Bring on the Photoshop!

Several of the catalogs I love to order from are now promoting the fact that they no will not Photoshop or retouch the images of their models.
While I should be all, "yay for natural beauty!" I am, in point of fact, thoroughly bummed.
This means that the dewy-faced girls with all the golden freckles and tousled locks in those sports bras are, I am to believe, actually that gorgeous.
Whereas before, I could plausibly believe that those six pack abs had been digitally re-mastered, cellulite smoothed with the Bandage tool, and lanky shins artificially un-scarred.
No more!
Usually, when you meet someone model-gorgeous in person, you can pick out their flaws to see that they, too are human: they're an ugly crier, or their penmanship is horrible, or they're a low-information voter, or their cuticles are in terrible condition.
But, caught in a moment of sheer, well-lit photography, all you can see is: God just wanted to make sure you know that life is just that damn unfair.

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The Lost Designer of the 80's

Claude Barthelemy seems to have been one of those if-you-needed-to-ask-you-didn't-need-to-know designers. In the '80's, he was listed as a young, hot couturier alongside go-the-distance blue chips like Karl Lagerfeld and Lanvin with his oversized sweaters, minis, leggings and fur-trimmed stoles. Exclusive stores carried his soft-edged jackets to shoppers in the know. And then what happened? His pleated skirts, intarsia sweaters, and naughty, zippered wool catsuits still fetch high prices in vintage world and any dealer with his elegantly simple, Gallic tag on her racks raises a flutter in second-hand seekers. He designed for Barbie, for heaven's sake! But the designer himself, who seems to have cut a meteoric swath across the runways and then...? So what's the story with this wasp-waisted pleated skirt? I wondered what else this woman could have dropped off on her Goodwill drive-by--a Chanel original? A couture Pucci? Surely someone this linked in wouldn't just ...

I Heart Shop-a-Holics

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Show Up, Shut Up, Wear Beige

Instructions to mothers of the groom. The reason why groomsmen all wear the same suit to a wedding--so if the groom doesn't show up, everyone can just take a step to the left. The people on that side of the church are just props, baby. Your role, as mother of the groom, is to provide a groom. And maybe a brother for a spare. The extent of your input is limited to saying how lovely everything is. The bride's strapless ballgown in the church? Why, it's lovely, of course. The mother of the bride's equally revealing gown to show off her boob job? Lovely. The new wife of the bride's father who describes herself as a "cougar" (in the latter part of her nine lives) (meow!)? Nope! Nope! She's so lovely. The "blending" ceremony in which all the members of the bridal party dance around and fill a vase with pink and blue vials of sand to symbolize the "blending" of two souls into one purple-ish vase of sand...or something? Lovely, lovely, love...

Second Hand, Second Thoughts

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