One of the things I enjoy about reading magazines I don’t
often read is that the writing tends to seem new and interesting. And also,
sometimes, annoying.
While I was reading that Vogue on the plane I came across
the word “sartorial” which means “of or relating to a tailor or his craft.” I
only know that because Barney explained it once on “How I Met Your Mother” and
it stuck to the sticky part of my brain.
So I came across this word – all high faluten and fancy
pants – on page 22 while charting the “sartorial evolution” of the actress
Allison Williams who is on “Girls” and is – turns out – also the daughter of
Brian Williams.
I shrugged a little. It is a fashion magazine after all and
so the word is in their wheelhouse, so why not rock it? I drop the word “semiotic”
whenever the fuck I can because I have a very expensive English degree. So live
and let live.
BUT THEN! There was the word again! Right there on page 59
introducing a spread on the best dressed actresses of 2012 and describing “Kristen
Stewart’s disregard for sartorial convention” and so now I know that I am being
punked, in what is surely the world’s weirdest and most specific punk ever. Firstly,
Kristen Steward does not has a disregard for sartorial convention, she just
dresses poorly and makes odd choices (for instance, the choice to become an
actress even though she lacks the ability to emote with her face.) And
secondly, I have no problem with somebody dropping a nice ten dollar word
occasionally, but twice and so close together? That’s a bit much and it makes
me think that the writes over there all had a slumber party and watched “How I
Met Your Mother “ on DVD and all listened to Barney say the word and all of
them simultaneously and joyously jotted it down in their pink dream journals.
But whatever. No big deal. Nobody cares but me anyway. So I read on.
AND THEN! SIX PAGES LATER! THERE IT WAS AGAIN! On page 65
describing Emma Stone’s “sartorial powers” and keep in mind that this was a
photo spread, so the only text on the intervening six pages was in caption
form. Well this just did not make me happy at all. I quickly composed a letter
of complaint in my head:
Dear The Sartorial Writing Staff at Vogue Magazine,
Sartorial.
Sartorially,
The Editors at Standardkink
And I would have sent it too, except I was on a plane and
also I am too lazy to ever actually send any of my letters of complaint, of
which I have drafted very, very many.
I suppose it could be worse. I suppose that the word could
just never be used and it could be allowed so slowly wither and die like so
many good words (“civility” is a good word that has died this way, both as a
word and as a value too). However, something about the way it was used THREE
TIMES so quickly in a magazine that should know lots and lots of
fashion-related words, just made its use seem somehow cheap. To me at least,
and I have obviously spent a lot of time ruminating on this.
Fear not though. I also read a copy of The New Yorker on
that flight and, say what you will about the puffed up elitists over there at
The New Yorker, they know how to use words. And they use them dizzying well.
They can build sentences like Rube Goldberg machine. On page 44 of the December
24 & 31, 2012 issue, while describing damaged art that is not worth
repairing, they wrote:
Such works – those for which the cost of conservation and
the subsequent loss in market value are greater than the amount for which the
works are insured – will enter into a strange netherworld.
That ladies and gentlemen, is a motherfucking sentence.
I’m not saying it is the best one ever, but it certainly is
bold and almost taunting. (The best sentence, some say, is from the Bible and
it is this: Jesus wept. One of my favorite sentences is from a book called “My
Cousin, My Gastroenterologist” by Mark Leyner, but I will tell you about that
some other time.)
However, later in that same issue - and kind of sorta lamely
- on page 132 in a review of the movie “This is 40” a writer is talking about
the bourgeois family in the movie saying, “Here is all the plentitude and
warmth and the triviality and sadness of Los Angeles life.” Although, what
would one expect from a magazine that considers itself the reliable and worthy
maker of taste for New York City. To prove that NYC can’t help itself from
LA-basing, the review – which is a review of a sweet and completely harmless
comedy mind you – also waxes rhapsodic by bemoaning, “In Los Angeles, time has
a particular poignancy, since the body can never be young enough to satisfy an
unsustainable ideal.” You know, that is probably even true, but I have spent a
lot of time in New York and I have seen some pretty bad plastic surgery there
too. Just saying.
Now that I have written this admittedly complainy and pretentious
blog post, I will try to redeem my humanity in your eyes by posting the below
pictures of Emma Stone (because it is tangentially related and because EVERYONE
has a crush on Emma Stone) and a heart meltingly cute kitten.
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