My kind and whip-smart Henry colleague, Kathy Savory just shared this article in last weekend’s New York Times about how the word “curate” is no longer museum, exhibition, or collection-specific. Sneaker shops, farmers’ markets, nightclubs, dress boutiques and more are all in the business of curating.  (Which in the vernacular, this article observes, currently means “pick out really well, with a specific audience in mind, a discerning eye, and good taste.)

“And what of actual museum curators themselves? Are they offended by the democratization of their title?

“Maybe the use of ‘curate’ to refer to extra-museum activities is just metaphorical, akin to the way we use the word ‘doctor’ as a verb,” Laura Hoptman, a senior curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, wrote in an e-mail message. “If we doctor a script, we are only theoretically operating on it.”

“It doesn’t really bother me,” she said of the trend. “Actually, I’m hoping its popularity will spawn a reality television show — maybe ‘Top Curator’? ”

This is truly a watershed moment for me.  My sense of style has finally been affirmed by the gatekeeper of Sunday Styles, Bill Cunningham.  My father called me this morning to tell me (I was still asleep) but as I don’t subscribe to the print edition, I’m a bit at a loss!  I can’t find the item online, though I did watch Bill’s “On the Street” video which I also appear in.

UPDATE: Scan from the page below!

Watch the video here!

My friend revived my interest in our old friend the Slanket today when he name-checked the Snuggie in his gchat status message. I had to follow the link and I discovered that, basically, a Snuggie is a Slanket without pockets. Otherwise, same.exact.thing. Right down to their marketing plans, which take advantage of our shitty economy and high gas prices to remind you that outfitting your family in the Slanket/Snuggie will help you slash your heating costs.

And then I remembered something I saw on the always-financially-oblivious third page of the Sunday Style section of the NYTimes: hooded blankets are high fashion! Yay! Apparently, Ralph Lauren and StellaMcCartney both marched models down their runways in hooded Peruvian-style blankets for their spring ‘09 collections. And you can get your very own hooded peruvian-style blanket, ready-to-wear, at Barneys for $900-1200. Take that, high gas prices.

high fashion slanket

Whether you’re a religious conservative or an aging punk with an office job and an axe to grind, the New York Times Sunday Styles section is never a bad place to start for those looking for the latest evidence of the downfall of Western Civilization. While the minor annoyances it details are generally amusing–oh look, another socialite started a crust-punk band! Isn’t that darling!–the one article it will truly never be able to live down (at least until hyperinflation truly renders the figure meaningless) is its 2005 pièce de résistance “Six Figures? Not Enough!” In this expose of Manhattan’s almost-rich, various young professionals earning the titular threshold complain about not only the fact that their salaries cannot reasonably support a First World lifestyle, but that said complaint garners them very little sympathy. Regardless of its national distribution, though, and its attempts to position itself as America’s default newspaper, the NYT still writes with a tone designed for New Yorkers, and the Sunday Styles section in particular writes for those with a concept of noblesse oblige–or at least a sense of shame. Fortune feels no such compunction, writing both for those living the dream and for those buying into it. Its spiritual center is not the Upper East Side, but office parks, corporate towers, and exurban developments across America. Its wealth is one that feels no need to explain itself.

And thus we get articles like “Meet The HENRYs,” which outpaces inflation at a rate Ben Bernanke could only dream of. Not only is $100,000 a year not enough for the “High Earners, Not Rich Yet” set, but half a million apparently still leaves some bills short at the end of the month. In it, homeowners with massive cash stockpiles¹ lament that they don’t “feel rich.” Even Fortune, that bastion of socialist thinking, points out that HENRYs who complain that higher taxes will disincentivize their hard work might be perhaps a bit disingenuous (or, if they are telling the truth, lazy). Given the current state of the stock market, is it really a good time to be complaining about the capital gains tax? Given the current state of the housing market, can people who own their homes outright, rather than owing more than it’s worth, really complain about property taxes (which, of course, fund the top-notch schools that make their districts so desirable)?

Fortune, for of all of its faults (mainly that it tends to be cheerleader for conventional wisdom without challenging the underlying assumptions, a trait that can be dangerous in cases like the housing bubble), is not run by idiots. Well, it’s not run by complete idiots. With an article like this, one can only assume that Fortune’s decided to enter the realm of social commentary simply by getting out of the way and letting the HENRYs talk.

¹ One couple, even more remarkably, put two daughters through Cornell without them ever seeing a student loan officer.

The Times asks if Americans are becoming news-obsessed as we are in the middle of a very exciting election season as well as stuck in a hot economic mess. They begin with a story of a film production accountant with the last name “Lehman” (coincidence? please….) whose MSNBC-watching habits have gone so far as to elicit a pretty hilarious behavioral tick from her  5 year-old son Beckett.

YANA COLLINS LEHMAN, a film production accountant who lives in Brooklyn, knew something was amiss when her 5-year-old son, Beckett, started to announce to no one in particular, “I’m John McCain, and I approved this statement.”

Ms. Collins Lehman, 36, thought: “Oh my God, I’m watching too much news.”

But it is hard not to, she said, with the financial markets in meltdown, and that crisis increasingly intertwined with a frenzied presidential campaign entering the homestretch. This is why her own news diet has spiked to where it feels as if it’s taking over her life. And maybe her son’s, too.

“It’s such a drain on productivity,” Ms. Collins Lehman said. “It’s a compulsion.”

And of course the NY Times looks to a sociologist to ask about news-compulsion.

ERIC KLINENBERG, a sociology professor at New York University, said people are unusually transfixed by news of the day because the economic crisis in particular seems to reach into every corner of their lives. Usually, he added, people can compartmentalize their lives into different spheres of activity, such as work, family and leisure. But now, “those spheres are collapsing into each other.”

I do not buy Klinenberg’s veiled economism but I do see where his view stems from. More philosophically, we would consider his statement about the ability to rationalize and compartmentalize social phenomena parallel to what existential philosophers call “ontological security.” In other words, everything is in its right place. Or as the phrase goes, “everything is everything.” But as of late, during periods of crisis or social transformation, as the classical sociologist Durkheim believed, we experience a spike in “anomie” or normelessness. Or, as the great George Constanza put it: “Worlds are COLLIDING!!!!!“(Warning: The link is actually in Spanish overdub, which I find to be extra-hilarious.)

But beyond the existential argument, I find another area that the Times reports on to be far more interesting, that of what Pierre Bourdieu called “cultural capital.”

For others, information serves as social currency. Crises, like soap operas or sports teams, can provide a serial drama for people to talk about and bond over, said Kenneth J. Gergen, a senior research psychologist at Swarthmore College who studies technology and culture. “It gives us the stuff that keeps the community together,” he said. And for those whose social circles think of knowledge as power, having the latest information can also enhance status, Dr. Gergen said. “If you can just say what somebody said yesterday, that doesn’t do the trick,” he said.

This is something you and I have all experienced, which is the necessity of “one-up-manship” that occurs at all social gatherings especially in situation in which the person who does not know how to explain a derivative and its importance in the current global financial meltdown is looked upon as lacing social currency, in other words, culturally poor. It is most likely the case that we modulate between the one who is disdained and the one who disdains.

However, I find the tragic human alienation narrative that the Times story paints is not only a bit “precious” but also empirically iffy in one sense. Information can become a compulsion but it can also, and is in many places in the world, a hard-to-find commodity. And in many ways, I think information-in-use, that is not the concept of information but information as it is used socially and other wise, exists as something that is ready-at-hand, not something is overloading humans’ ability to use it. What I mean to say is that the Times report lacks an understanding of information distribution. It assumes that because all of this information exists in our technomediated worlds, that it is used by everyone at once. It is quite clear that people do not use one media at a time; I, along with most of you all, watch TV regularly with laptop close by. Nevertheless, information, especially news, must be accessed through iPhone, TV sets, and computers. It does not land on the doorstop of your consciousness with the help of a news stork. All of this to say, the Times paints the portrait of the overfed individual who obsessively watches the news and goes to Huffington Post by him or herself. This is a very old story from the 1950s in which the individual loses his or her individuality through the colonization of his or her mind by technology (See various books by Riesman, Lasch, Adorno and Horkheimer, Jacques Ellul, and more recently Neil Postman). But this is not exactly an accurate picture of the conditions under which information is distributed–sent out and received.

How many times have you sat around the TV with roommates, friends, significant others and had a burning question which was quite easily answered by someone grabbing the computer or whipping out (pause..haha, had to do it.) their iPhone?

X-posted at Human Potential.

I had an assignment for my writers group to write something based on either an obituary or a wedding announcement. A few weeks ago the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times had a blurb about a woman scorned who made a few phone calls to cancel vendors for her ex-boyfriend’s wedding.

I had been thinking about what to write and most of this story came to me in a dream in the early hours of the morning. I thought I would transcribe it and see how it came out. You tell me.

Joe woke up to find a gaggle of protestors on his front lawn accusing him of child molestation. He hoped they would leave before his date arrived in the evening.

Over dinner, Joe felt the need to defend himself to Carla.

“My son and his friend were playing in my bed, making tents and the sort. When it was time for bed, they asked if they could sleep with me. I said sure. I guess in the middle of the night, half asleep I rolled over and spooned next to this kid. He told his dad, some red neck homophobe who called the cops and his KKK pals. And here we are.”

Carla sympathized and admired Joe’s honesty. No man would want to talk about this on a second date, and that he brought it voluntarily revealed a strong character.

Carla, dedicated and unassuming, had not dated many men for any serious length of time. She felt comfortable and needed around Joe, as if she was somehow helping him. She stood by her man through the rallies, yelling at the local hicks “spooning was not a crime.” She helped him relocate to a new home void of protestors. She went to the arraignment and cheered when the judge dismissed the case.

Joe was grateful for the companionship and having someone believe him. Even his brother David stayed comparably silent during the spooning ordeal, as he would later refer to it. So much of Joe and Carla’s relationship revolved around this ugly accusation and its aftermath. It disgusted Joe that someone who barely knew him before the spooning ordeal would remain so loyal and never ask any questions. In fact, she never asked anything of Joe. She just stood beside him loyal and meek. At another point he would have found her passivity attractive, and in fact he did, six months ago when the world was ready to ex-communicate him. But now, now that he had a grittier view of the world, now that he was once accused of a heinous crime and saw his freedom flash before his eyes, now Joe wanted more.

“Every woman has the potential to be psychotic,” David once told his brother.

Joe thought Carla too submissive to do anything crazy, and after all that he endured, anything Carla could potentially do would not compare to the spooning ordeal. So he said goodbye to Carla without ado.

Devastated, she called twelve times before noon, hanging up once the answering machine picked up. She dialed Joe’s cell phone and home number, careful to block her number eleven times that evening. The calls tapered off until after one week she no longer picked up the phone and dialed the digits she was embarrassed to have memorized. Was a just reward for her loyalty? Stand by your man, my ass.

“You told her you loved her, didn’t you?” David asked.

Joe nodded.

His brother looked at him with knowing eyes.

As the weeks turned into months, Joe discovered that the dating scene was not as accessible for a formerly accused child molestor/spooner. He longed for the reliability of Carla, those comforting hazel eyes assuring him that he could survive anything. He almost wished that she had more stalked tendencies.

Joe was lamenting his mistake at their favorite falafel haunt when the waiter congratulated Joe on his engagement.

“Huh?”

“Carla came in the other day with a beautiful diamond ring. I assumed you were still together,” the waiter said in a heavy middle-eastern accent.

Carla’s wedding was scheduled to be a beautiful affair complete with white flowers, an ivory gown and cream cake. Days before she was set to walk down the aisle, her caterer called confirming the recent cancellation.

“Huh?” she asked.

“We received a phone call the other day canceling the arrangements.”

Carla un-cancelled the cancellation and confirmed her other vendors. She told her fiancé what happened. “I think it’s Joe.”

“You told him you loved him, didn’t you?”

Carla nodded and her fiancé caste a knowing smile.

Moral of the story: Every man has the potential to go psycho too.

Check out the newest “On the Street” in the Style Section of the NYT.

Then take a look at our “A Two-Wheeled Accessory Spins into Boston” post.  

I’m just sayin’…

Sometimes I think the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times writes articles just to bait me. This week in “They’ll Take Manhattan, in Cash,” we learn that New Yorkers are beginning to feel left out of the cosmopolitan offerings of their global city thanks to the weak dollar. Flush with heightened spending power, Europeans are treating the apartments of New York friends like drop-off spots for Mac store purchases and the products of drunken shopping binges at Bergdorf’s.

I guess that is kind of rude.

But then I read this: “Wearing the sort of outfit that usually acts as a siren for department store salespeople — a Tory Burch shift dress and Jimmy Choo slingback heels — she instead found herself waiting behind a European couple in sneakers and bike shorts who ‘had made such massive purchases that we couldn’t get anyone to give us the time of day for our size 11 ½ Ferragamo party slippers,’ recalled Ms. Blitzer, 32.”

I just hate it when sales peons won’t give time of day to Ferragamo party slippers.

One New Yorker is even walking dogs on top of her normal job as an investment banker in order to earn the spending cash necessary to keep up with her European friends. They all want to dine at expensive restaurants like WD-50, Suba and Thor. Who names New York restaurants? I have no desire to have drinks at a place named “Thor,” unless there is tacky Viking paraphernalia on the walls and the joint is a subsidiary of TGI Fridays.

That would be a hot spot.

Ah, currency imbalance: the root of 21st Century Xenophobia.

A nice little interview from Times Sunday Styles Magazine with Mad Men costume designer Janie Bryant. She talks about her inspiration to become a costume designer, Mad Men clothing styles and the elegance of the period. If you haven’t been watching – you should just relegate yourself to total uncoolness. AMC 10:00 pm on Sundays.

The journey to pick a Democratic Presidential candidate was rough, to say the least.

And this past Tuesday, Freshman senator Barack Obama clinched the nomination — causing Hilary Clinton to concede on Saturday and New York Times’ fashion critic Guy Trebay to start dissecting the wardrobe choices of his wife and potential first lady, Michelle Obama.

In his Sunday Styles essay, Trebay cites that Michelle’s penchant for over-sized faux pearls, Jackie O flipped hair styles, and streamlined silhouettes “can sometimes appear to be tempering her own strong personality with a modernized version of another era’s ladylike clothes.”

However, he goes on to make it clear that the Princeton graduate’s style is very much her own. As was evident when she took the stage on Tuesday night to celebrate her husbands victory:

“[Obama], was momentarily upstaged by his wife, and not just because she knuckle-bumped him in front of the world.

What grabbed the eye was the sleeveless purple silk crepe sheath made for Mrs. Obama by Maria Pinto, the former Geoffrey Beene assistant who has long been an Obama favorite. Simple in silhouette and, at about $900 retail, not the kind of garment most working-class voters can reasonably aspire to, the dress was immediately subject to water cooler dissection.”

Michelle’s remarkably purple knee-length dress, Azzedine AlaÏa belt, and dainty white pearls caught my attention too that night, but for far more different reasons:

How eerily similar did Michelle’s ensemble look like that of SJP’s character Carrie in the soon-to-be cult classic, Sex and the City: The Movie.

Surely, with the daily grind of a grueling 15-month campaign trail, Mrs. Obama couldn’t have possibly seen the movie yet. And as W magazine points out, this is most likely just “a sartorial coincidence.”

But it’s definitely cool nonetheless and very authentic, much like that fist pound exchanged between herself and Barack in St.Paul last Tuesday. As Vanity Fair’s Amy Collins says: “I’m sure she’s being advised. But there’s nothing imposed on her that isn’t generated by who she is. She has a very definite sense of herself.”

Obama ‘08

The Sunday Styles from the NY Times asked college students to submit short essays on what love meant to them in our modern context. Here are a couple samples.

“Want to Be My Boyfriend? Please Define”

“My Dropout Boyfriend Kept Dropping In”

“The wealthy don’t generally speak publicly about their finances, in good times or bad. It’s in poor taste, for one, and their employers could fire them for talking even a little.”

While the wealthy may not speak of financial woes, the New York Times Sunday Styles section has never balked at writing pitying articles about the stresses and anxieties of the richest New Yorkers. Times are tough on Wall Street. And while Middle America may feel the pinch of the economic times with greater sting, Sunday Styles reports that Manhattan lofters and Hamptons homeowners are also suffering these days.

Like this man, for instance: “One New York real estate developer cut his budget to less than $250,000 a year from $1.5 million a year. ‘A year ago, he would have only flown Gulfstreams,” Mr. Sullivan said. “Now it’s moving to the point where he’s flying Beech jets and Learjets.’” Not a Learjet! The unnamed hedge fund manager is worried his children may become the butt of ridicule. Other high-wager earners fear spousal separation if their salaries remain low.

I think it’s important to note that the first Google Image hit for “wealthy” is this picture:

What problems, seriously. I mean, it’s not like tens of thousands of families are struggling to recover from Cyclones and Earthquakes in Burma and China. Let’s all pause to worry about penny-pinching among America’s effete class. Some of them are so stressed out they are even gaining weight! In related news, I just received notice that my economic stimulus package (courtesy of Bush) will arrive any day now. Maybe I’ll apply it to a Learjet timeshare.

The new preppy “it” band Vampire Weekend has been popping up everywhere (Teen Vogue, GQ…cover of yet to be released major music magazine). Pictured below is the GQ “Music” section from the February issue – can you say Glenn O’Brien! The profile (by Mr. Will Welch) might as well be the Fashion Well, only styled in the GQ editors own clothes (don’t get me wrong – I dress just like these / those guys). It doesn’t really seem to be just a music profile. With songs like Oxford Comma and Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa it is only a matter of time before these guys are going to be in an ad campaign.

By the way – how could I not mention that cover with Rachel Bilson?!?

Sometimes it’s worth staying up late on a Friday — you can read the Sunday Style section of the New York Times as soon as it gets posted early Saturday morning. Usually it’s a slideshows of presentations from whatever fashion week is currently going on, maybe a piece on “modern love” going wrong the same way that “classic love” (?) has gone for the ages. It’s not often there’s anything that might have some “ethnic” content for when I’m feeling feisty, but then I get rewarded with this article on the (not surprising) lack of diversity in the the models you see in runway shows.

Just one image of a black model appears in the issue, midway through a 17-page article photographed by Miles Aldridge and titled the “Vagaries of Fashion.” In it, the glacial blond Anja Rubik portrays an indolent, overdressed Park Avenue princess with a gilded apartment, a couture wardrobe, two towhead children and a collection of heavy rocks. The sole black model in the pictorial is more modestly attired, in an aproned pinafore.

See? Interesting stuff. I know that it may seem like there should be a big “Obvious” tag somewhere — standards of beauty are upheld by the fashion industry, these standards call for a skinny white girl, blah blah blah — but I never thought the discussion would come up again, and not in the Times. There’s been a lot of attention paid to the on-going discussion of weight and whether or not it’s responsible to hire models who may be suffering from eating disorders, but it never seems to get farther than a wire piece that gets a few days in the news cycle, picked up by the tabs, and then discarded until the cycle starts all over again. Here’s hoping that a real discourse on race and fashion is sustained until some new ideas and solutions are emerge.

Runways Fade to White (NYT)