For centuries, women have acquiesced in having their feet crushed. Different nations and cultures are guilty. The Chinese are infamous for binding the feet of their women; European and American designers produce shoes with high stiletto heels that get higher and higher. The more the pain, the more cramped the foot, the more fashionable the [...]
Dorian Leigh, whose career as the world’s most famous supermodel began in the mid-1940s, died yesterday at 91. For me she epitomized the excitement and glamor of living in New York in the post WWII years. In that period, I struggled my way out of a cloistered family in New Haven, came to New York, [...]
Having just realized that most wristwatch ads set the time at l0:08 (more or less), Henry, my husband, wondered why that particular time. (AM or PM is never revealed.) I came up with the suggestion that perhaps l0:08 is indicated for design and balance. Both hands set on the left half or right half would [...]
A new phrase recently coined, “slow medicine” is an approach to treating the very sick elderly in humane ways that are less aggressive and less costly than hospitalization. “Slow medicine” shares with hospice care the goal of comfort rather than cure and is available in nursing homes, certain retirement communities and, of course, it can [...]
One of the most colorful agebusters I’ve known was Frank Crowninshield, who helped found the magazine Vanity Fair with Conde Nast in 1913. He was Vanity Fair’s first editor. I did not know “Crownie” then , but in his last years when he was editorial advisor to the Nast publications at the age of 74.
He [...]
The new dress code is a nifty agebuster. The old strictures of wearing apparel are gone. Today girdles have vanished,, petticoats and slips also. I remember how all older women looked the same, heavy, with stiffened bodies contained in solid girdles that eliminated the waist.
Today women have slimmed down. and it’s not unusual [...]
