Surely we’ve all become educated and enlightened enough to appreciate the struggles women have gone through to obtain equal rights in this country. It’s a lesson retaught weekly on today’s most engaging TV show, Mad Men, which delves heavily into our recent past when opportunities for women were limited and social morays were unsettling at best. Not to mention the suffrage movement and the fight ladies like Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony waged to give women the right to vote. Surely all that history and the lessons we’ve learned from it can’t be completely lost on today’s youth?
“You know what? I am actually not that much into voting. I think it’s kinda crazy that a woman is running, because I think that women deal with a lot of emotions and menopause and PMS and stuff. Like, I’m so moody all the time, I know I couldn’t be able to run a country, ‘cause I’d be crying one day and yelling at people the next day, ya know?”
Pearls of wisdom from a media whore who wears acid wash denim chaps. I hope I live to see a day when we all tire of the idiot spawn of the rich and famous transforming into minor celebrities simply because they have no shame and will allow cameras the film them anywhere.
The nonpareil beauty and style of Francoise Hardy is timeless. From a young ye-ye girl in Paris, to a gray haired icon, there has never been a time when she wasn’t ravishing and in vogue.
The ye-ye girls, which also included Brix Picks Chantal Goya and Sylvie Vartan,
were a hip set of French pop singers, in the style of the Beatles.
Francoise, only nineteen at the time, was one of movement's golden
stars; a tall magnificent lady who not only sang like a nightingale but
had the songwriting skills to match.
She was just as popular for
her looks as for her talent and for a woman who said “I can’t stand to
wear anything that will make people look at me” she's been turning
heads for decades. And yet, that modesty is so much a part of her
charm; she exudes a timid and bewildered innocence, as if all her fame
came about by accident.
In fact that fame came through hard
work and dedication to singing and songwriting, as well as overcoming
her innate shyness to keep auditioning. As for her stylish
sensibilities, lover and photographer Jean-Marie Perier is credited as a major influence for turning the gangly teen into a French superstar.
While I've never considered myself a particularly big fan of The Addams Family, I sure seem to remember watching it quite a bit when I was a kid. I also remember catching episodes of its more blue collar rival, The Munsters, too. Man, what a strange world it was when not one, but two sitcoms focusing on spooky families were in competition on network TV. In my book, The Addams Family is the superior show. Not only is its source material top notch (Chas Addams's wickedly funny New Yorker cartoons), but it’s got the beautiful Carolyn Jones (take that, Yvonne De Carlo).
Jones is most recognized as spooky matriarch Morticia, a role her sister said was custom made for her offbeat sense of humor, but there’s much more to her career. She was lovely with haunting eyes, and can be seen in The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Seven Year Itch, House of Wax, a couple of Elvis flicks and How the West Was Won. Her award winning role came with The Bachelor Party, where she played a “philosophical nymphomaniac” and shocked everyone by cutting off her blond hair and dying it jet black. What a brilliant style decision from an independent woman (she consciously chose to focus on her career and refused to give it up for family life).
Jones died far too young, at the age of 53 of colon cancer.
Raffaella Mangiarotti is an innovative industrial designer of common objects for the mass market like a funky lamp that uses 30 LED bulbs, but as much energy as a single incandescent one and a vacuum cleaner with a hinged neck that can go under furniture. Currently she is working on a kitchen for disabled people.
She's a mother and an innovator, a woman with a lovely smile and an agile mind. Her website and company, Deepdesign works with the philosophy of "organic minimalism" and form evolving from function.
Anna May Wong was a fashionable, determined and talented beauty who managed to forge a career as a Chinese American in a less than tolerant decade ("miscegenation" laws, which banned interracial marriage and sex - barred her from even having on screen kisses with non-Chinese actors).
While she was often only playing stereotypical roles of dragon ladies or demure obedient women, off screen she was daring and non-shrinking violet. She was a stylish and sophisticated woman who was called "The World's best-dressed woman" to the public's shock by the Mayfair Mannequin Society of New York. She was good friends with other independent women like Marlene Dietrich and the controversial Leni Riefenstahl.
Two things seem to keep running through my mind right now, sweaters and stripes, sweaters and stripes.. It's the approaching crisp fall days and the yearning for sweaters and it might be thoughts of Jean Seberg and Jonathan Richman or the appreciation of a beloved raggedy old Coolwear tee shirt of my own that has me on the stripe kick.
And on such a kick, no one could be more apt as my style icon than French legend and elegant wraith like talent, Sonia Rykiel whose bright striped sweaters feel as comfortable and beloved as her shock of bobbed and banged red hair.
Rykiel began designing when she couldn't find a maternity sweater soft enough for herself. Don’t you just love entrepreneurial women? Since then, she and later she and her daughter have built a knit empire that never follows trends but transcends them.
That reluctance to fads has in some ways made her a less flashy hyped designer, like the dramatic McQueen for example, but her most recent show expanded beyond the expected with cute, bright party frocks and fun plays on the stripe. And I’m telling you I am all about knits and stripes and no one has done them better for as long as she.
Judy Blume is more than just a talented and wise writer with a smashing smile and great age defying cheekbones. She changed the face of reading for young women, she offered popular stories that kids could relate to and she never shied away from the realities of life in her writing. Her boldness has often and repeatedly made her a target of censors which in turn has made Blume even more awesome in my book as an advocate for free speech.
She works with the National Coalition Against Censorship and is probably as horrified as the rest of us about the possibility of Palin becoming Vice President. While the stories of Palin's plan to ban books has been partially untrue (that list she supposedly made of books was not likely to be her own list, just a list of commonly banned books and she never specified the banning of any particular books), she still "asked the library how she could go about banning books," according to TIME magazine.
Blume is also very humble and personable about her talents. She's said that she simply as always making up stories in her head and once she had two kids to tell them to, began writing them down. She was twenty seven when she began to write seriously, which can make anyone who feels like it's too late to become a success at doing what they love feel better.
I doubt there's many people my age who can't recall at least one Judy Blume book in their life.
I love love love London fashion week. It’s always crazier and brighter and quirkier than anywhere else and there’s always stuff I covet like a little Gollum. Already, the first day, the tweed, neon, printed, ladylike collection by Luella Bartley has really lifted my spirits and I want every single piece. Even the setting, Hyde Park’s Crystal Palace is perfect because nothing makes a neon orange veil pop like a vista of green leaves. Of her daring and amazing color choices she said “ I wanted color, but in a sort of sick way. When I saw it all lined up, I thought, Ew! Can we do this?"
She’s a bit less known here in the states despite a cute Target collection from a couple years back, but this collection is so stunning that I feel like her fan club can only grow and grow.
Life can be very unfair and very, very sad. I fist heard of the name Nagi Noda, a thirty five year old Japanese pop artist and all around amazing person, when I read an article about her death. Surgical complications after a car accident cut short a prolific, inventive, electrifying, and diverse career.
She was lovely and I am sad the world has lost such a unique artist and voice. Truly awesome to the end she passed away "in her Mark Ryden dress, Chanel boots, perfect make-up with Viktor & Rolf lace black eye lashes."
