I’m not really a traditional New Year’s person — January 1st New Year’s, that is. I don’t go out and...
August, 2014

Just Smile

Sometimes, after weeks of paging through vintage fashion magazines and seeing countless pouty/haughty-faced models, I’ll find myself just hoping for...

Factory Records Album Art Remembered
Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album By Matthew Robertson Chronicle Books, 224 pages, 2006 A few weeks back I wrote...

If I Could Turn Back Time
I kissed the other Mark. More like he kissed me, but I let him and I guess I kissed him...

JC Penney

Let’s face it: most department store fashion ads aren’t particularly memorable. They’re usually simple, clean, showing the clothes to their...

’80s Preppiness

Here’s the thing: even at the height of my all-black-wearing, semi-goth teenage ’80s youth I still had a soft spot...

Say Cheese!

In the 1980s, models didn’t just pose for cameras, on occasion they also posed with them. A popular prop, cameras...

Pop Culture Trivia Book Good, But Not Great
Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the ’70s & 80s By Gael Fashingbauer Cooper...

Hit Me With Your Best Shot
There was a fountain in a pedestrian square close enough to our hotel that I was “allowed” to go by...

Charles Jourdan

Surreal and sexy, the Charles Jourdan shoe ads of the 1980s were a sight to behold. The images were unexpected...