Fashionable Fat

by Peter J. Leithart

Can “plus-size” fashion escape the assumptions of the fashion industry? Continue Reading »

17 Sep 2014

The Fashioned Self

by Catherine Addington

This week, over 100,000 fashion insiders will gather in New York’s Lincoln Center for dozens of designer shows at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. Copies of copies of copies of this year’s outlandish silhouettes and bizarre prints will end up in our closets a few years from now, and we will wonder how we ever thought them strange. You might not know, however, that the industry and the art Fashion Week showcases are just a few hundred years old. Continue Reading »

12 Feb 2014

Carl’s Rock Songbook #69: THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO, Pt. 2

by Carl Scott

. . . one can change human institutions, but not man; whatever the general effort of a society to render citizens equal and alike, the particular pride of individuals will always seek to escape the [common] level . . . In aristocracies, men are separated from one another by high, immovable . . . . Continue Reading »

9 Nov 2012

Carl’s Rock Songbook #68: THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO

by Carl Scott

This and the next will be the last songbook posts on pop-music movies for a while. Despite my doing five(!) posts on ALMOST FAMOUS , two on the SCHOOL OF ROCK, and an epic one on THE DOORS, I do think that among my list of pop-music films , THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO is the standout in terms of sheer . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Nov 2012

Carl’s Rock Songbook #51: Simon Reynolds and Kurt Andersen on Our Cultural Cul-de-sac

by Carl Scott

Pop music critic Simon Reynolds, in his book Retromania , and style-writer Kurt Andersen, in his “You Say You Want a Devolution” essay, have their finger upon a certain pattern in our contemporary cultural scenes of recyle-ment, repetition, and lack of forward motion. To be more specific, . . . . Continue Reading »

17 Jun 2012