Attempting to define style is much like trying to draw blood from a rolling vein. Physiologically, we know it's just under the skin but in the operating theater of reality, it can prove elusive. Fashion is triage, and there has been no greater reference book on female anatomy than Vogue.
Helmed by the indomitable Anna Wintour, she of the disproportionate sunglasses and precision-cut page boy, Vogue has become the go-to source for all things couture and coat rack for over 100 years, lending credence to the adage that beauty lies not in the eye of the beholder, rather in the eyeliner of the beholden.
If Anna says that blue is the new black, or that bouclé is so very last season, then it is. It simply is. Mortals can get no closer to God on earth, a fashion deity that deems something is so true that the apostles must purchase the monthly gospel while standing in checkout lines at the local A&P with a cart filled with a few groceries and dreams that would certainly put them over the 15-item limit; women who fantasize that with the right cloak, and cut, and powder and paint, that they too can emerge from the chrysalis as the next Sienna Miller, or Halle Berry, or heaven forbid something goes horribly wrong, Jennifer Aniston.
In R.J. Cutler's "The September Issue," a behind-the-scenes frockumentary on the publication of Vogue's largest issue ever, a behemoth that clocks in at 844 pages, online fashion director Candy Pratts Price makes a bold yet telling assessment when she proclaims that "September is the January of fashion."
The rules have been brought forth down from the Condé Nast publishing mountain, and much like the minor 26 second difference between the Gregorian Calendar and an actual solar year, we count seasons based on magazine covers and photo spreads rather than what we actually see roaming the streets on a day-to-day basis. Life imitates artifice.
When a woman purchases Vogue, she isn't purchasing reality, she is buying a lifestyle, a piece of a dream, an unattainable perfection documented twelve times a year at $5.95 a pop.
Who needs the definition of style when there it is staring back at us from the nearest coffee table, checkout stand, or waiting room at the doctor's office? Perhaps when it comes to phlebotomy we're a lot better off taking our chances with Anna.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Thursday, September 3, 2009
clocks
Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent. ~Ambrose Bierce
Once upon a time, there was time. Seconds and minutes and hours counted by hatch marks on the wrists of those now passing years in timeless cemeteries. It is a concept at once elusive and obvious, hurtling each of us toward a destiny that can only be recounted in hindsight.
I am constantly reminded of time whenever I look in the mirror. Or when I feel an ache that wasn't there the day before. Or when I see the children of friends who look exactly as I remember their parents looking just a few years prior. Or perhaps longer than that.
They say that time is what prevents everything from happening at once, and I am inclined to believe this. Time is not something that passes us by, rather it is static, a permanent sign post stuck in concrete. Time stays... we go.
Addresses change, lovers uncouple, hairlines recede but time remains constant. Sometimes I wish I could retrieve some of that constance and have back many of those wasted hours, a do-over if you will. I want to change my mind and do things differently, and take the other fork in the road and make a decision that leads to a different outcome. I want to miss that elevator and meet someone else on the stairwell, and find myself in a different city with different friends and a different house with another name on the mortgage. To go back and tell a loved one that they were indeed a loved one before it was too late. Or, make amends for something that hadn't happened yet.
These are the tricks of time. It is an illusory mechanism that calculates the distance between cause and effect. Whether I will fully understand my actions as measured by the clock is not for me to tell. The present is the moment that just passed, and the future waits in the next sentence.
Time won't give me time.
Once upon a time, there was time. Seconds and minutes and hours counted by hatch marks on the wrists of those now passing years in timeless cemeteries. It is a concept at once elusive and obvious, hurtling each of us toward a destiny that can only be recounted in hindsight.
I am constantly reminded of time whenever I look in the mirror. Or when I feel an ache that wasn't there the day before. Or when I see the children of friends who look exactly as I remember their parents looking just a few years prior. Or perhaps longer than that.
They say that time is what prevents everything from happening at once, and I am inclined to believe this. Time is not something that passes us by, rather it is static, a permanent sign post stuck in concrete. Time stays... we go.
Addresses change, lovers uncouple, hairlines recede but time remains constant. Sometimes I wish I could retrieve some of that constance and have back many of those wasted hours, a do-over if you will. I want to change my mind and do things differently, and take the other fork in the road and make a decision that leads to a different outcome. I want to miss that elevator and meet someone else on the stairwell, and find myself in a different city with different friends and a different house with another name on the mortgage. To go back and tell a loved one that they were indeed a loved one before it was too late. Or, make amends for something that hadn't happened yet.
These are the tricks of time. It is an illusory mechanism that calculates the distance between cause and effect. Whether I will fully understand my actions as measured by the clock is not for me to tell. The present is the moment that just passed, and the future waits in the next sentence.
Time won't give me time.
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