World News: Jul 16, 2009

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Emma Soames on fashion and style for the older generation

My cup of sartorial joy brims over with the discovery of Ari Cohen's blog, Advanced Style, which chronicles the style of the chicest, wackiest and best dressed of America's older generation. Here you will find inspiration from vintage style mavens, ranging from 93-year-old model Mimi Weddell, to a dude from Seattle whose fine legs are displayed in stockings and who is topped off with a blazer and cap. Then there's fabric designer Elizabeth Sweetheart, who dresses entirely in green - a different outfit every day. She was recently profiled in New York magazine where she explained the genesis of her eccentric but bizarrely successful look. "I began wearing green nail varnish and it just spread all over me."

Cohen, 27, started the blog last summer. He works in the bookstore at the New Museum but originally came from Seattle where his best friend was his grandmother. "I adored my grandparents. Older people's style has evolved and they don't mind what other people think so much. They just aren't so self-conscious." He says that when he moved to New York last May he noticed immediately how vibrant and stylish older people in the city were, and wanted to start a project to bring that into focus.

The site is gathering momentum along with a mood of greater acceptance and respect for the older practitioners of style consciousness. "People have started to notice older people more," explains Cohen. "You can learn so much from the way an old person wears a coat that they have had for ever with maybe a hat, for instance - these are the last people around who know how to dress formally and they have a confidence about them that younger people just don't have."

Recent trends spotted on the site include bright red lipstick and huge dark glasses - neither of which are age specific but do look fabulous on the denizens of Advanced Style. There's no doubt that when the fat lady finally starts singing, she will do so in Balenciaga, with a slash of red lipstick and possibly some kid gloves taken out of a closet and smelling of the lavender in which they were for decades preserved.

? Emma Soames is editor-at-large of Saga magazine.

Fashion

Older people

United States

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How Would Obama's Father Being Muslim Have Affected The Election?

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It's So Personal: The Regret

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A reader writes:

My wife and I are/were staunch choice advocates; we'd both done our

share of marching on Washington for the cause. Actually enduring the

process gave us a much more nuanced opinion about abortion.

For us, it was Trisomy 21 -- Down Syndrome. The test came after my

wife awoke one night in a pool of blood screaming and thinking she'd

suffered a miscarriage. After she ran to the toilet, it fell upon me

to call her doctor and then scoop out the remains--that actually

turned out to be huge clots--and take them to the doctor the next day.

The geneticist said that because of all the bleeding and other

complications there was almost no chance the fetus would make it to 20

weeks let alone full term.

My wife says one of my finest moments as

her husband came when I somehow made her laugh while she awaited the

abortion. My wife doesn't talk about her feelings of the abortion and

the "failed" pregnancy. But we've been together for more than a decade

and I know she will always be crushed by it. I know we made the right

decision for us but it still hurts badly. This was the son we would

never have.

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In defense of history

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St. Paul's Webster Magnet Elementary School changed its name last month to the Barack and Michelle Obama Service Learning Elementary. What's wrong with that? Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editor David Shribman makes an impassioned plea on behalf of the school's namesake:

Webster was the greatest orator in the age of great oratory; some of his words remain in the American memory, even in this ahistorical age. He was probably the most eminent Supreme Court lawyer in American history, having argued 249 cases before the court, including several of the landmark cases of the early 19th century that shaped constitutional law in the United States for generations. And he was one of the greatest secretaries of state ever (and the first to serve non-consecutive terms, one under William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, another under Millard Fillmore).

"He achieved great distinction," says Kenneth E. Shewmaker, editor of the "Diplomatic Papers of Daniel Webster." "Barack Obama may have greater distinction because he had the chance to be president. A senator doesn't have that kind of power, but if we understand his legacy, including his role in creating the sense of American nationalism, we wouldn't wipe Webster's name off our buildings."

After pleading Webster's case, Shribman makes the larger case for the preservation of historical memory:

Changing the name of a school from Webster to Obama is a symptom of a larger problem in American life.

"The kind of present-mindedness that wipes out historical knowledge is a cultural fault of American society," says Hyman Berman, an emeritus history professor at the University of Minnesota. Alan Berolzheimer, a Norwich, Vt., historian who as a young man worked on cataloging and publishing the "Webster Papers," adds: "You don't make light of a long-standing historical figure whom a community honored in the first place."

Americans like to name schools after political figures. In Minnesota, there is an elementary school in St. Paul and a high school in Minneapolis named for the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash while running for re-election in 2002. The University of Minnesota has the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, named for the mayor, senator and vice president who is the state's greatest historical figure. And the University of Minnesota Law School is housed in Walter F. Mondale Hall, named for the former senator and vice president. Mondale is very much alive.

"There should be room for Daniel Webster on our schools," says Mondale, who is 81. "He would want it that way, and he deserves a place. And though I know names can go up and they can go down, let's leave Mondale Hall alone for a while."

In working on the column, Shribman found the powers-that-be at Webster Magnet School present a case study in historical amnesia:

There is no trace at all of Webster in the Obama Service Learning Elementary school today, not even a picture of Webster, who may have been the subject of more formal portraits of any man of his time, if not of all American history. Indeed, in the period leading up to the vote on the name change, the principal of the school, Lori Simon, actually had to figure out for whom the school was named originally.

If Webster had been remembered at the school, I am quite certain that what was "remembered" would have been wrong. Such is certainly the case with what high school students are taught, for example, about Lincoln, whose political hero was Webster, when they are taught anything at all.

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World News

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Emma Soames on fashion and style for the older generation

How Would Obama's Father Being Muslim Have Affected The Election?

It's So Personal: The Regret

In defense of history

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