Live from GOOP: "GoopGlow, ingestible. I drink one every single morning. It’s skin care from the inside. And I take my vitamins of course. I’m on the Madame Ovary, the premenopausal, I say without any shame"

I know you tried

I know you're cursed

I know your best was still your worst

When Hollywood was calling out your name

Saint Augustine.

The best of the worst at GOOP. Who? Well, G.P.

G.P. herself:

How many Goop products are on you, or in you, right now?

An embarrassing amount. GoopGlow, ingestible. I drink one every single morning. It’s skin care from the inside. And I take my vitamins of course. I’m on the Madame Ovary, the premenopausal, I say without any shame.

Well, forget them. What’s on your wrist?

This is a fitness tracker device. My trainer is a big proponent of walking. So I track my steps, and then three times a day I take loops around the office just to make sure I’m not sitting too much.

How are you doing today?

Today shouldn’t be too bad because I did cardio this morning. I’m already at 7,800 steps.

Amazing.

My goal is 10,000 per day, so I’m good. Yesterday I only did 3,500.


Some super important executive inadvertently confesses pay can't be that good at GOOP.

Gucci loafers?

I borrowed these from a friend.


We switch to the kitchen department at GOOP which is not yet finished.

Your skirt is similarly business-meets-kitchen. No nonsense.

It’s apron-y, which is why I was drawn to it. Utilitarian piece. G. Label.


Now over to the Pocahontas of editing at GOOP.

You have a very heavy wrist game.

It’s like a garbage dump.

I like your dress, a little bit prairie. On trend.

I feel like I really thrived in the ’90s — this reminds me of that. It’s Brock Collection.

And then a warrior sandal.

Paul Andrew. I’m trying to get into sneaker culture. It’s not my jam.


And it's on to the finance department at GOOP.

The Off-White sweatshirt! The tennies!

I’m the street Goop.

Has “G.P.” ever commented on your sweatshirt?

Probably.


Where there is finance there's got to be accounting. He did not get the Q.

Is your polo terry cloth?

It’s teal, and I picked it because of the color choice. And it breathes. It’s Zara.


Now here comes the gravitating content officer at GOOP.

How do you dress for work?

I’ve gravitated to jumpsuits, dresses that don’t wrinkle. I have two small boys. It’s messy work being the mother of dragons.

Tell me about the dress.

This is La Double J. I like that they’re high-necked or collared. It’s the most flattering look for me, with my haircut.

Those are the whitest white sneakers I’ve ever seen.

You can use a Magic Eraser on your shoes.


Can there be life at GOOP without a schtylist? No, and this one has arms.

How do you feel?

Fabulous.

Oh, good. Tell me about these high-waisted Frame Denim jeans.

Goop x Frame denim from last summer. Totally in my wheelhouse. Classic with an edge. Jeans every day.

You’re wearing your blazer as a cape.

It’s extra fashion, and I can do all sorts of things with my arms.


Head of V.I.P. who left her heels in the car.

Tell me about your shoes.

These are by Yuul Yie. I have heels in the car.

Very classic watch.

My sweet boyfriend gave it to me for my 33rd birthday. Black band. I wear a lot of black. I drive black cars. I’m from Jersey so I’m a little hood sometimes.


Finally to the Ret Op Ass @GOOP.

Is your dress linen?

It’s silk and linen. For a long time I used to just use neutrals. Now I’ll do a pop of color just to keep it fun. It’s Tuesday. Why not? And it’s not holding me in like a sausage.

...

...

Read the full article. It is so worth it.

Could someone please slap me in the face now!

by Christine Hahn

by Christine Hahn

KL

Karl Lagefeld and Jacques de Bascher
from "The beautiful Fall" - Alicia Drake (highly recommended)

“I’m a kind of fashion nymphomaniac who never gets an orgasm.”

 “Vanity is the healthiest thing in life.”

 “I’m rather pro-prostitution. I admire people who do it. It can’t be much fun. Thank goodness for it. People need relief or they become murderers.”

 “Normally, I don’t recommend me for wedding dresses – they all get a divorce.”

 “Be politically correct, but please don’t bother other people with conversation about being politically correct, because that’s the end of everything. You want to create boredom? Be politically correct in your conversation.”

 “Kate Middleton has a nice silhouette and she is the right girl for that boy. I like that kind of woman, I like romantic beauties. On the other hand, her sister struggles. I don’t like the sister’s face. She should only show her back.”

 “I am a sort of vampire, taking the blood of other people.”

 On selfies: “They are this horrible thing where you are distorted. The chin is too big, the head is too small. No, this is electronic masturbation.”

 “Chic is a kind of mayonnaise, either it tastes, or it doesn’t.”

 “I have no human feelings.”

 “The discussion of fur is childish.”

 “I am very much down to Earth. Just not this earth.”

"Analysis? What for? To get back to normality? I don’t want to be normal." (T)

"I came to know Marlene Dietrich when she was an old lady," Lagerfeld said. "I introduced her to Helmut Newton. He told me he used to masturbate to her photographs."

"I have a Google brain."

Fashion modelling dumbs down modest intellectually aspiring young girls to foster sartorial masturbation

In a yet unpublished paper we posit fashion modelling dumbs down modest intellectually aspiring young girls to foster sartorial masturbation in a masculine-neoliberal-dominated cultural space of vanity and profanity. pic.twitter.com/qqxhNgu3sX

— Straussian Obfuscator (@ErebusSagace) January 14, 2019

Please discuss.

'2019 German Parliamentary Fashion' presented

Exclusive '2019 German Parliamentary Fashion' in Berlin

Three models present trendy line of smart yet casual-sophisticated suits in an austerity-friendly wool/polyester blend.

The 2019 women prefer an audacious color mix with a decided tinge of Scottish highland nostalgia, complemented by politically correct cotton tights and rounded off with a slightly rumpled jacket.

Reading Lounge

1. Train trip in Norway

2. Ugliness Is Underrated

3. A Well-Behaved Woman

4. We make street food, at home

 5. Taleb: Those Idiots Who Emphatically Told Me "He Will Last 3 Months At Best"

6. The Truth About Algorithms

7. Twitter Should Kill the Retweet

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1. Pipes, monks and glaciers: Climbing Everest, 1920s-style

2. Love and loathing in Las Vegas

3. Hospital patients held hostage for cash

4. These Americans fled the country to escape their giant student debt

5. Blood on the Canvas

6. BIG BANG ONE CLICK CALAVERA CATRINA

Reading Lounge

1. You have to apply to buy Wone’s $320 leggings, and you can bet founder Kristin Hildebrand will Google you first.

2. Academically conned

3. To Heil, or Not To Heil, When Traveling in the Third Reich

4. Why Do Some People Have Curly Hair and Others Straight?

5. The First Abstract Painter Was a Woman

6. Trolling Nazis (and the world) with Forged Art

7. The first Mechanical massage chair

8. Revisiting Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Reading Lounge

1. Brunello Cucinelli

2. Google’s AI to detect toxic comments can be easily fooled with ‘love’

3. The Brains of Jazz and Classical Musicians Work Differently, New Research Shows

4. Who Is Michael Ovitz?

5. The color Red

6. These Newly Released Nuclear Test Videos Are Horrific And Beautiful At The Same Time

7. The rising use of recycled plastic in design is "bullshit" says Jan Boelen

8. Every Wes Anderson movie ranked in order of greatness

Reading Lounge

1. Man is pleading people to stop ‘having sex’ with his hedge

2. Moncler's New Identity

3. What if U.S. retail prices were not denominated in U.S. dollars, but instead were denominated in gold or Bitcoin?

4. Life as a North Korean living in the South.

5.  “All credit card PIN numbers in the World leaked”

Reading Lounge

1. "preponderant design assemblage"

2. Chinese Folklore Gets Reimagined as High Fashion Couture Photo Shoots

3. The tiny union beating the gig economy giants

4. The Modi vision

5. In Europe's east, a border town strains under China's Silk Road train boom

6. How Warner Brothers Resisted a Hollywood Ban on Anti-Nazi Films in the 1930s and Warned Americans of the Dangers of Fascism

7. Honeymoon planner for billionaires

"testosterone increases positive attitudes toward positional goods when they are described as status-enhancing, but not when they are described as power-enhancing or high in quality"

You hear that Louis Vuiton?

The Froomester showed that inhaling Salbutamol wins you the Vuelta. After three weeks of steep climbs on a road cycle in sweltering heat. Good to know you can gain status easier.

Single-dose testosterone administration increases men’s preference for status goods

Abstract

In modern human cultures where social hierarchies are ubiquitous, people typically signal their hierarchical position through consumption of positional goods—goods that convey one’s social position, such as luxury products. Building on animal research and early correlational human studies linking the sex steroid hormone testosterone with hierarchical social interactions, we investigate the influence of testosterone on men’s preferences for positional goods. Using a placebo-controlled experiment (N = 243) to measure individuals’ desire for status brands and products, we find that administering testosterone increases men’s preference for status brands, compared to brands of similar perceived quality but lower perceived status. Furthermore, testosterone increases positive attitudes toward positional goods when they are described as status-enhancing, but not when they are described as power-enhancing or high in quality. Our results provide novel causal evidence for the biological roots of men’s preferences for status, bridging decades of animal behavioral studies with contemporary consumer research.

Reasons are manifold. Like shagging.

At the individual level, higher social rank improves mating opportunities, promotes access to resources, reduces stress, and increases social influence. Therefore, individuals exert considerable effort to enhance their social rank by gaining status (i.e., respect and admiration from others, sometimes also referred to as prestige) and power (i.e., control over valuable resources, sometimes also referred to as dominance).

There is also the risk of outspending yourself and you might end up looking like an idiot.

Understanding the drivers of costly signaling through positional consumption is important because this behavior is, by definition, wasteful—in the sense that less expensive goods could have the same functional value as their high-status counterparts (e.g., cars and houses). Status consumption therefore creates inefficiencies. Spending resources to elevate perceived status might, for instance, perpetuate poverty by reducing self-investment in health and education among the poor, who spend disproportionately more on status signals and thus substitute status signaled through consumption for long-run wealth accumulation.

Then again, you might be an idiot but a fit one.

The handicap principle explains these adaptations as costly signals of male fitness: because only the fittest can afford to waste resources on traits that do not directly increase survival probability, these adaptations become reliable indicators of fitness.

Speaking of fit idiots, you want of course Calvin Klein's crap.

Testosterone’s effect on brand preference

Participants viewed five pairs of pretested apparel brands in a randomized, counterbalanced order. One brand of each pair was associated with higher social rank than the other (e.g., Calvin Klein, high vs. Levi’s, low). Importantly, perceived social rank difference between the brands in each pair was substantially greater than perceived difference in quality, mitigating the possibility that the latter influenced participants’ preferences in our task (see Fig. 2b and Supplementary Table 5). Participants indicated the extent to which they preferred one brand relative to the other using 10-point rating scales (Fig. 2a).

More testosterone-laden stuff here.

Reading Lounge

1. This fashion show is being called the latter for its ridiculous catwalk.

2. Foreign languages used in Japanese courts

3. Competition in everything - gardens on wheels

4. Fleet Street’s Greek comedy

5. EU is financing Greece – as the Greek government persecutes ex-head of ELSTAT

6. And now for some sick chick. It's complicated.

7. After the IT miracle

Reading Lounge

1. Chinese Couples Want Boys — Trust Me, I’m a Fertility Doctor

2. “All the other designers hate me...” Karl Lagerfeld gets ready to tell all - Karl rules them all

"I read somewhere that now you must ask a model if she is comfortable with posing. Its simply too much, from now on, as a designer, you can’t do anything. As for the accusations against the poor Karl Templar [creative director at Interview magazine], I don’t believe a single word of it. A girl complained he tried to pull her pants down and he is instantly excommunicated from a profession that up until then had venerated him. Its unbelievable. If you don’t want your pants pulled about, don’t become a model! Join a nunnery, there’ll always be a place for you in the convent. They’re recruiting even!"

3. The role of privacy fatigue in online privacy behavior

Reading Lounge

1. Takahata Isao obituary: Studio Ghibli’s quiet visionary of the real

2. "But while the Triple S does make its wearer look dainty, the shoe does not feel agile on the foot. Returning home after a long day in the city, my feet felt tired, oversized, and swollen, much like the body of the Triple S itself."

3. Drunk on genocide: how the Nazis celebrated murdering Jews

4. "Rochester is perhaps the single greatest pornographer produced in the English language. The literary critic Carol Fabricant writes in “Rochester’s World of Imperfect Enjoyment” (the Journal of English and Germanic Philology) that the “poems focus to such an extent upon genitalia of various sizes and capacities that these, by their sheer quantity, emerge as the central objects of Rochester’s world.”

5. Illicit Love Letters: Albert Camus and Maria Casares

6. The day 385 years ago when bananas made their British debut