Emma Soames on fashion and style for the older generation
Saturday, July 11, 2009
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PDF My cup of sartorial joy brims over with the discovery of Ari Cohen's blog, Advanced Style, which chronicles the style of the chicest, wackiest and best dressed of America's older generation. Here you will find inspiration from vintage style mavens, ranging from 93-year-old model Mimi Weddell, to a dude from Seattle whose fine legs are displayed in stockings and who is topped off with a blazer and cap. Then there's fabric designer Elizabeth Sweetheart, who dresses entirely in green - a different outfit every day. She was recently profiled in New York magazine where she explained the genesis of her eccentric but bizarrely successful look. "I began wearing green nail varnish and it just spread all over me."
Cohen, 27, started the blog last summer. He works in the bookstore at the New Museum but originally came from Seattle where his best friend was his grandmother. "I adored my grandparents. Older people's style has evolved and they don't mind what other people think so much. They just aren't so self-conscious." He says that when he moved to New York last May he noticed immediately how vibrant and stylish older people in the city were, and wanted to start a project to bring that into focus.
The site is gathering momentum along with a mood of greater acceptance and respect for the older practitioners of style consciousness. "People have started to notice older people more," explains Cohen. "You can learn so much from the way an old person wears a coat that they have had for ever with maybe a hat, for instance - these are the last people around who know how to dress formally and they have a confidence about them that younger people just don't have."
Recent trends spotted on the site include bright red lipstick and huge dark glasses - neither of which are age specific but do look fabulous on the denizens of Advanced Style. There's no doubt that when the fat lady finally starts singing, she will do so in Balenciaga, with a slash of red lipstick and possibly some kid gloves taken out of a closet and smelling of the lavender in which they were for decades preserved.
? Emma Soames is editor-at-large of Saga magazine.
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Emma Soames on fashion and style for the older generation
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Emma Soames on fashion and style for the older generation
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Emma Soames on fashion and style for the older generation
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Emma Soames on fashion and style for the older generation
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Emma Soames on fashion and style for the older generation
Emma Soames on fashion and style for the older generation
posted by 71353 @ 11:07 AM,
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The other Susan Boyle
PrintEmailPDF The global success of the Britain's Got Talent star has had an unlikely impact on one unassuming Texas artist. Stuart Jeffries hears how
There is, you might think, room in the world for only one Susan Boyle. But you would be wrong. The American artist, Susan K Boyle, was living her quiet, unassuming life in the pretty hill country of Kerrville, Texas, when a friend sent her an email.
"It was a link to Susan Boyle's YouTube performance a few days after her audition," recalls Susan K. "I thought she was wonderful - what a beautiful voice and what a compelling story. But I thought it was just an interesting coincidence, nothing more."
Except that back in 2002, Susan K Boyle had set up a website, susanboyle.com, to display her artworks. That site had been rusting in cyberspace for a couple of years - until the Britain's Got Talent finalist sudenly came to the global consciousness last month, and something rather strange happened. "A journalist called me and said, 'Do you know your site is getting 1,800 hits per hour?' I had no idea - I hadn't upgraded the site for a couple of years." Yesterday, she calculated the cumulative total of hits to be more than 172,000.
Susan K's website shows her figurative line drawings and head studies in oil. Like her namesake, she has got talent, though not the sort to irrigate Simon Cowell or Amanda Holden's tear ducts.
And then the madness, as it does in such cases, began in earnest. "A couple of Susan Boyle fans emailed me to say they thought I sang beautifully. Another thought I sang beautifully and liked my artwork! Among the emails were inquiries for price quotes on a couple of my art pieces. However, I have had no sales as a result of this. Yet."
So is Susan K expecting a surge of sales as a result of the sudden celebrity of an unglamorous though sweet-voiced woman who lives on the other side of the Atlantic? "That would be too weird, wouldn't it?"
Next, she started getting calls and emails from people wanting to buy her website's domain name. "One guy, within a minute, had increased his offer from $100 to $500,000. I'm not sure how serious he was, but that sort of thing is very strange to happen to someone like me." She consulted a company called Sedo that sells domain names and, following their advice, has now put her web address up for sale for a cool $25,000. She hasn't sold it. Yet. (She has moved her artwork display, though, to sboyleart.com).
Surely she'll be rooting for her namesake to win tomorrow night's final? "I haven't heard the other finalists, so I can't say." Admirably diplomatic - but Susan K now has a pecuniary interest in the other Susan's success. According to Sedo's director of business development, Nora Nanayakkara: "The value of the domain name really depends on the sustainability of Susan Boyle's popularity."
I ask if Susan K's life story is as heart-rending as her namesake's. "I don't know much about her biography," she replies. I'm thinking of the fact that the 46-year-old singer from West Lothian claimed - apparently as a joke - never to have been kissed, at least until Piers Morgan made her life story even more harrowing by kissing her backstage last week. "Oh, I've been kissed," Susan K replies finally.
The 64-year-old from Kerrville is an art major who has drawn and painted throughout her life, while working mostly in the airline industry. "I was a stewardess, as they were called in the 60s, for PanAm. I left just before Lockerbie [the PanAm crash in 1988]."
In addition to Susan K's new website, her work can be seen in a show called Turning Point at the Hill Country Arts Foundation in Ingram, Texas, from 6 June. She is understandably eager for the media circus (ie me calling her at the prearranged time of 7.30am from London) to move on, so she can walk her "lovely old dog" and then get back to her art.
After the interview, she sends me a disarming email: "Please be kind to me in your article. Another outfit in the UK wrote about me yesterday and made me sound stupid AND greedy - and they hadn't even spoken with me!! Egads!"
For the record, Susan K Boyle is neither of those things (and I'm always a sucker for a woman who exclaims "egads"). She is, like her namesake, a breath of fresh air. The last thing the "other" Susan Boyle says sounds sweet coming down the line to this celeb-crazy nation. "I am an artist and am happiest in my studio working on my art. I don't deserve, or want, fame".
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The other Susan Boyle
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posted by 71353 @ 10:01 AM,
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Dick Cheney comes out again for gay marriage: "I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish."
PrintEmailPDF Last week, Ted Olson. Today, Dick Cheney:
Dick Cheney rarely takes a position that places him at a more progressive tilt than President Obama. But on Monday, the former vice president did just that, saying that he supports gay marriage as long as it is deemed legal by state and not federal government.
Speaking at the National Press Club for the Gerald R. Ford Foundation journalism awards, Cheney was asked about recent rulings and legislative action in Iowa and elsewhere that allowed for gay couples to legally wed.
"I think that freedom means freedom for everyone," replied the former V.P. "As many of you know, one of my daughters is gay and it is something we have lived with for a long time in our family. I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish. Any kind of arrangement they wish. The question of whether or not there ought to be a federal statute to protect this, I don't support. I do believe that the historically the way marriage has been regulated is at the state level. It has always been a state issue and I think that is the way it ought to be handled, on a state-by-state basis. ... But I don't have any problem with that. People ought to get a shot at that."
We hate Dick Cheney here at AMERICAblog.com. Hate him. But, even a broken clock is right twice a day. And, as Sam Stein, who wrote the article above, notes, this statement make Cheney more progressive than Obama on marriage equality. If Cheney can support marriage equality, there's really no excuse for Obama and other leading Congressional Democrats.
Cheney has been using similar language since 2004, when he broke with his boss, George Bush, over the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage:
At a campaign rally in this Mississippi River town, Cheney spoke supportively about gay relationships, saying ?Sfreedom means freedom for everyone,? when asked about his stand on gay marriage.
?SLynne and I have a gay daughter, so it?"s an issue our family is very familiar with,? Cheney told an audience that included his daughter. ?SWith the respect to the question of relationships, my general view is freedom means freedom for everyone. ... People ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to.
?SThe question that comes up with the issue of marriage is what kind of official sanction or approval is going to be granted by government? Historically, that?"s been a relationship that has been handled by the states. The states have made that fundamental decision of what constitutes a marriage,? he said.
And, Congress should stay out of it. But, in 1996, President Clinton signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which put the federal government in a position to regulate marriages at the state level. DOMA needs to go.
And, this further confirms all the polling that shows when people know someone gay, it makes them more likely to be supportive of issues like marriage equality. Frankly, I don't think Dick with be with us absent that. But, he is -- and here's the video. Cheney almost sounds human:
Dick Cheney comes out again for gay marriage: "I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish."
[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
Dick Cheney comes out again for gay marriage: "I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish."
[Source: October News]
Dick Cheney comes out again for gay marriage: "I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish."
Dick Cheney comes out again for gay marriage: "I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish."
posted by 71353 @ 9:57 AM,
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Sotomayor's Porn Trial
PrintEmailPDF McClatchy's Mike Doyle digs up Farrell v. Burke, a case from 2006 involving a sex offender who had violated his parole by purchasing porn. The salacious details, including Sotomayor reading excerpts from Scum: True Homosexual Experiences, are here. (Unfortunately for the culture warriors, she ultimately sided with the state.) Doyle also highlights this classic exchange between the sex offender's attorney and parole officer:
MR. NATHANSON: Are you saying, for example, that that condition of parole would prohibit Mr. Farrell from possessing, say, Playboy magazine?
P.O. BURKE: Yes.
MR. NATHANSON: Are you saying that that condition of parole would prohibit Mr. Farrell from possessing a photograph of Michelangelo['s] David?
P.O. BURKE: What is that?
MR. NATHANSON: Are you familiar with that sculpture?
P.O. BURKE: No.
MR. NATHANSON: If I tell you it's a large sculpture of a nude youth with his genitals exposed and visible, does that help to refresh your memory of what that is?
P.O. BURKE: If he possessed that, yes, he would be locked up for that.
Sotomayor's Porn Trial
[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
Sotomayor's Porn Trial
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Sotomayor's Porn Trial
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Sotomayor's Porn Trial
Sotomayor's Porn Trial
posted by 71353 @ 9:50 AM,
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Obama "Upbeat" About GM. And the Middle East Peace Process.
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President Barack Obama, according to a headline in The New York Times, is "Upbeat for G.M.'s Future."
That seems a bit, well, wacky. But then, this is the same guy who is "upbeat" about the Middle East peace process, according to AFP. So that puts the remark in perspective, I suppose. After all, as Justice-to-be Sonia Sotomayor now knows, context is everything.
Over at Out of Control, the Reason Foundation's Shikha Dalmia, with some entertaining snippiness followed by good economic analysis of G.M.'s situation:
"I am confident that the steps I'm announcing will mark the end of the old G.M., and the beginning of a new G.M.," [Obama] said. Great! Then what do, we, the taxpayers, who have just been forced to fork over $50 billion to G.M.—in what is it? loans? stock?—have to worry about? The president is cool with it. And he, after all, has an Ivy League degree, a silver tongue, not to mention a glamorous wife with lovely arms who dotes on him. But even His Awesomeness can't command a drowning man to swim after tying lead weights around his ankles.
The president seems to think that there is nothing that G.M. has that a visit to bankruptcy court won't cure. Amputate its liabilities to bondholders, excise all its promises to unions (no, actually, scratch that one, that didn't quite happen) and, presto, it'll be ready, once again, to kick some foreign ass.
If only!
Read the whole thing, and stay tuned for an upcoming cover package on the GM fiasco in our next print edition.
Obama "Upbeat" About GM. And the Middle East Peace Process.
[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
Obama "Upbeat" About GM. And the Middle East Peace Process.
posted by 71353 @ 9:47 AM,
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