Tuesday, August 31, 2010





good leaf brooch, Philadelphia PA


Maybe they are twins, but that still doesn't make it right.
"Of all the male dress designers visible in the world of American fashion, some 95 percent, if not more, are homosexual.
They have a variety of ways of being gay. John Prince was individual in his solid British gentry style, noticeably masculine and tempered with good midwestern roots. Others were austere functional-gay, given to wearing dark glasses at all times and dressed in a careful, unvarying uniform of a dark turtleneck and dark trousers, as if they had come out of the future by first-class spaceship. They lived in steel, plastic, and glass apartments, so spare and fined down that people felt tense just looking at their living rooms in which no trace of comfort was permitted. Then there is the sweet flock of Gatsby-gays, young beauties who dress in perfectly cut navy blazers and white pants, innocent, Ivy League open-necked pale blue shirts and shetland crew sweaters, impeccably ready for a yacht to sail in and anchor at their feet. There is also a block of elder statesmen-gays who have been secure for long enough to affect jeans and beards and amulets and strange-looking jackets without buttons. All of these designers are in enormous demand as guests and escorts by many of the most powerful-but single-women in the country. Without her priceless list of gay reliables, few society hostesses could put together a party."

from Scruples, by Judith Krantz, published in 1978

Sunday, August 29, 2010





It's an empty promise. They say they will, but they never actually move out.

Friday, August 27, 2010

"With Cheri out of the house, Léa became herself again, very much alive, cheerful, and on the spot. Within an hour, she had been given her bath, followed by a spirit-rub scented with sandal-wood, and was ready dressed, hatted, and shod. While the curling-tongs were heating, she found time to run through the butler's book and send for Emile, the footman, and call his attention to the blue haze on one of the looking-glasses. She ran an experienced eye-rarely taken in-over everything in the room, and lunched in solitary bliss, with a smile for the dry Vouvray and for the June strawberries, served, with their stalks, on a plate of Rubelles enamel as green as a tree-frog after rain."

-from Cheri, by Colette

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Tuesday, August 17, 2010







street studies, Philadelphia PA, August 2010
    "Perhaps there had been some excuse for him. He, too, had been dressing for the party, and all had gone well with him until he came to his tie. It is an astounding thing to have to tell, but this man, though he knew about stocks and shares, had no real mastery of his tie. Sometimes the thing yielded to him without a contest, but there were occasions when it would have been better for the house if he had swallowed his pride and used a made-up tie.
    This was such an occasion. He came rushing into the nursery with the crumpled little brute of a tie in his hand. 'Why, what is the matter, father dear?'
    'Matter!' he yelled; he really yelled. 'This tie, it will not tie.' He became dangerously sarcastic. 'Not round my neck! Round the bed-post! Oh yes, twenty times have I made it up round the bed-post, but round my neck, no! Oh dear no! Begs to be excused!'
    He thought Mrs Darling was not sufficiently impressed, and he went on sternly, 'I warn you of this, mother, that unless this tie is round my neck we don't go out to dinner to-night, and if I don't go to dinner to-night, I never go to the office again, you and I starve, and our children will be flung into the streets!' "

    J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

    Thursday, August 12, 2010