Everybody knows New Yorkers are fashionable and fashion-centric and often fashion-eccentric. We're the center of the US fashion industry and hello, we have Bill Cunningham!
In an era of multinational conglomerates controlling dozens of fashion brands, and designers designing for more than one house, or moving from one to the other, what is a fashion brand? What is a fashion designer? And how and why do women choose the ones they do?
Manhattan may be the exception to the adage "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." It's hard to come back to a smelly, noisy, cramped town after a beachy, rural summer idyll. Lots of us hate it — complaining about being back in town after time away away (in the Hamptons, Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket, most often) is a Fall tradition here. But distance and absence have certainly make the city look more fascinatingly strange, exotic and foreign to me after 11 weeks at the beach (don't hate me — I worked while I was there!) Manhattan and Manhattanites, now I see you as you truly are — a tribe (or collection of tribes) with rites, rituals and ways of being and doing that truly set you apart.
Manhattan is a town of tribes. And there is no tribe-ier tribe than the fashion tribe. They speak their own language, in which they express their own concerns to themselves and the rest of us who care (“Fringe is trending”; “Alexander Wang is the new Marc Jacobs”; “The yellow story is holding on”). They are migratory and exotic, traveling where their Vuitton luggage and schedules take them: New York City, London, Milan and Paris are the tribe’s habitus. And they live in another timeframe — for them, it’s all about Spring/Summer 2014 in the early days of fall. But as a New Yorker, I like to think they are somehow ours, that they live with us here and now, and always will.
Beach Magazine is running a piece on my fieldwork in the Hamptons and Manhattan in its current (Labor Day) edition. Check out the Brood column, all about the tribe of Manhattan mothers I study (and love) and my upcoming book, Primates of Park Avenue.
Nearly everywhere you go, people have anxiety about what they eat and drink, and restrictions and beliefs that regulate how, what and when they ingest. Food laws are a cultural universal — but they vary widely from place to place.
All of England seems to have a stake and an interest in the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s newborn son. After all, who can resist a baby - especially a royal one? For centuries, babies have had an incredible ability to knit together families, communities and even nations.
New on psychologytoday.com....my piece on Kate Middleton. Being a privileged mum is not all Silver Cross prams and silver spoons. It's not as easy as it looks! Hope you will have a read and leave a comment.
I was asked to comment for an article in the New York Post on the phenomenon of the black market, disabled Disney guide. In Primates of Park Avenue I describe and analyze many of the "Gets" and "Hard-to-Gets" that privileged Manhattan parents seek out for themselves and their children.