"Bling is over."

-- Karl Lagerfeld

From the archive:

Those who loved the dignity and the sporadic secrecy and the sudden intimacies of traditional French civilization are bound to long for the days when President Mitterrand would go on long walks alone to old bookstores, and then make love to his mistress on the way home to his wife, patting his love children on the head while making sonorous pronouncements about life and destiny.

Also:

And what's with all these sayings? Emo, Metrosexual, Bling-Bling. No wonder the English Language is going to hell in a handbasket, the younger generations are slaughtering it!

What now?

We need to return to the culture of thrift that my mother and her generation learned the hard way through years of hardship and deprivation.

Fun!

The sheer amount of sewing done by gentlewomen in those days sometimes takes us moderns aback, but it would probably generally be a mistake to view it either as merely constant joyless toiling, or as young ladies turning out highly embroidered ornamental knicknacks to show off their elegant but meaningless accomplishments.

Look your best.

Most of us, of course, think we know what a depression looks like.