Contemporary culture is obsessed with makeovers — of bodies, homes, even entire neighborhoods. But this quest for transformative authenticity often has a dark side.
fashion
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Diluted State of Punk
With a recent slew of documentary films and books, punk’s forty year old body has been repeatedly repackaged, sweetened and sold to the masses at the mall, mystifying and irritating many people in the process. In The Baffler, Eugenia Williamson analyzes punk’s history, evolution, literature and commodifycation and addresses the lingering question: what does being ‘punk’ even mean anymore more? Besides, anyone who’s seen […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How the Modern Modeling Agency Came to Be
This was a precursor for what would become the protocol by which models were paid for the rest of the century, but as Natálie [Nickerson] put it to Eileen [Ford] in their late-night Barbizon conversations, the system was back to front. According to Eileen, Natálie told her, “Models were treated as if they worked for […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How Halston’s Death Galvanized the Fashion Industry to Take Action Against AIDS
But not all AIDS deaths were hushed up; indeed, there was a backlash against the conspiracy of silence. Before Way Bandy—one of the industry’s top makeup artists—died on August 13, 1986, he directed his executors to announce his death as AIDS-related. And Halston acknowledged the cause of his own death on March 26, 1990, in […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How Christy Plott Redd Became the ‘Queen of Gator’
The title is self-appointed. Several years ago, Redd heard about an alligator buyer from Italy working in Florida and calling himself the King. This was annoying. For one thing, there are no alligators in Italy. Live ones, anyway. More importantly, royalty is demonstrated by blood line, and nobody in the world can lay claim to […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Origins of Lilly Pulitzer
[Lilly Pulitzer] Rousseau’s story has been oft-told over the years: Born the middle of three daughters into a socially prominent family in Roslyn, New York, Lilly McKim attended all the right schools (Chapin, Miss Porter’s) with all the right people (Jacqueline Bouvier was a schoolmate at Miss Porter’s) before eloping in 1952, at age 21, […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
‘I Feel Very Strongly That Almost the Entire City Has Copied My Glasses.’
I feel very strongly that almost the entire city has copied my glasses. I went to a fashion show during fashion week, and everyone there had on my eyeglasses. Warby Parker has also copied my eyeglasses. Here’s what started happening: A few years ago, kids—and by which I mean, my friends kids—started coming up to […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How Truman Capote Compiled the Guest List for His Famous Black and White Ball, According to Gloria Steinem
What gave the Black and White Ball “its intoxicating piquancy,” according to Amy Fine Collins, was the fact that Capote’s guest list had “flung together, in a gilt-edged melting pot, the most alluring power brokers in the worlds of high society, politics, the arts, and Hollywood—disconnected universes that collided, if not for the first time that evening, then at least with unprecedented force.”
The Ball also found an unlikely chronicler in Gloria Steinem, an invited guest who had made Capote’s acquaintance after she interviewed him for Glamour the year before. Steinem wrote a feature on the party for Vogue in January 1967 in which she described the luminaries, feathers, masks, ball gowns, and jewels all whirling around the room: “The effect was like some blend of Hollywood, the Court of Louis XIV, a medieval durbar, and pure Manhattan.”
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Identify an Aesthetic, and Then Recreate That Aesthetic
To understand why Urban Outfitters and American Apparel have declined so spectacularly, it’s helpful to remember what it was that made them so successful in the first place. In their heyday, each made a science of identifying exactly what it was that made hipsters so attractive, then recreated that aesthetic in their stores.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How a Blog Post Sparked a Retail Movement
Once in a while, a single post can spark a movement. In the summer of 2011, Gabi Gregg, who writes the blog GabiFresh, went on a quest to find a bikini; at the time, bikinis were hard to find in large sizes. When she found one, she posted a picture of herself in it, calling […]