Tuesday, August 31, 2010

"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

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