Even in my Tiger Beat reading days, I’ve never been one for pop star crushes. Ok, well there was that brief moment as a 7 year old when I not only would go to sleep every night with Shawn Cassidy’s album cover under my pillow. I also drove my mom mad until she got me the baseball jacket, hat and short shorts in fire-red satin to complement the shiny white look Shawn favored then on the album cover and in Bandstand appearances.
But that could’ve been more about the fashion than puppy love, right?
Right?
Three decades-plus later, I find myself similarly smitten it seems with Paul Weller. And it’s as much about song as style. The Brtipop modfather is as cool now as ever, and his latest solo album, 22 Dreams, his ninth since those years fronting The Jam and Style Council, is worth every song. The summer release--featuring fanpeers such as Stone Roses’ Aziz Ibrahim, Oasis’ Noel Gallagher and Gem Archer and Blur’s Graham Coxon, among others— shot to number one on the UK Album Charts on its release this summer.
Noel and Graham were nowhere on stage at Wednesday night’s show at the Wiltern Theater in Koreatown. But that’s not why any of us would’ve turned out. It was all about Paul Weller, from his cropped blonde top to his winkle picker lace-ups to the solid two-hour set of amazing music.
Bow wow.

Had the incredible fortune of sitting down with one my all-time inspirations, Phyllis Diller, not just once but twice in recent weeks. One of the all-time funny girls--make that funny people--Madame Diller (as her assistant advised me to call her) has always been true to her own style, be it her dead-pan and delirious observations on family life or her deliriously dead-on wigs and boots.
The tales got bawdier as the night wore on at a dinner at the Beverly Hills home of Fred Hayman (whose bio I'm writing--and the reason for my meeting with Mme. Diller at her home weeks later). She insisted on calling Andy Jesus because of his thick patch of a beard. And she managed to stretch out a punch line over two courses (which, kid you not, was as old school a menu as anything, starting with the baked potatoes heaped with caviar and a shot of vodka on the side).
As extravagantly quirky as that evening was, it didn't compare to our afternoon interview another day at her Brentwood home, decorated along the same maximalist interior design school that informed the Madonna Inn and Liberace's homes and stage sets. So along that note, I found this jolly vid of Lib and Mme. D. on his 1969 variety show. Enjoy.

This fall, designers are smitten with surrealism. Or so the editors and stylists who translate their work are telling us. While the very suggestion of a mass lockstep into this trend has me reconsidering wardrobe staples such as my trio of Thai jeweled beetle brooches or the wristlet resembling a banana, I also resist censoring my personal whims solely on the basis of the industry’s marketing conceits—however deafening they can become.
So in the spirit of Dali’s sofa inspired by Mae West’s pucker or the supersized set floating in Man Ray’s pictures, I’ve become obsessed with wanting a lip clutch.
It’s a desire rekindled, actually, last year at the V&A’s “Surreal Things” exhibition, when I could finally ogle up close another set of Dali-designed lips, the brooch in rubies, pearls and 18 karat gold he created in 1949. It appeared in a room not far from the Mae West sofa, which I’d admired many times at his namesake museum in his hometown of Figueras.
Not long after that London trip, a black box arrived at my door and inside was a a gold hair comb set with a full smooch in red and orange crystals. It was a thank you from Vanessa Seward, a perfectly French kiss from a quintessentially Parisian gal (by way of Argentina!). The jeweled lips are from her ever expanding vision for the house of Azzaro.
But there still was the matter of the purse. Last weekend on Ebay, I found a rectangular black Lucite box topped with a silver fastener in the shape of lips by Lulu Guinness. Only two days to go at auction, noted the seller.
Tonight, I realized, this was day three. It’s gone. (I know, I know...that’s why there are such aids as alerts!)
Lulu does feature in her classics range what might be the perfect lip clutch--in red, gold or silver snakeskin. A deal it is not, yet.
But as I decide whether the other lip bags on Ebay are frogs, maybe I can convince myself that Lulu’s might just be the one. Maybe it really is the one and only good-buy kiss.

Much is made about Michelle Obama channeling Jackie Onassis. Why? Because she occasionally flips her 'do and has a penchant for pencil skirted dresses? While the First Lady hopeful has had to curb part of her feistier side as the march to the White House draws closer, her anticipated appearance on the first evening of the Democratic National Convention showed she is not some 1950's charm school throwback.
(Never mind the 1980s revival that is Cindy McCain.)
On stage at Denver's Pepsi Center Monday night stood a woman who was more than just well poised and fabulously dressed. She addressed the packed house with focus, strength, passion and she did it intelligibly and earnestly. Yes, she might have focused on praising her husband rather spending the minutes rattling autobiographical points--but then that's just a revealing as anything else. Hers is a voice that is not just more compelling to listen to than some of the politicians at the podium earlier in the evening, but a voice to all those of us who are living in the real world.
This is one modern woman whose style is as much about substance.
Ok, so the turquoise dress by Chicago designer Maria Pinto, coupled with the major star brooch, gets high marks. (Pinto was also responsible for the purple dress Obama wore the night her husband launched her campaign.)
But in that moment when her two daughters, Sasha and older sis Malia, shared the stage, I, for one, saw the kind of America I want to live in.

It's simply the difference between class and crass.

Sunny as we might all try to live life, some weeks require galoshes to get through. While Sundays may mark rebirth for most, I prefer to think of Friday sunset as the dawn of a new phase.
With that in mind, let's pour ourselves something crisp, cold and bubbly, drop something perky in the music box and be moved to groove and get glam with this short, courtesy of the superfabulous Peggy Moffitt and the two divine men of her life, the late designer Rudi Gernreich and the still very much alive and wonderful, her husband and lensman, William Claxton.

Now that's happy hour.