withdrawn YSL's portrait from a Paris exhibit of Andy Warhol portraits, on the grounds that mixing the designer with others from the world of "glamour" was disrespectful to Saint Laurent as an artiste. Bergé's letter of explanation, published in Le Monde, opened with a quote from Warhol himself, proclaiming YSL "le plus grand artiste français de notre temps."

Even leaving aside the very important and limiting qualifier français, what would Andy Warhol mean by proclaiming someone a "the greatest artist"? After all, Warhol famously wrote:

Business art is the step that comes after Art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist. After I did the thing called “art” or whatever it’s called, I went into business art. I wanted to be an Art Businessman or a Business Artist. Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. During the hippie era people put down the idea of business—they’d say, “Money is bad,” and “Working is bad,” but making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.

Bergé's reaction was very French and not very Warholian.

“All things considered this was not an affair about painting but about people," said the exhibit's curator in response. "It’s a decision I regret enormously, because the portraits are those where Warhol’s empathy for the subject is of the highest degree.” 

Once the show opened, people pretty much forgot about Saint Laurent.  In an interesting review that doesn't mention the missing portraits (except in their appearance in a poorly reviewed exhibit 30 years ago), the FT's Jackie Wullschlager writes:

The sweeping style with which some 100 paintings are displayed, across vast galleries linked by a belle-époque staircase, would surely have made Warhol delirious with snobbish glee. His best works – “Red Jackie”, “Silver Liz”, laconic 1963-64 self-portraits in dark glasses, interleaved with paintings of a glittery dollar sign and an electric chair – have never looked more seductive or more classical. Warhol, New York soup can prince of conceptualism, becomes in Paris an opulent society portraitist in the tradition of John Singer Sargent or Kees van Dongen: master of colour, texture, clarity, precision, ravishing yet chilly, flattering even as he anatomises triviality and brittleness...

Frivolous in appearance but deadly serious in intent, his mechanical repetitions put painting in its place, within a continuum of the 1960s media of mass production – particularly photography – only to exalt it again by the conviction and beauty of his painterly surfaces. This is an utterly enjoyable show which illuminates the artist’s lifelong concerns, methods and his discomforting, prophetic take on an epoch that continues to shape our own.

This online article, which features some shots from the show (including one of the missing YSL portraits), explains some of the groupings:

Hollywood stars (Marilyn Monroe, Liz Taylor, Brigitte Bardot, Jane Fonda, Sylvester Stallone, BB, etc), pop stars (Mick Jagger, Deborah Harry, etc.), artists (Man Ray, David Hockney, Joseph Beuys, Keith Haring, etc.), collectors and art dealers (Dominique de Menil, Bruno Bischofberger, Ileana Sonnabend, Leo Castelli), politicians (Willy Brandt, Edward Kennedy, etc.), fashion designers (Yves Saint Laurent, Sonia Rykiel, Hélène Rochas, etc.) as well as businessmen and jet-setters (Gianni Agnelli, Lee Radziwell, Princess Grace of Monaco, Günter Sachs, etc.). Famous or less famous, they all glow with the aura of Warhol’s genius. The entire global social scene… in paint!

Like designers, singers are commercial artists. But you don't see Mick Jagger and Deborah Harry pitching fits about not being adequately respected. Of course, they aren't French.

DG Contest: AminoGenesis Wrinkle Arrest

Congratulations to DG reader Deborah H., who won Sothys Bath Scrub and Gel in our previous contest.

"Always wear sunscreen" is a motto to live by, especially if you have skin like mine and double especially if you use wrinkle-reducing products.

AminoGenesis's Wrinkle Arrest is a new moisturizing day cream that helps reduce the appearance of fine lines, wrinkles, discoloration and other signs of aging, while also providing SPF 18 and broad spectrum sun protection. It has earned the AAD SEAL OF RECOGNITION® from the American Academy of Dermatology for its sun-protection benefits.

Now, thanks to the glamour-loving folks at KMR Communications, a DG reader can win a jar of Wrinkle Arrest (retail price: $59). Just be the first one to email me at virginia-at-deepglamour.net with the answer to this question: Who discovered ultraviolet light?

Contest open to U.S. residents only. The prize will be shipped directly from KMR Communications.

The Entourage Effect

Both men and women seem to recognize that a valuable fashion accessory can be the company of an attractive, well-attired member of the opposite sex. And if one item of arm candy helps proclaim one’s attractiveness, what about the effect of a bevy of them? 

Musical theater has long understood and exploited this notion. In the 1957 film Les Girls Gene Kelly works with a troupe of 3 beautiful dancers. In the 1942 film Yankee Doodle Dandy James Cagney sings for a bevy of 16 belles wearing matching costumes. (See image number 22.) And in the same film Fay Templeton is admired by 8 nattily attired men. (See image number 37.)

Costuming one's bevy of admirers in matching outfits helps mark them as your entourage. In a 2005 Salzburg production of Verdi’s La Traviata, Anna Netrebko,  in a red dress, is surrounded by a large chorus, all of whom wear black suits. If you look closely you can see that many of those wearing suits are women, which only adds to the implication that she is attractive to all.

This image from Broadway Melody of 1938 suggests even greater sexual ambiguity. Thirty-two men in black top hat and tails kneel in admiration of Eleanor Powell, who is dressed in masculine, gray-blue top hat and tails. She stands in a feet-planted, legs-apart stance that body language experts call a crotch display. It is common stance for tough guys, but is seldom used by women (except superheroes). Of the 32 women whose eyes admire her, half already seem to have swooned, their dresses forming a lovely pattern. (See a superb large scan of this image here.)

Such over-the-top images almost parody themselves. By the time music videos came around, the entourage effect was ripe for post-modern reworking. In Robert Palmer’s  Addicted to Love video his band consists of five women who seem made up to resemble the stylized prints of Patrick Nagel. Clad in provocative versions of the simple black dress, these women wear neutral expressions. This leaves the tie-clad Palmer as the only person free to show facial emotion, his sexual attractiveness firmly established by his glamorous band.

Shania Twain parodied these images with her Man! I Feel Like a Woman! video. Her male band is strangely clad. Wearing what appears to be latex from the waist down, their upper bodies are showcased in thin stretch fabric. Better matched facially even than the women in Palmer’s video, they all wear swim goggles atop their forehead, perhaps a reference to a particular image of Nagel’s. The men seem to be stoic soldiers of glamour who know and accept their role as accessories. For brief periods they even disappear from the video. (And be sure to note Twain's stance.)

[Click to see YouTube video.]

Twain begins the video wearing a top hat and long black dress that suggests a tuxedo. By the video’s end she has stripped down to long black gloves, thigh-high boots, and a black corset. This costume has enough dominatrix overtones to reinforce her commanding role in this group, and, like Palmer, she is the only one allowed to show facial emotion.

As a stage device the entourage effect can seem part of an entertaining fantasy. But perpetuated over time in real life (à la Hugh Hefner surrounded by living Barbie Dolls), it can devolve into a caricature that becomes unflattering to everyone involved.