STYLE GURUS

GAULTIER, (French fashion designer), is doing good for women. GALLIANO (British fashion designer) is more or less banished.

Gaultier (John Paul, the French guy) designs under things -- bras and panties -- as well as over things -- shorts, shirts, suits, house dresses, and evening gowns

Galliano, (John, the British guy) this past February, had the fashion world with their hands over their ears. He said he loved Hitler. After rehab in Arizona and Switzerland for triple addiction to alcohol, Valium and sleeping pills, he's been tried and found guilty, in France, of anti-semitic comments. Making anti-semitic remarks is against the law in France. His fine, his punishment, will be announced by the court sometime in September.

Will he pay? Yes. Will he be jailed? No. Will he rebound? I bet he will. The fashion world that adores McQueen, falls in love with a designer, and doesn't fall out of love for more than a minute. (A season is a minute.)

These two G's --both named John -- John Galliano and John Paul Gaultier -- are rather weird chaps, unrelated, but similar. Famous weird chaps put poison in our ears. (Yes, I borrowed that phrase from "Hamlet.") Women and men trust them, make them kings, revere them, follow them -- buy and wear their clothes, even when they're uglifying.

Galliano was fired from Dior, even though he's a brilliant, big-selling name designer. He'll be back with something marvelously innovative, shockingly new, that celebrities will wear, and if they wear 'em, we wear 'em

Gaultier has been Madonna's pal for a long time. I have a lot of reservations about what he and Madonna did to styles for women. Those cone bras, black net stockings on a garter belt -- say "Madonna" and you picture sex-gimmicks on her ultra-revealed body parts. Though Gaultier's creations haven't reached the high level of an exhibit in NYC's Metropolitan Museum, or MOMA (like McQueen's did), Gaultier's art is being displayed in museums -- currently in Montreal, and on its way to Dallas and San Francisco.

We love Gaultier things. He looks at and reacts to the swirl of activities, and creates for the real everyday world. (Side note: wherever he exhibits, he displays his good luck charm that sort of tells who he is -- it's a tiny teddy bear onto which he's stitched a tiny brassiere.)

Gaultier has a sense of humor. Oh yes, he's very interested in sexual provocation, but links his aesthetics with trends as well as politics. Daily life is on his runway -- tattoos, body art, Hasidic Jewish traditions, noble turbans of African immigrants, as well as the retro cool of Harlem. And he champions untypical faces -- Cyrano de Bergerac noses, Rubenesque bodies -- he even puts plus-size ladies on his runway.

Meanwhile, while Gaultier's rising, and Galliano's disappearing, Bernard Arnault (another name for our registry of IN people) is the top man. He's CEO of the number one, most powerful French coneglomerate -- LVMH (Louis Vuitton, Moet Hennessy).

Arnaut is aggressively reviving Dior, selling the fashion world on the house of Celine ((for 40 years, the top of the luxury brands for sexy city girls, that's now run by Phoebe Philo). Arnault is also promoting his designer daughter, Delphine.

Delphine may end up being the biggest fame-name. Fashion is a rock star business. Promotion gets us singing and dancing to the latest song.

What all this means, I don't know. I'm merely advocating that you learn the names, the styles. It's a bestseller world -- we'll see, love, or hate, and buy it, in one form or another.

Why? Because fashion reflects, and defines, delightfully temporarily, who you are and who you aren't.

IF WE RETIRE (video)

Em Asks: "What would we do if we retired, John?

John Cullum states unequivocally that he doesn't want to retire.
He says he has banished thoughts of retirement, but Em pursues the thought. She mentions that she'd like to live in a small town and be the proprietor of her own vegetable store.


Gardening?
Living in a small town?
No show biz ventures?
OH NO, says John.
Oh YES, Em says, as she explains why.

WHO WHAT WHY

How did it happen, that I have to hear, see stuff and nonsense about these girls, this family of I WANT TO BE FAMOUS, PAY ATTENTION TO ME girls?

Why are these not very special girls in the limelight, in the news?

Okay, a producer made them into a show in 2007, and it was a hit, and its going on, and on, and on. Audiences love them.

Why do they love them? Who cares, or can identify with them?

I think it is the SELL -- the instinct and taste of smart producer people who feel out the pulse of audiences today, know the appetite -- and feed audiences, stuff audiences, with the tasty, not nourishing, yummy desserts -- body and soul fattening treats.

I'm not mentioning the producers names -- the names of the bad guys who've produced various talent shows similar to the Kardashians. Like the producers who've created the various murder/death/violence shows, they are -- for me -- the ENEMY, birthing, shaping the next generation NCIS creators. A few kids growing up now, fed, bred on these old bad guys' creativeness, will replace them in a few years. And, undoubtedly, the younger generation will gift us with more, worse, culture-crippling reality shows that are edible-inedible garbage.

I don't know why we had to participate in the wedding, the gown, the guy, the "name" guests (whose names I never heard of), the silly camera-conscious little boy who "stole the show," the commentators told us/sold us, ad nauseam. The kid wasn't cute and there was no show to steal -- the dress, the gown, the decorations were boring!

And 10 million dollars! $10 mill for a wedding of a nobody whose biggest contribution to the world is her managing to be someone we are noticing -- envying? admiring? wanting to emulate? Why? She looks like umpteen other not memorable pretty girls.

The 10 million bucks could have been spent on something, anything other than this not special, very ho-hum ordinary event.

Of course I could Google and gather facts, background, the story behind the story of how the pretty girls in this family managed to emerge from the masses of pretty girls who want to be famous, important, be stars in movies, TV, 'blips," hot items, flashes on the giant screen of world-wide everything news.

I can't do it.

I don't want to pay attention to the Kardashians!

DOUBLE THINK

A Facebook friend,"N," sent me a message about "S" -- should she accept him as a friend?

I immediately thought "Sure!" I wondered why N. was so curiously careful about who were her friends?

I wrote her, and said "Sure" and explained why I enjoyed messaging back and forth with S.

Her dilemma has been cooking, stewing in my mind.

There's a full page advertisement in Time Magazine -- no worse than the daily dose of Viagra and Cialis ads -- about a touch, tender glance, and the fact that you guys need to be ready, capable of doing it.

Or the ads that promote that face lift with chicken-wire that sits in my head next to pills, creams, treatments that I might need -- don't need, will need -- because every day without them I am decaying.

Yes, I hate ads. But some of this stuff is viral. It makes you feel old, less effective, vulnerable. The offensive ad in Time -- a flower with droopy leaves -- a new lubricant for post menopausal women, who are experiencing painful intercourse -- I was jarred by it, tut-tutting, bothered, probably as my mother, and her mother were bothered by brassiere, corsets, and panty ads.

C'mon, shut up, you jerk -- you're making a big deal over nothing!" I told myself.

I know that sex, menopause, lubricants, contraception devices are out-in-the-open, palpable, current topics these days! But I am offended. Is nothing private anymore -- between you and yourself? (And maybe your doctor, if you trust your doctor.)

N.'s reluctance to take on a friend on Facebook without checking into who this "S" guy is, seemed unnecessarily old-fashioned. I mean -- why bother? -- your FB friends are not coming over for tea. You'll probably never meet them.

Hmm. N is being careful about what she allows in her life -- what she'll listen to, and pay attention to. Suddenly, like a full moon appearing out of nowhere, I'm seeing an important point.

Beware of what you take into your life. What ad, what sing-song, what religion, what designer, what fad, what words. -- they become a part of you. And whatever is a part of you will affect your loved ones, your kids, your companion, and your real friends whose words -- whether you like them or not -- sit in your head.

A lot of junk -- violence, hatred, bad manners, stupid fashions, fads, trends, fears -- and politics -- are already in that crowded, jam-packed space. We're got to stop watching dumb, brain-washing stuff!

You can't?

Then, start turning off that damn TV whenever you see something offensive. Give it a try. You'll have more time/space/passion for what's important to you.