As you know by now, October is Breast Cancer Awareness month (shop our pink picks if you haven't already), so to go out with a bang we're sharing an inspiring interview we found over on Lisa Says Gah featuring Amande Niello who's a fashion blogger fighting cancer. Scroll down to see photos from her editorial, and be sure to check out her blog Thanks I Have Cancer to read her story.
After Lou Reed died of liver disease on Oct. 27, 2013, Rolling Stone wrote that he "fused street-level urgency with elements of European avant-garde music, marrying beauty and noise, while bringing a whole new lyrical honesty to rock & roll poetry."
His old friend Patti Smith, writing in The New Yorker, called him "our generation's New York poet, championing its misfits as Whitman had championed its workingman and Lorca its persecuted."
Laurie Anderson, his wife since 2008, described Reed in The East Hampton Star as "a tai chi master" who spent his last days on the South Fork "being happy and dazzled by the beauty and power and softness of nature."
"Lou was a prince and a fighter," she wrote.
On the latter point, at least, Ms. Anderson may overlap with Howard Sounes, the author of the controversial new Lou Reed biography, "Notes From the Velvet Underground: The Life of Lou Reed," released in England last week, which paints a less-than-flattering portrait of Reed as a "monster" of a man, who used racial slurs, abused women and fought with fellow artists.
"He was constantly at war with people — with family, friends, lovers, band members, managers and record companies," Mr. Sounes said in an interview last week. "He was a suspicious, cantankerous, bitter, angry man."
"It was the worst-kept secret in show business," he added.
Photo Patti Smith and Reed, circa the 1970s. Credit Lynn Goldsmith/CorbisWhile no one ever confused Lou Reed for an Osmond, the Sounes book, part of a coming wave of Reed biographies, pushes the standard Reed narrative of the substance-addled, gender-confused avatar of cool into "Mommie Dearest" territory, portraying him as given to emotional and physical brutality, paranoid tantrums and acid-tongued invective.
Mr. Sounes's portrait of an artist who slapped women, yanked fans by the hair and pulled knives on bandmates has stirred headlines on both sides of the Atlantic since its publication on Oct. 22, and provoked a spirited Reed defense among fans and intimates.
His longtime wife and manager, Sylvia Reed ( now Ramos), broke what she said was an 18-year media silence to dispute Mr. Sounes's portrait for this article.
"That's not a person I recognize," Ms. Ramos said of the Lou Reed portrayed in the book. Many damning anecdotes, she added, seem to come from people Reed knew in the hazy drug-fueled 1970s "that I know for a fact were not capable of remembering anything they did in any given six-month period during that time, much less come back all these years later and say, 'Oh, yes, I was there, this is what was going on.' "
Readers will have to decide whether the musician was simply a rock-and-roller taking a walk on the wild side or the disturbed individual Mr. Sounes portrays.
Photo Sylvia Morales and Lou Reed at their wedding in January 1980. Credit Roberta Bayley/Redferns, via Getty ImagesThrough more than 140 interviews, Mr. Sounes, who has previously written biographies on Charles Bukowski, Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney, portrays a troubled genius whose antisocial tendencies were evident even from his early years in Freeport, N.Y.
The book quotes one friend from that time about a double-date on prom night, in which Reed made a move on his date in the back seat while the other couple squirmed in front. As the encounter turned X-rated, the girl in front protested that such behavior was disgusting.
Reed answered with a vulgar rejoinder, adding, "Don't look if you don't like it."
Mental illness, Mr. Sounes says, was always a factor in Reed's erratic behavior. The book reports that Reed suffered his first nervous breakdown in his freshman year in college, which was quickly followed by his much-chronicled experience with electroshock therapy.
The treatment decimated his short-term memory and inspired "incredible rage" toward his parents, particularly his father, Sid, according to Reed's sister, Merrill Reed Weiner. (Ms. Weiner, however, disputed her brother's claim that the therapy was forced on him "to discourage homosexual feelings." "My parents were many things — anxious, controlling — but they were bl azing liberals," she is quoted as saying.)
If Reed harbored deep-seated anger after this trauma, it was likely aggravated by his early experiences with fame — if such a word applies to his tenure in his seminal '60s band, the Velvet Underground.
The band's albums are now considered among the most influential in rock history. But at the height of the hippie era, they were ignored by many critics and the public, which was more interested in flower power than the Velvets' brooding art rock.
The failure to break through left him bitter, Mr. Sounes said in the interview: "He spent five years creating some of the most inventive and original mus ic of the 1960s, and nobody cared. The week of the Woodstock festival, the Velvet Underground were playing at a roadhouse in Massachusetts."
At a time when the rock world was entranced with kaleidoscope LSD visions, Reed was bingeing on speed and, as his bandmate John Cale has said, acting like a "queen bitch" and spitting out "the sharpest rebukes around."
Continue reading the main story Slide Show Lou Reed, 1942-2013CreditFred R. Conrad/The New York Times
"Meth made him feel like Superman," Mr. Sounes writes; he reportedly told one friend that "he was going to take meth every day for the rest of his life. For years, he did."
Reed's demons, which came to include alcohol in copious amounts, were allowed to run amok during his solo career in the free-for-all '70s.
On a 1975 tour of Italy, Reed splattered an unsatisfactory plate of pasta against a wall during a lunch in the luxurious Ambasciatori Palace Hotel in Rome, according to the book; he later pulled a switchblade on his violin player at a party at an estate belonging the Agnelli family, the founders of Fiat.
But Reed was also capable of outrage that went well beyond the typical Keith Moon trash-the-hotel-room high jinks. At a news conference, the book recounts, Reed shocked reporters by saying, in vulgar terms, he came to Rome to have sex with the Pope.
Even more damning are the book's allegations of abusive behavior toward women.
Photo The cover of Howard Sounes's book.The guitarist Chuck Hammer recalled a 1979 concert in Germany, in which a woman climbed onstage during a tense standoff between Reed and a heckler. "Lou proceeds to drag her off the stage by her hair, and pushes her off the stage," Mr. Hammer is quoted as saying. "She fell 15 feet — at least, at which stage a full-blown riot breaks out."
Reed's first wife, Bettye Kronstad, recalled him starting to binge on Scotch every day around 3 p.m. on tour. Sometimes, those binges turned violent.
"'We were on the road, and he was really drunk, and he would, like, pin you up against a wall and tussle you, lik e rough you up a little," Ms. Kronstad is quoted as saying.
Once, he gave her a black eye, so she swung back at him: "It was pretty clear to me that the only way he would ever stop doing that was if I did it to him, so he'd have to walk on stage with a black eye."
While Mr. Sounes's book offers a detailed analysis of Reed's music, as well as some flattering anecdotes, it is the dirt on Reed that has gained news media attention.
A recent article about it in The Daily Beast cited Reed's derogatory refer ence to the fact that Bob Dylan is Jewish, and mentioned one anecdote in which Reed, in an interview with a journalist, referred to Donna Summer with a racial slur.
Coverage like that, Ms. Ramos said, describes a very different man from the one she was with for 18 years. "I was with him all those years," she said. "I saw him through not only the intense cycle of drinking and drugs, but through nine lawsuits, which were extremely stressful, and his financial condition when I met him was terrible."
"No matter how hard it got, I never had that behavior from him," Ms. Ramos said. She added that "he was never physically aggressive with me."
Ms. Ramos said that Reed, while not religious, was deeply proud of his Jewish heritage, and highly sensitive to anti-Semitic slurs. As for racist language, Reed was a student of jazz and soul who campaigned against apartheid. "He never used that word in front of me and he would have been ferociously angry if anyone used it in front of him," she said.
Ms. Ramos also disputed the idea that Reed was mentally ill. "He saw things differently," she said. "He was a creative genius." While Reed and she had discussed his undergoing shock therapy as a youth because of depression, Ms. Ramos added: "In the years that I lived and worked with him, he had no diagnosis of severe mental illness, no hospitalizations, no admissions to clinics, no depressive states, no interventions, no withdrawals into apathy. He was constantly productive and working."
Photo Andy Warhol, left, Reed and Danny Fields in 1978. Credit Ebet Roberts/Redferns, via Getty ImagesWithout question, Reed was capable of highly self-contradictory behavior. In the 1970s, he publicly identified as gay, yet he went on to marry three women ("Notes" recounts Mr. Reed's faux-wedding, complete with three-tiered cake, to his transgender partner, Rachel, in 1977). But Reed intimates found the idea that Reed was a "monster" unconvincing.
"Most talented people are horrible and wonderful simultaneously," said Danny Fields, the writer and rock-scene fixture who briefly managed Reed.
When he received an advance copy of the book, Mr. Fields said, "I looked up my name in the index, read my quotes, sighed and put it on the shelf."
His conclusion: "Poor Lou, his act worked too well."
Legs McNeil, the writer who helped found Punk magazine in the '70s, said that Reed's unhinged behavior hardly stood out in a circle that included berserkers like Iggy Pop. "Everyone was on so many different drugs that their brains got scrambled," he said.
Some of Reed's lingering image problems may boil down to a career-long failure in public relations.
In contrast to rock-god contemporaries like Pete Townshend and John Lennon, who used news media interviews as a form of public confessional (Lennon made a shame-soaked admission in a 1980 interview for Playboy to apologize that he had been "a hitter" in past relationships with women), Mr. Reed often seemed to see interviews as a bare-knuckle boxing match.
His face-offs with journalists are the stuff of legends among fans. In a much-circulated interview from 2000, the prickly star stops just short of slow-roasting a young Swedish television reporter on a spit, deriding his lack of experience, dearth of interesting questions and ultimately his profession, calling journalists "disgusting," "pigs," the "lowest form of life."
Reed thought that many journalists were "lying in wait for him," said Anthony DeCurtis, a longtime Rolling Stone contributor who is writing a comparatively sympathetic Reed biography to be published by Little, Brown next year.
An interview might start off with benign questions about songwriting, but as Reed once jokingly said to Mr. DeCurtis, they were eventually going to ask, "'Did you have sex with a goat in Central Park with David Bowie in 1975?' "
(In addition to Mr. DeCurtis's book, Rolling Stone's Will Hermes is scheduled to publish "Lou: A New York Life"; Luc Sante, the chronicler of New Yor k street life and culture, also said he recently started a Reed biography that he intends to be "proportionate.")
In the latter years of Reed's life, there was not much tawdry material to keep journalists titillated.
Aidan Levy, a New York music writer who wrote "Dirty Blvd.: The Life and Music of Lou Reed," also published last month, said that Reed "could be abrasive, difficult and abusive," but also that he "softened up over the course of his career, so Lou Reed in 1974 was not the same as Lou Reed in 2004."
Indeed, Ms. Ramos said that Reed r esolved to free himself from his addictions starting around 1979. The grueling process took years, and often involved separating himself from people from his old drug milieu and holing up in his country house in New Jersey, where he explored tai chi and Eastern philosophy.
"He did this on his own," she said. "He was one of the strongest, bravest people I've ever known."
Howie Klein, the former president of Reprise Records, recently posted a retort to Mr. Sounes's book called "A Very Different Lou Reed From the Guy I Knew" on his blog, DownWithTyranny! In the post, Mr. Klein recalled talking philosophy with Reed and the former Czech president Vac lav Havel after a state dinner at the Clinton White House.
Michael Dorf, a founder of the experimental music venue the Knitting Factory, recalled genteel dinners with Reed in which they discussed art, music and their shared appreciation of Willamette Valley pinot noirs. After a long struggle with addiction, Reed was able to sip wine "in minimal amounts, for the flavor," he said.
"People always said, 'He hasn't lashed out at you?' " Mr. Dorf said. "No, he never did." Rather, he recalled Reed having "a grandfatherly kind of quality to him, that made him very warm and almost very huggable."
(Ms. Anderson did not respond to requests for an interview for this arti cle, although her new film, "Heart of a Dog," a rumination on memory and loss, is laced with images of Reed).
Photo Lou Reed in 1982. His ex-wife says he had resolved to free himself from his addictions starting around 1979. Credit Waring Abbott/Getty ImagesIndeed, the Lou Reed who sat with Mr. DeCurtis for an expansive hour-plus interview at the 92nd Street Y in 2006 bore little resemblance to the bleach-blond nihilist of the '70s who squirmed through interviews murmuring Warholian nonanswers.
Reed, looking Malibu breezy in a ribbed T-shirt and cocoa-colored sports jacket, sprawled loose-limbed on a chair, smiling and joking as the conversation bounced from Fats Domino to William Burroughs to "Hudson River Wind Meditations," Reed's foray into ambient meditation music.
At one point, Mr. DeCurtis asked if he ever felt burdened by the iconic Lou Reed persona, as the public understood it.
"It's a creation," Reed said. "The most important thing is that people believe it's true."
"If they don't believe it's true," he added, "they won't listen to the song."
We'd be lying if we said we weren't slightly fatigued by the incessant discussion of French vs. American style, but when we spotted Vogue's latest video featuring model Camille Rowe (who spends her time split between Paris and New York) we were more than happy to continue the conversation. In the lighthearted short film, Rowe illustrates how a Parisian would handle certain situations and vice versa. It's probably the cutest thing you'll see all week, so click above to watch and tell us what you think in the comments!
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In the long battle for feline affection, cat owners may have some fresh ammunition.
David Teie, a soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra, recently teamed up with animal scientists to develop "Music for Cats," a series of whirring, lilting and at times squeaky musical tracks designed for cats' brains and ears.
Owners often leave the radio or a playlist on for cats alone in the house, assuming they will share human musical tastes, be it classical, country or the lyrical tones of NPR hosts. But cats' hearing develops differently and "we mindlessly turn on music" for them, said Charles Snowdon, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who worked with Mr. Teie on the project. With its special instruments and tonal mixing, "Music for Cats" aims to bridge that sensory gap, he said.
In some tracks, sounds similar to the chirps of birds are overlaid with hurried streams of staccato for an energizing effect; in others, crescendos of purring and suckling sounds are designed to relax. To a human ear, the sounds are otherworldly and at times soporific.
But what about the music's target audience? My cat, Pocket, could do with some music-induced relaxation. She was found wandering the streets of the Bronx, and when we took her from the New York City Animal Care and Control shelter to her new home in Brooklyn, she developed a nervous habit of running full speed down the hallway, smacking her head against doors along the way.
Listening to the track "Cozmo's Air," built upon soothing vibrato sounds, she sat still. By the end of the four and a half minutes, she had curled herself around the speakers, purring.
Young rescue cats like Pocket are generally the most responsive to the music, Mr. Snowdon said, adding that the more-calming tracks could be therapeutic for cats who have experienced neglect or abuse.
A Kickstarter campaign aims to raise $20,000 to produce more songs for a full album that can be left on for the housebound pets. It will include around six tracks of 10 minutes of music, interspersed with silences.
Continue reading the main story Music for Cats Video by musicforcats.comIn a video that accompanies the campaign, some of Instagram's favorite cats are shown listening for the first time to music designed for them. In the video, Nala, Bacon, City the Kitty and Cole and Marmalade appear to react variably with surprise, confusion or contentment.
The "Music for Cats" project joins a pet market that was worth more than $74 billion last year and which continues to grow, according to George Puro, who analyzes it for Packaged Facts, a market research company.
For several years, marketers have been particularly successful selling pet products and treatments generally associated with humans. Consumers who see their pets as family members (referred to as "pet humanization") are increasingly inclined to spend money on things they themselves would appreciate, Mr. Puro said. The cat music can now be added to a list including spa treatments, artisan food and designer clothes.
Mr. Teie said he wants to bring "the beauty and comfort of music to as many species as possible." Next up: dogs.
"I worry they will want to sing along, though," he said.
Inspired by the brand's launch of the blooms and caleido prints, Gucci's Alessandro Michele came up with the idea of the project #GucciGram, which invites talents to reimagine artworks by marrying them with these new prints. The result is a gallery chock-full of eye candy from well-known artists to emerging image-makers worldwide. Scroll down for a few of our favorites, and be sure to check out the #GucciGram site for more!
The dust is still settling in the empty drawers that once belonged to Raf Simons at Dior and Alber Elbaz at Lanvin, but speculation already has reached a deafening pitch about who might replace them.
Olivier Rousteing of Balmain, Phoebe Philo of Céline, Joseph Altuzarra and Riccardo Tisci of Givenchy are some of the names that have been thrown (not by the individuals themselves) into the ring for both jobs. Hands down the loudest speculation, however, is that Mr. Elbaz, now presumably a free agent, is the natural choice for Dior.
But is he? A little perspective.
We've been to this dance before. Rumor had it that Mr. Elbaz was a top candidate back in 2011 when John Galliano was fired from Dior and the house first was looking to fill the position that eventually went to Mr. Simons. There was a reason the two sides decided not to engage, and it may well still hold true. Though there is also one big difference between now and then: Mr. Elbaz is no longer employed, and the need for a job is a big deal — even if his forced exit came with a fairly large parachute.
Still, if Dior wanted him then, there's no reason it wouldn't want him again.
Afte r all, he is very talented, and he has made a signature out of a certain kind of highly decorative ease that would make sense in the Dior aesthetic lineage. He understands how to manage a heritage brand, having been at Yves Saint Laurent for a brief stint after Mr. Saint Laurent retired from ready-to-wear, and at Lanvin for 14 years, and he appreciates the responsibility of being entrusted with a legacy. He can work with an atelier (the Lanvin atelier loved him). He lives in Paris and does not have the distraction of a second brand.
And he is widely adored in the fashion world. On Wednesday, talking on the phone, Ralph Toledano, the president of the Fédération Française de la Couture, du Prêt-à-Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode, and the man who brought Mr. Elbaz to Paris as the designer of Guy Laroche back in 1996, told me, "The fashion world loves him, and he deserves it." Given that the fashion world is mourning Mr. Simons's departure, replacing him with someone who has its support, and who is seen as having been maltreated, would give Dior a fairly deep cushion of good will.
It all makes a fair amount of sense, yet Mr. Elbaz has been very vocal about his attraction to the small, tight team at Lanvin. His bruising experience at Yves Saint Laurent, where he was replaced in short order by Tom Ford after the brand was bought by then-Gucci Group, has made him leery of the corporatization of fashion.
He is a designer who wears his emotions on his sleeve, and Dior is one of the biggest global brands in the industry, a cornerstone of the billion-dollar club. Its demands of a creative director are well-documented — though at the same time, there were areas that were off-limits to Mr. Simons: the choice of celebrity spokespeople, for example; the store design. Both of those bore the quirky signature of Mr. Elbaz at Lanvin, and they would probably be responsibilities that would be hard for him to relinquish as they are integral to the aesthetic message of a brand.
In the end, though, the single biggest factor that argues against this scenario is a speech Mr. Elbaz gave last week at the Fashion Group International Night of Stars in New York, noting that "everyone in fashion just needs a little more time." A lack of time was widely believed to have contributed to Mr. Simons's decision to leave Dior, so it would seem contradictory for Mr. Elbaz to turn around and opt for that job.
Still, when Mr. Elbaz commits to a brand, he does so for the long term, and Dior could use a little commitment about now — both for the sake of the men and women in the ateliers, and for the sake of the customers.
Not very conclusive, I know. But if years watching this business has taught me anything, it's that I rarely can second-guess the machinations of creative hiring that go on behind the ornate facades of these brands. It could be Dior really wants to shock the world by going with the unexpected, à la Balenciaga and Demna Gvasalia. And Mr. Elbaz may decide he's had enough and would just like a different life, as Helmut Lang and Ann Demeulemeester did before him.
For all our sakes, it would be healthier to stop the gossip, let Mr. Elbaz and Sidney Toledano, the chief executive of Dior, catch their breath; leave this to the headhunters to sort out; and assess the decision once it has been made.
Though if you believe that is going to happen, I also have a very pretty bridge I can sell you.
If you were to open your closet right now, a good chunk of it is probably dedicated to your work clothes. Right? Well, amongst your assortment, do you have the one piece designers swear by? Well, we sat down with Liz Giardina, the VP of design at Derek Lam 10 Crosby, to fill us in on the item every working woman needs in her closet. The result? A great poplin shirt.
"Something they stressed when I worked at Derek Lam was the importance of honest materials. Classic materials like cotton canvas, poplin and Merino wool. Fabrics that are in my wardrobe, my mother's, and my grandmothers. Fabrics that have been around for generations. I think poplin is this wonderful crisp light poplin. It makes you look beautiful. You can wear it with jeans, a pencil skirt, and even a pair of sweatpants. Everybody should own a lot of them. I think it is exciting to see someone treat it in a different way like playing with the proportions and trims of a traditional poplin shirt," Liz said. So true!
Do you have the perfect poplin shirt in your wardrobe? If you're still looking for the one, keep scrolling to shop a few of our favorite tops of the moment!
It was the party of the night. For the invited.
Nylon magazine was hosting an "It Girl Prom" at the Gilded Lily on West 15th Street. It promised a cute crowd, open bar and a performance by the Swedish singing duo Icona Pop.
Under the skeptical eye of an outsize bouncer, several iPad-wielding door-girls checked the names of hopeful guests. "Press?" said Terence Edgerson, 26, who was bobbling gently but insistently against these gatekeepers like a housefly trying to get through a glass window.
Charming and a sharply dressed in a black velvet Dior Homme blazer and leopard-print shirt, Mr. Edgerson had all the élan needed to fit into a stylish party — except for one inconvenient detail. He wasn't invited.
But as a veteran party crasher, he was not about to give up. About 20 minutes later, Mr. Edgerson, who identifies himself as a writer for the obscure Bunch magazine and a party chronicler under the Instagram and Twitter handles @NYSocialBee, spotted several acquaintances on their way in. One fellow extended a friendly arm and escorted Mr. Edgerson inside, as a plus-one.
Soon enough, he was slinging back cocktails, air-kissing fellow partygoers and dancing onstage with Aino Jawo, one half of Icona Pop. Flashbulbs popped.
"It was such a blast, I had so much fun," Mr. Edgerson after an hour inside, spilling into the night with an "It Girl" party bag dangling from his arm. But there was barely time to sift through its contents before heading uptown. There were more parties to crash.
New York's private-party scene allows a select few to eat, drink and be entertained for free, often in the company of celebrities. The irony is that while exclusivity is the key to this circuit's appeal, it relies on a constant stream of fresh faces, pushing their way through the velvet rope, to stay vibrant.
Hence the enduring New York social type: the sharp-elbowed dervish party crasher, comprising e qual parts of opportunism, chutzpah and off-price designer clothes, and whose current iteration is exemplified by Mr. Edgerson.
Not everybody is so charmed, of course.
"Party crashers are a publicist's biggest nuisance," said Kelly Brady, owner of Brandsway Creative, a public relations firm that has managed large events for the Daily Front Row and others.
"Our clients hire us to craft the perfect guest list of people for their event, and curate the right crowd for their brand," she wrote in an email. "Party crashers are the ones who act the most entitled a t the door, by trying to pass themselves off as a reporter from some bogus website. And if they do weasel their way into a party, they are the ones who drink too much, follow the trays of passed hors d'oeuvres, and hoard the gift bags at the end of the night."
Ms. Brady's firm maintains a blacklist of about a dozen crashers, mostly men, some of whom falsely claim to be reporters. "Just the ones that have misbehaved, that you don't want back," she added. "A party crasher can get through, and if they blend in, I won't know."
She named one unwelcome fixture on her blacklist, William Gaines, who she said claims he worked at Comcast. She has barred him from her events, but that doesn't always stop him. One time, she said, � ��he showed up before the event and was in the restaurant before we arrived to set up for the opening."
Reached by email, Mr. Gaines said he indeed worked at the Comcast in the mid-2000s and is currently an actor who "receives invitations to events all over New York City and beyond." He added that the restaurant episode is "a figment of that Brandsway employee's imagination. Quite possibly an immature and bitter P.R. girl harboring resentment that I didn't show the interest in her that she showed in me."
The dean of party crashers is arguably Steve Kaplan, a tall, shambling man who has been on the circuit for decades. Nominally a travel writer for Talent in Motion, a magazine based in New Rochelle and published biannually, he is known as Shaggy because of his unkempt curls.
A relatively benign if perennially uninvited presence, Shaggy has been at the party-crashing game for so long that his arrival these days, at least for some publicists, bestows a certain imprimatur. It means the party was worth crashing.
"If he doesn't show up to your party, your party sucks," said Leigh Cherrier, a spokeswoman for Louis Licari, a Fifth Avenue hair salon that gave a party this month attended by Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Fran Lebowitz, Katie Couric, Sofia Coppola and Sandra Lee.
Shaggy crashed. "I walked up to him and said, 'Sir, thank you so much,' because I felt like, he came, that means my party is a big deal," Mrs. Cherrier said, adding that the only selfie she took that night was with him.
Reached by phone, Mr. Kaplan declined to comment.
Not all crashers end up being embraced. Nancy Kane, a longtime publicist of celebrity events, warns that crashers who get caught can turn vindictive. "Party crashers are like crazy exes," she said. "Very hard to get rid of, once you eject them. They don't forget."
Ms. Kane said she once had to get a restraining order against a crasher, whom she prefers not to name because of his intimidating tactics, after she threw him out of a party. "He ended up waiting for me, and following me to my apartment that night," Ms. Kane said with a shudder.
And in 2012, a crasher by the name of Priyantha De Silva was reportedly sentenced to one-and-a-half to two years in prison for using a fake credit card to pay for a ticket and Prada bag at a fund-raiser.
But not every showdown with a crasher is so fraught. Ms. Kane laughs as she recalled running the door for a downtown Halloween party, hosted by the designer Karl Lagerfeld, in 2005. Tinsley Mortimer, a prominent socialite, came dressed as the cartoon character Rainbow Brite.
"But then, a few minutes after she arrived, another guest, in a puppy dog mask, said she was Tinsley Mortimer," Ms. Kane said. "I said, you have to take off your mask or we won't let you in, and the puppy went running out the door. Then, an hour later, in walks a ghost and says, 'I'm Tinsley Mortimer.' "
Ms. Kane adds: "The crazier the venue, the easier it is to get in, believe it or not. In Cannes, people are always sneaking into Harvey Weinstein's party at the Hôtel du Cap. You can arrive by boat, and once on the lawn, if you're sneaky about it, you can usually wander in."
Fortunately for the crasher on a budget, a boat is not always required. For Mr. Edgerson, crashing is "the least amount of trouble, and the most amount of fun, you can have without doing any harm," he said. "That's half the thrill, that you've managed to get into this party that you weren't invited to."
Back in downtown Manhattan, Mr. Edgerson had left the Nylon party and arrived at the Dream Midtown hotel on West 55th Street, which was celebrating its revamped lobby bar and rooftop lounge, PHD Terrace.
He wasn't on the list, but the hotel drew an older crowd and softly speaking "press" was enough to unhook the velvet rope. (Bunch, "a guide for the daring creative," is based in Los Angeles and has published five issues in three years.)
A native of Rochester Hills, Mich., Mr. Edgerson has been crashing events since moving to New York at age 18. He said he started out interning for Paper magazine, adding that he once lost a job at Idiel Showroom, a fashion distribution and marketing firm, for falling asleep during a trade show. "I'd been out partying too much, so I couldn't stay awake," he said.
His party-crashing night begins with wardrobe selection, where favorite pieces include a Karl Lagerfeld for H&M blazer and a white Dior sweater. "It starts with what you're wearing, but it's also confidence," he said. "If you are planning to get into the party, you can't second-guess yourself."
But even for career crashers, some doors remain tantalizingly out of reach.
"I wouldn't try and get into a Marc Jacobs after-party or show, and KCD is hard-core," he said, referring to the fashion P.R. pow erhouse, known for protecting every dainty soiree like the Empire defending the Death Star. "No one wants to crash a party that KCD is doing. A lot of people I know in fashion joke around about what kind of training they must go through to deny people."
(Rachna Shah, a spokeswoman for KCD, made no effort to dispel that notion. "I cannot disclose our training methods, but let's just say, if you make it out of training camp, you could probably be hired by the Secret Service," she said.)
Others may argue that firms like KCD are not just entitled, but compelled, to exclude crashers. The most elaborate parties can cost millions to produce, and crashers may pose security risks.
But, asked why anyone would want to attend an event at which they were not welcome, Mr. Edgerson seems almost not to understand the question.
"Why not? It's a party, and people are supposed to enjoy themselves," he said. "And if you want to go enjoy yourself, you should go do it."
In the warm air of an autumn night, bathed by the light of nearby Times Square, Mr. Edgerson pronounced himself impressed with the Dream Hotel. Nursing his sixth free cocktail of the night, he said: "The views are great. Midtown is not usually my first destination choice, but now, after seeing it, maybe I will come up here and hang out."
Mr. Edgerson departed around 1:30 a.m., not to go home, but to a party at the Goldbar, a lounge on Broome Street. This time, he said, he was on the list.
Looking for a new Instagram account to get lost in? Look no further than @thecollecteur. Artist Giulia Scalese takes high-fashion products of the moment (think: Fendi bags, Miu Miu dresses, and Valentino boots) and assembles them in creative ways against vibrant backgrounds to create fun and inspiring style snaps.
Check out the creative Instagram account here and Giulia's website too. Plus, keep scrolling to peep a few of our favorite snaps.
By John Ortved
Dimes, the Los Angeles-style cafe that serves chia pudding and kale black rice bowls, has been drawing moneyed organivores to the fringes of Chinatown since opening in 2013. The parade of painfully on-trend diners grew this year, when Dimes relocated to a larger storefront at 49 Canal Street. On a recent Friday, patrons paused from their tuna nori wraps to dissect their fashion choices.
Supermodel Miranda Kerr got a head start on Halloween this past weekend, as evidenced by her Instagram account. The brunette beauty attended a friend's party in Los Angeles dressed as Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, complete with a platinum blond wig and white halter dress. Although Kerr looks totally different, she still looks 100% amazing. To re-create the look for yourself, try this affordable Romwe halter dress.
Scroll down to see Miranda Kerr as Marilyn Monroe!
Balmain creative director Oliver Rousteing and his #balmainarmy came out in droves on Friday night to celebrate Rousteing's 30th birthday party in the Hollywood Hills. Everyone from Kendall Jenner to Jennifer Lopez to Justin Timberlake was in attendance, and everything was well-documented on Instagram, much to our delight. Considering Rousteing's high-profile Balmain x H&M fashion show earlier in the week and this celebrity-friend-filled celebration, we'd say it was a very successful week for the designer.
Scroll down to see the best Instagram photos of the stylish crew at the festivities!
During a recent long car ride whose soundtrack was a medley of NPR podcasts, I noticed a verbal mannerism during scripted segments that appeared on just about every show. I've heard the same tic in countless speeches, TED talks and Moth StorySLAMS — anywhere that features semi-informal first-person narration.
If I could attempt to transcribe it, it sounds kind of like, y'know … this.
That is, in addition to looser language, the speaker generously employs pauses and, particularly at the end of sentences, emphatic inflection. (This is a separate issue from upspeak, the tendency to conclude statements with question marks?) A result is the suggestion of spontaneous speech and unadulterated emotion. The irony is that such presentations are highly rehearsed, with each caesura calculated and every syllable stressed in advance.
In literary circles, the practice of poets reciting verse in singsong registers and unnatural cadences is known, derogatorily, as "poet voice." I propose calling this phenomenon "NPR voice" (which is distinct from the supple baritones we normally associate with radio voices).
This plague of pregnant pauses and off-kilter pronunciations must have come from someplace. But … where?
A primary cause of NPR voice is the sheer expansion of people broadcasting today. Whereas once only trained professionals were given a television or radio platform, amateurs have now taken over the airwaves and Internet. They may not have the thespian skills necessary to restrain the staginess of their elocution, leading to "indicating," or overacting to express emotion.
Michelle Obama's 2012 Democratic National Convention speech presents an interesting case of either indicating or of legitimately overwhelmed expression (or a combination of the two). By and large, the speech was received rapturously, though it had a few detractors, such as Walter Kirn, who wrote in The New Republic that the first lady was "overacting. Two gestures for every word."
In an in terview with NPR's "On the Media," he elaborated. "The emotions that were gushing up in her were exactly on cue with the lines coming up on the teleprompter," he said. "That to me seems prima facie evidence of acting."
Continue reading the main story Michelle Obama DNC Speech 2012 Complete: 'How Hard You Work' More Important Than Income Video by ABC NewsPerhaps he was referring to the fact that she began numerous sentences and clauses with brief stuttering, such as, "Wh-when people ask me whether being in the White House has changed my husband, I-I can honestly say. …" Her stuttering ramped up during emotionally charged segments of her speech and mostly fell away during the more straightforward portions.
If Mr. Kirn's charge was accurate, Mrs. Obama can be forgiven for trying to amplify heartfelt sentiments during a nationally televised political speech. But her performance (if that's what it was) is in keeping with a cultu re in which game shows are called reality TV and a billionaire, skyscraping real estate heir is positioning himself, with some success, as down to earth.
By now, however, people trying to sell something — whether it's a pair of jeans or a presidential candidate — know that consumers (and voters) are ever skeptical of faux sincerity. To subvert our suspicions, then, these salespeople reveal the ostensibly "genuine" cracks in their facades. How could I be deceiving you, the catch in the voice, the exposed seam in a sweater or the actor cracking up during an outtake asks, when I'm vulnerably baring my … flaws?
Speaking on (the more traditionally velvet-voiced) Alec Baldwin's WNYC radio program "Here's the Thing," the most influential contemporary speaker of NPR voice, Ira Glass, the host of "This American Life," said his own colloquial broadcasting style had anti-authoritarian roots.
"Back when we were kids, authority came from enunciation, precision," Mr. Glass said. "But a whole generation of people feel like that character is obviously a phony — like the newscaster on 'The Simpsons' — with a deep voice and gravitas."
For h is more intimate storytelling, Mr. Glass "went in the other direction," he said. "Any story hits you harder if the person delivering it doesn't sound like a news robot but, in fact, sounds like a real person having the reactions a real person would."
Continue reading the main story #567: What's Going On In There? Video by This American Life PodcastNonetheless, the preplanned responses of NPR personalities sound somewhat counterfeit when stacked against the largely, if not completely, unscripted monologues that open rawer podcasts, such as Marc Maron's "WTF" and Brad Listi's literary "Otherppl" podcast. Mr. Listi, for instance, frequently allows for lengthy pauses in between sentences that convey, without stage directions, the process of someone thinking aloud.
Mr. Glass found inspiration in Susan Stamberg, who began hosting NPR's "All Things Considered" in 1972. "She seemed like some Upper West S ide, New York lady leaning into the microphone, mensch-ily talking into the radio," he told Mr. Baldwin.
There may be another New Yorker partly responsible for NPR voice, albeit one across town. Carrie Bradshaw's "I couldn't help but wonder" rhetorical questions in "Sex and the City" were a marker, in the late 1990s, of the culture's transition to a confessional tone (the voice-overs were meant to be part of her sex column, which, to heighten their extemporaneous feel, the camera often depicted her composing).
C ompared with, say, Rod Serling's coolly detached voice-over in "The Twilight Zone," Carrie's self-interrogating speech was as radical a departure for scripted television as Mr. Glass's deviation from the staid, Cronkitesque anchorman.
But an even more forceful catalyst for speech patterns has been the modern Internet, the most powerful linguistic relaxant outside of alcohol. First, there was the advent of blogs, whose slacker-intellectual tone, Maud Newton hypothesized in The New York Times Magazine in 2011, derived in large part from David Foster Wallace's "slangy approachability."
"Was a blog more like writing or more like speech?" Ms. Newton wrote. "Soon it became a contrived and shambling hybrid of the two. The 'sort ofs' and 'reallys' and 'ums' and 'you knows' that we use in conversation were codified as the central connectors in the blogger lexicon. We weren't just mad, we were sort of enraged; no one was merely confused, but kind of totally mystified."
This style of writing then became most rampant on social media, especially Twitter, where the casual riposte trumps the carefully wrought and where, for fear of resembling a soulless corporate account or stiff elder, users typically traffic in, um, slangy approachability.
Conversely, specialists in fields where objective authority is still prized rare ly stoop to the hesitations and self-doubts of stammering confessors. In disciplines like academics, technology and finance, many speakers pepper long speeches with "right." Their pitch does not rise on the word, which comes in the middle of a series of statements — "analytics are most valuable over longer periods, right, than shorter ones, so … " — rather than at the end.
"Right" is not, therefore, delivered as a question that gives the listener a chance to respond to and possibly refute, but as a quick statement that is at once self-affirming ("This is right; I'm certain of what I'm talking about") and condescending ("Try to keep up with me").
Then again, maybe it's sort of just, well … me?
Correction: October 24, 2015An earlier version of this article misidentified the Manhattan neighborhood in which the "Sex and the City" character Carrie Bradshaw lived. It was the Upper East Side, not the West Side.
If "professional traveler" were a thing, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley would be the VP of it. We look forward to seeing the It girl strutting down the terminals of JFK and LAX on a weekly basis, in one on-point airport after another. For her latest visit to JFK this week, she wore another perfect travel outfit, but what really caught our eye this time was her casual yet polished bomber jacket. With its comfortable oversized shape and subtle embellishment, her cool bomber jacket beats our go-to leather jackets, denim jackets, blazers, and coats out for the best layering piece for the airport this fall and beyond.
Scroll down to see Huntington-Whiteley's outfit and shop some of our favorite bomber jackets!
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The faithful met in a windowed four-story atrium here in early September. Uplifting music played and snacks were passed on trays as the celebratory congregants, many clad in closefitting garments, chattered about a shared vision: that how one feels is as important as how one looks.
Attention turned to a central stairway, and the commanding figure who stood on it. "We are moving from being on the defensive to the offensive," Tara Poseley said. "We are back!"
Ms. Poseley was then the chief product officer for Lululemon Athletica, the company founded in 1998 and known for its kumbaya capitalism connecting the ideals of empowerment and personal development to $90 yoga pants.
Lululemon is also known for a 2013 recall of some of these pants after it was found that their material was see-through when stretched, leaving a lot of women in downward-facing dog exposed. Matters were made worse several months later when Chip Wilson, the company's founder and its chairman then, appeared on Bloomberg Television and addressed the issue. "Quite frankly, some women's bodies just actually don't work for it," he said, adding, "It's about the rubbing through the thighs."
Turns out th at women don't like to spend a lot of money on yoga pants and then be told they are too fat to wear them. Social-media outrage skyrocketed. The stock price took another tumble. And since, dozens of competitors, from the Gap's Athleta to Nike to Tory Burch and Derek Lam, have made headway in the market for pricey active wear.
Though largely still built around the peaceful practice of yoga, Lululemon has not given up the fight. Indeed, it seems to be doubling down on the devout yet irreverent corporate culture Mr. Wilson created, though he left the board earlier this year, after selling half of his stake in the company for about $845 million in 2014.
The gathering in the atrium, billed as a Pants Party, was in celebration of a new line of women's bottoms, which remains the core product for Lululemon. The various designs have names like Naked and Held-in and are being marketed to steer women's focus from how they look in the pants (not naked, one hopes) to how they feel in them. The atrium floor was decorated with stickers that read, "I feel more locked in than a harness on a roller coaster before it flips upside down," and "I feel freer than a skinny dip under the midnight stars."
After Ms. Poseley spoke, the company's chief executive, Laurent Potdevin, whose résumé includes Toms, Burton Snowboards and (less congruously) LVMH, also took a turn. " Who but you would take our anchor business and turn it on its head?" he said approvingly, in his heavy French accent, to the crowd. "It's the culture of innovation at its best."
Photo Laurent Potdevin, chief executive, left, and Duke Stump, executive vice president for brand and community. Credit Kamil Bialous for The New York TimesSpending time at Lululemon's headquarters is a bit like submerging yourself in an entire Pinterest board of inspirational quotes.
The walls are decorated with adages like "That which matters the most should never give way to that which matters the least" and "Sweat once a day to rejuvenate your skin," in addition to posted placards that assert the "Vision and Goals" of employees.
Every person who works for Lululemon, from the chief executive to the "educators" who work the retail floors of the company's stores, is encouraged to articulate a series of personal, professional and health aspirations for the next one, five and 10 years. That also goes for "ambassadors," who are athletes, fitness instructors and the like who — but primarily for free clothes — receive no compensation as they promote the brand in their local communities.
And the aspirations of the corporation?
"Our mission at Lululemon is to elevate the world to greatness," Mr. Potdevin said after the party.
Photo The Lululemon offices. Credit Kamil Bialous for The New York TimesOriginally set forth by Mr. Wilson, this mission was inspired by a theme of Ayn Rand's 1957 novel, "Atlas Shrugged," which posits that self-interest is beneficial to society. (Lululemon has lately removed more explicit Rand references from its company literature. It also discontinued a shopping bag printed with an "Atlas" catchphrase, "Who is John Galt?")
Mr. Potdevin was sitting in his office, which was spare, with empty bookshelves and stationary bicycles set to overlook the view of this coastal city.
He took the helm of Lululemon about six weeks after Mr. Wilson's televised remarks. "I expected morale to be down," he said, but apparently it was just the opposite. "There was a spirit of working together, of being engaged. It was such a disconnect from the outside world."
He added: "What Chip did, it was wrong, it was a mistake. It was his mistake, it wasn't the brand's mistake." Mr. Wilson declined to comment.
Mr. Potdevin's strategy is essentially twofold: to grow the men's business (recently with loosefitting pants designed to give their geni talia breathing room) and to expand globally. To accomplish this, he has brought on a new chief financial officer, as well as new executives to lead digital, "brand and community" and design — all men.
He also said he has tweaked the company culture, putting less pressure on employees to take, as they have for years, Landmark Forum personal-development seminars (though many still do, and the company pays for them, along with fitness classes).
"I don't think it's one size fits all in personal development," said Mr. Potdevin, known to many of these employees as L.P. "Some people find it through yoga, some people get that through meditation, some people might get that through Buddhism or some through sweaty endeavors."
Photo An on-site meditation class. Credit Kamil Bialous for The New York TimesAnd some find it online: Lululemon ambassadors have access to a private social network, or "Commons," where they can connect and share their experiences, and which Mr. Potdevin hopes to take, in some form, to the general public. "I think we're incredibly well positioned to develop a curriculum that develops the leadership that we have around the world," he said.
In the patois of idealized consumerism that has become common in the 21st century, he refers to Lululemon loyalists — employees and customers — as "the collective."
No longer part of the collective, however, is Ms. Poseley, the chief product of ficer, who was fired this week, with Mr. Potdevin reorganizing the management structure. On Friday, the company's stock price closed the week down 9.8 percent.
"I want to kick off with some love," said Duke Stump, as he stood in a second-floor hall filled with mostly female employees, many decked out in Lululemon.
Mr. Stump, the company's executive vice president for brand and community, was leading a monthly meeting called "the Brand Bonfire," two days after the Pants Party.
"There are a lot of good vibrations," Mr. Stump said, noting that the new line was selling well. Then he moved on to the other agenda items, like giving "gratitude" to "teammates" and asking new employees to introduce themselves.
"Hi, I'm Bill and I'm very happy to be on board," one said.
"Welcome, Bill!" the team called out in unison.
The gathering had the aura of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, but the only discernible thing the people in the room were addicted to was loving their jobs.
Sarah Harvison, Lululemon's global yogi program manager, came forward to make a presentation about Forlise, an experimental community-building store in Whistler, British Columbia, which came to be after a company executive noticed a "for lease" sign in a local storefront. ("For lease" equals "forlise," with a fortuitous echo of the Beethoven bagatelle "Für Elise.") It offers bicycle-tuning clinics and "stretch sessions" to introduce men to the brands.
" 'Yoga' is a little intense for the 'Whistler' guy," Ms. Harvison said.
Mr. Stump thanked her for the presentation. "This decentralized love is part of our special sauce," he said.
Along with the sauce, Lululemon executives constantly extol their "decentralized" model. The company does not sell to wholesalers; its stores are run as individual endeavors, part of a larger fief. "We have primarily young women in their 20s essentially running $15 million to $20 million stores independently," Mr. Stump said.
The whole operation has been backed since 2014 by an in-house research and development lab, opened in the center of the Vancouver office and encased in glass walls that frost over to assure the privacy that innovation (formerly known as spitballing) requires. It is run by an internal team of engineers and scientist s called Whitespace.
The lab is a Wonkaville for athleisure gear. There is a weather chamber that simulates extreme heat and humidity, letting the company determine the effect of elements on materials, seams and other details. There are washing machines to test how well garments withstand the spin cycle. And there is an enormous treadmill built into the floor, surrounded by video cameras to help map out the stretch of seams and — that bugaboo — coverage of material.
Photo Testing in the lab's pool. Credit Kamil Bialous for The New York TimesBut above all, Mr. Stump emphasized, the company is recommitting to the ideals of vision and goals. To do so it has been leaning on David Ogle, at 29 already a company veteran of more than six years, who has become something of a vision and goals guru in the company's "people potential" department (a.k.a. human resources).
"We don't do it to drive business success, and as a result, people feel loved and engaged — and that's our secret sauce," said Mr. Ogle, sitting in a third-floor open space against the backdrop of a mural that read, "Stretch Your Head."
He spends most of his time working as an on-site life coach, training managers on how they should set their own vision and goals and help employees make good on theirs. Once, Mr. Ogle set a goal of being the successor to one longtime Lululemon executive.
"It was a terrible goal," he said now. "We call them 'looking-good goals.' Looking-good goals are goals that are created out of ego."
But Lululemon encourages employees to embrace failure, and Mr. Ogle did. "I learned something even with my looking-good goal," he said. "It's that I love leadership, and as I grow and develop as a human being, it comes back to a conversation of legacy: What is every moment of my life creating and generating that will lead me to where I see myself in years?"
Now Mr. Ogle's goals include having "completed an education in leadership/neuroscience" by 2018 and becoming "an influencer in the realm of masculine leadership" by 2024.
Photo A Lululemon gathering at its headquarters. Credit Kamil Bialous for The New York TimesMr. Stump, meanwhile, said the company has helped stretch the contours of his masculine leadership, previously honed as a student at Choate Rosemary Hall and with jobs at Nike and Seventh Generation. "I've learned that what can appear to be really irrational thought can be beautifully rational," he said. "I've learned that creating a culture of trust creates beautiful magic in abundance."
He admitted that when he took the job with Lululemon less than a year ago, he was skeptical. The company's reputation had been battered along with the stock price, and Mr. Stump was prepared for gloom.
"I thought for sure I was going to wa lk in and it was going to be a morgue," he said. "And I walked in and it was like walking into Oz. I thought, 'Do these people not know that Rome is burning?' But everyone here seemed so vibrant and happy and positive."
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Dior couture, fall 2012.
Read moreCreditValerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times
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The announcement by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Wednesday that he would not seek the presidency in 2016 has been met with relief — the uncertainty is over; with a certain outpouring of affection, as well as with disappointment, among those who hoped he would run; and with the usual analysis of the reasons behind the decision. But the visual of Mr. Biden standing behind a lectern in the White House Rose Garden with his wife, Jill, and President Obama at his side also caused a few double takes, and not because the president seemed to have his vice president's back with the announcement.
The two were wearing almost exactly the same thing: navy suit, white shirt, little flag pin, blue and white diagonally striped tie. The word "twinsies" was hard to ignore, even as one might be trying to concentrate more on the high-minded speechifying.
The choice of attire was seen, at least on social media, both as visual proof that Mr. Biden was, indeed, the bearer of the Obama administration flag, and that the two men had about as good a working relationship as any executive-office team. After all, it is doubtful they had actually gone so far as to plan their tie choices (though the suit and shirt combination was pretty predictable); they just think that much alike.
At the same time, however, I have to say I'm surprised that no aide was sent scurrying for another option for one of the men. This was a staged moment, one that has a certain stand-alone significance and as a result may have a historical life beyond that day. And though I'm all for sartorial messagi ng and implicit signals via clothes, in this case I think the similarity was so striking, it actually served to distract from the moment at hand.
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So Canada has a new prime minister. On Tuesday, Justin Trudeau, the Liberal Party leader, became the second-youngest Canadian head of state in history, marking the end of almost 10 years of Stephen Harper and Conservative dominion, and trouncing the third party candidate, Thomas Mulcair of the New Democratic Party.
Though lasting only 11 weeks, this campaign was one of Canada's longest, and reports on the new era have posited it as a referendum on climate change and the economy; on immigration and the niqab.
But largely overlooked in all the analysis has been the issue, which played a surprisingly large part in the various bids for office, of hair.
This is not a joke. And it is not a frivolous observation. Dismiss it as north of the border tomfoolery and miss a trick.
Hair has not played such a big part in a political contest as far back as I can remember. It puts the flurry of conversation around Hillary Rodham Clinton's do-switcheroos, John Edward's $400 cut and Mitt Romney's crowning glory in the shade.
And it suggests that, like it or not, in a social media world where humor and pictures have a very real power, successful candidates need to be clever enough to use them strategically, lest they be used by others against them.
Each candidate's hair had its own (unofficial) Twitter account, and Mr. Mulcair's beard had two: @trudeaushair, @graybouffant (for Mr. Harper), @MulcairBeard and @Mulcairsbeard (the latter has more followers).
Hill & Knowlton Strategies in Canada even created a special set of election emojis that used hair to stand in for each of the candidates. As of Election Day, they had been downloaded 54,894 times, according to Sarah Brandon, the vice president for corporate development.
"Each of the candidates had a very distinct look," Ms. Brandon said, explaining why Hill & Knowlton chose hair as communications semiology. "As soon as you saw the hair, you knew exactly which leader was being referenced."
Photo Thomas Mulcair of Canada's New Democratic Party. Credit Jim Young/ReutersIndeed, as much as anything over the last 78 days, hair came to stand for each candidate: Mr. Trudeau, called "hair apparent" by the Economist in acknowledgment of the legacy of his father, the former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, as well as his lush brown curls; Stephen Harper, a.k.a. "Lego hair," thanks to his side-parted and immobile resemblance to the all-in-one toppers of the little plastic people; and Mr. Mulcair and his beard, itself an anomaly in a country that has not elected a bearded prime minister since 1896, when Mackenzie Bowell resigned.
There's a lesson here to be learned. It starts back in May.
That was when Mr. Harper (who resigned his post after the Liberals' decisive victory) used Mr. Trudeau's hair as a small jab at the potential threat, releasing an ad called "The interview" that suggested, in various not-so-subtle ways, that the Liberal leader was not yet seasoned enough to guide the country, though he did have "nice hair." The aim: to plant the seed that he was a lightweight pretty boy.
Indeed, Mr. Trudeau's hair has been something of a talking (or stalking) point since his ascension to Liberal Party leadership back in 2013, when The Huffington Post Canada created a slide show of his "memorable hair moments," calling them "wild thing," "Mr. Slick" and "Grease Lightening" (among others).
Although Mr. Trudeau initially tried to rise above the hair thing, announcing (in response to the Conservative ad), "I won't be talking about beards or hair," the New Democratic Party took the dare on its chin, releasing its own ad overtly satirizing the Conservative ad, with the same hair tagline applie d to Mr. Harper.
Photo Stephen Harper, the defeated Conservative prime minister. Credit Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press, via Associated PressThere was even a host of memorabilia created around Mr. Mulcair's beard, including N.D.P. orange buttons with the slogan "beard a part of it" and posters with the slogan, "I'm voting for the beard."
In the end, there was so much hair discussion that even the writer Margaret Atwood felt compelled to weigh in with a satirical op-ed piece in the National Post in August pointing out that Mr. Harper travels with a personal stylist and that maybe he shouldn't open that particular can of hair gel.
Though the column was quickly taken do wn by the website, reportedly for "fact checking" reasons, it served only to make the hair discussion even more prominent — partly thanks to a tweet from Ms. Atwood. The column was later reinstated in slightly edited form, but not before it spawned its own hashtag: #hairgate.
Mr. Trudeau, meanwhile, sensed the opportunity in the Atwood situation, tweeting, "while we're all on the subject of hair, a reminder of what really matters" and releasing his own video with some nice script noting that Mr. Harper "can't stop talking about Justin Trudeau's hair," but that he, Mr. Trudeau, had other things to talk about. Like the middle class. In other words, he took the weapon and used it to his own ends, instead of s imply ignoring it because it was too superficial.
The hair hoo-ha culminated last weekend, two days before Election Day, when the Liberals released a pretty catchy cartoon entitled "Your Guide to Canadian Political Hair," which used the morphing hairstyles of the candidates to suggest that 1. no matter what 'do Mr. Trudeau sported, it didn't change the potential of his policies; and that 2. no matter the hair, there was little difference between Mr. Mulcair and Mr. Harper.
Ridiculous? A distraction from the real subjects? Or a smart and humorous way to push the identification levers currently available via imagery and optics (Who doesn't have hair issues? Who can't relate to these stereotypes?) to create an instant narrative, one of alternative options, youth and difference?
I, and apparently the majority of the Canadian electorate, reach the latter conclusion. It's a strategy also shared, it's worth pointing out, by Mrs. Clinton, who has managed to outwit her critics by making jokes out of her own image history and preferences, whether by noting that she won't go gray in the White House because "I've been coloring my hair for years," or posting her first Instagram picture ever of a rack of pantsuits with the caption "hard choices."
This is obviously not to say that a candidate doesn't need to focus on substance as well as style, but tha t poking fun at your own and others' carefully constructed image is not just a fig — sorry, maple — leaf. It's an effective part of the political arsenal. Republicans should take note.
