Lucinda Chambers worked at British Vogue for 36 years, and was unceremoniously fired upon the ascension of a new editor-in-chief. British Vogue is (was?) one of those magazines that I could never afford, but loved to read because there was actually thought behind things. The articles were interesting to read. The fashion was beautiful, photographs that I would look at again and again.

Fortunately for us, Lucinda is not afraid to speak the truth.

I don’t want to be the person who puts on a brave face and tells everyone, ‘Oh, I decided to leave the company,’ when everyone knows you were really fired. There’s too much smoke and mirrors in the industry as it is. And anyway, I didn’t leave. I was fired.

I admire this woman for speaking the truth. It doesn’t happen often in fashion circles–mostly it “oh this is the next greatest newest thing isn’t it wonderful” even if the lipstick rubs off after an hour or the sweater falls apart in the wash.

The glamour of the fashion industry, and the fashion press, makes us want to take it seriously (at least, that’s true for me). I often fall into the web that Anna Wintour spins about dictating the winds of fashion from on high. Part of me wants to believe.

It’s so easy to forget that all that is an illusion:

I remember a long time ago, when I was on maternity leave, Vogue employed a new fashion editor. When I met with my editor after having had my baby, she told me about her. She said, ‘Oh Lucinda, I’ve employed someone and she looked fantastic. She was wearing a red velvet dress and a pair of Wellington boots to the interview.’ This was twenty years ago. She went on, ‘She’s never done a shoot before. But she’s absolutely beautiful and so confident. I just fell in love with the way she looked.’ And I went, ‘Ok, ok. Let’s give her a go.’ She was a terrible stylist. Just terrible. But in fashion you can go far if you look fantastic and confident – no one wants to be the one to say ‘… but they’re crap.’ Honestly Anja, you can go quite far just with that. Fashion is full of anxious people. No one wants to be the one missing out.

The takeaway here is that fashion is full of anxious, rabbity people, The odds of finding truth among such people is slim–because they tend to echo what’s around them instead of observing and making observations for themselves. The hall-of-mirrors effect, I believe, is often what makes fashion (and fashion magazines, in particular) so out of touch with reality. In the quest for the next new thing, people lose track of the reason that clothes exist–the WHY of the clothes.

And when you lose hold of any sort of cornerstone (such as practicality), you spiral in to whims and flights of fantasy that quickly become out of reach of 99% of the population and only make sense to the very small group of people who see all the clothes, and make the magazine.

Truth be told, I haven’t read Vogue in years. Maybe I was too close to it after working there for so long, but I never felt I led a Vogue-y kind of life. The clothes are just irrelevant for most people – so ridiculously expensive. What magazines want today is the latest, the exclusive. It’s a shame that magazines have lost the authority they once had. They’ve stopped being useful. In fashion we are always trying to make people buy something they don’t need. We don’t need any more bags, shirts or shoes. So we cajole, bully or encourage people into continue buying. I know glossy magazines are meant to be aspirational, but why not be both useful and aspirational? That’s the kind of fashion magazine I’d like to see.

Funnily enough, that’s the kind of fashion magazine I would like to read myself.

It’s the kind of fashion magazine I would like to create.

RIP British Vogue.

Edit: This is probably a troll but 1) I fell for it and didn’t do my research, and 2) it’s still kinda funny, so I’ll keep it.

The word “optics” was fairly new to me this election cycle, but clearly has a necessary place in political vocabulary. Tactical visual presentation (or the analysis thereof) is a major part of politics today, as we continue our slide into the post-literate age.

How a person or situation is presented visually is just as important (or more important, frankly, since people are so often seeing a thumbnail and headline but not clicking through to the full article) as how it is verbally “spun” or rhetorically presented. The visual can be grokked in a split second, and can be just as persuasive and packed with meaning as a long-form essay.

So when Eric Trump showed up on my twitter timeline with a fashy haircut….

via @KFILE

I’m not going to pretend to know what Eric Trump is thinking, or what he tells his barber. I would venture to guess that he puts some thought into his visual presentation, given that he was already in the public eye before his father became the President of the United States.

When we started this roller coaster ride two years ago, he had helmet-hair. Not sure if he used more hairspray than his wife, but it’s not the greatest look for him. Donald gets away with the outrageous hair because it is just as cartoonishly exaggerated as his public persona. Eric Trump doesn’t have the persona to go with weird hair, and whatever persona goes with crunchy hairspray, it’s probably not great.

Eric then switched things up to the “stereotypical 1930s movie villain banker” hairstyle (he needs some round, wire-rimmed glasses to complete the look, and a pinstripe suit) which was a welcome change. The side part broke up the crunchy helmet-hair effect, and plays better with his hairline.

(I’m not going to look any further back, because the results are tragic.)

But speaking of villains

Remember when the Trump children released this photo? Lots of comparisons to movie villains from the left. Cartoony, Wall Street-style villains. The ones the left loves to hate.

Or at least, they USED to love to hate them.

Since the Hillary speech, the alt-right has become the shadow behind every door and the boogeyman under every bed. Perhaps the new fashy Eric Trump haircut has been updated to reflect the new villains of the day: the alt-right.

Regardless of what this says about his political inclinations, I like this fashy version of his hair. Definitely an upgrade.