Portnoy

I’m reading Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth.

The rambling disjointed manic style threw me at first but I’ve come to admire it.

As for the story, not that I personally know what the 1960s were like, but I imagine the content was pretty out there for its time – published in 1967.

It makes me laugh, particularly in its more vulgar parts. Please don’t read on if you offend easily:

“How can I give up what I have never even had, for a girl, who delicious and provocative as once she may have been, will inevitably grow as familiar to me as a loaf of bread? For love? What love? Is that what binsd all these couples we know together – the ones who even bother to let themselves be bound? Isn’t it something more like weakness? Isn’t it rather convenience and apathy and guilt? Isn’t it rather fear and exhaustion and inertia, gutlessness plain and simple, far far more than that “love” that the marriage counselors and the songwriters and the psychotherapists are forever dreaming about? Please, not let us not bullshit one another about “love” and its duration.”

And another:
“I believe that I have already confessed to the piece of liver I bought in a butcher shop and banged behind the billboard on the way to a bar mitzvah lesson. Well, I wish to make a clean breast of it, Your Holiness. That – she – it – wasn’t my first piece. My first piece I had in the privacy of my own home, rolled round my cock in the bathroom at three-thirty – and then had again on the end of a fork, at five-thirty, along with the other members of that poor innocent family of mine.”

Underwear on the outside

I’ve been waiting for this to become a fashion. It is going on 20 years, so time for the ’90s to make a come-back. Not grunge. Lingerie as outer wear.

My friends and I used to be “alternative” when we wore our second-hand petticoats and slips as dresses. But now it’s trickled down from some catwalk shows. Apparently the ladies are wearing lingerie in London.

Meanhile, in France, railway workers are getting a far better deal. Christian Lacroix has designed their latest uniforms. He’s already done unis for Air France. Cute.

Jingle bells

Dear Father Christmas

This year I would like:

+ wireless Bluetooth mini mouse (for laptops) – this kind of thing or this

+ measuring tape – hardware store type, with measurements on both sides of tape

+ sun visor for car – 4-pack at Foodtown for $10 would be great

+ citrus squeezer. Not sure if this wooden reamer type, the metal squishing ones (colour-wise red is preferable), or something more traditional is best. But probably not one of these.

If those options are a little dull, I’d also like:

+Panasonic TZ7,  Sony DSC-WX1 or Fujifilm Finepix F200EXR

+ white Omega Constellation

+ Skoda Octavia, BMW 635 CSi, Volvo S40 or Peugot 407

+ tailor’s adjustable mannequin – this kind of thing

Muchos gracias
K

Designers

Why are so many highly paid successful designers men? Like top chefs?

It has nothing to do with skill.

And here’s a lovely quote from Mr Karl Largy: “No one wants to see curvy women. You’ve got fat mothers with their bags of chips sitting in front of the television and saying that thin models are ugly.”
From Focus mag, Oct 2009

Luxury

I’m reading Dana Thomas’ ‘Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Lustre’, about the luxury business. Interesting.

Can't wait 2 years for that $20,000 Birkin bag? Buy in to one of their other fish hooks - sunglasses and perfume. You know you can afford that.

Rest assured, when you buy into “luxury” and spend money on that overpriced item, you’re ensuring people like Bernard Arnaud remain in the lifestyle they’ve become accustomed to. Arnaud runs one of the mega-luxury corporations, LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moey Hennessy).

Arnaud came into the luxury industry in the 1980s and began sucking up luxury brands from their original family owners. He then turned them into money-making machines, churning out stock and stores.

Items made by some luxury brands are increasingly produced in China. They’re then shipped to Italy or England where a section of the item is constructed (the handle attached to a bag, for example) so they can put the “Made in Italy/England” label on. And customers can feel better about their purchase.

When Arnaud took over clothing labels, he situated designers as the supposed head of the label and boosted their persona into “somebodies”. E.g. Marc Jacobs. This gave the label more exposure, more press and, consequently, more money for Arnaud’s LVMH company. As well as controlling the look of the brands and their street face (the stores), Arnaud also took more control over the direction of the label. Which some designers wouldn’t like of course. But then some of them got their own brand, e.g. Mr Jacobs.

A bit of celebity endorsement never hurts

Brands in the LVMH group include Marc Jacobs, Sephora, Loewe, Givenchy and Givenchy perfumes, Kenzo, DKNY, Louis Vuitton, TAG Heuer, Fendi, Dom Perignon, Veuve Cliquot, Christian Dior perfumes.They also own the DFS duty free chain. So they’re providing the luxury goods to stores they already own. Kaching.

Other megalomania groups are PPR (Pinault-Printemps-Redoute), which owns Gucci, who owns Yves Saint Laurent, Sergio Rossi, Balenciaga, and 50% of Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney, among others. Richemont is the third largest of these groups, and owns Cartier, Chloé, Montblanc, Van Cleef and Arpels.

As far as I can tell, some of the only companies – more well-known ones – still independent are Prada, Armani, Chanel, Versace and Hermès.

Luxury is no longer elite and one of a kind. It’s gone high street.