The Allure of Cruel Fashion People

Hi {{first_name|friend}},

There is an enduring fascination with bitchy fashion workplaces. Just look at the hubbub around The Devil Wears Prada 2, entering theaters this weekend with a projected box office haul of $180 million.

No one likes being in the crosshairs of a catty fashion genius (we’re speaking from experience), and yet we thrill to watch it on screen. Think of the interest sparked by Love Story’s depiction of the Calvin Klein offices, for example.

Perhaps this interest stems from the deep-seated knowledge that, above all, the fashion industry’s most powerful tool is its ability to make us feel insecure. A small new study illuminates this influence, tying middle-age women’s “social confidence and mental well-being” to their satisfaction with their clothing (or lack thereof). Women find issue with a selection that skews either too young and revealing or too frumpy and conservative; with sizing that doesn’t account for middle-aged body changes; and with trends that feel misaligned to real life. 

Meanwhile, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is “the kind of film in which we’re supposed to chuckle knowingly at a putdown like ‘Retail suits you,’ uttered by Runway fashion director Nigel Kipling (Stanley Tucci) towards Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt), once Miranda’s loyal assistant, now a Dior executive,” writes New York Magazine film critic Bilge Ebiri.

To make a movie about fabulously cruel fashion mag people is, as The New Yorker’s Naomi Fry says, to also “accept the facts: everyone’s on the internet, no one buys magazines anymore, print is dead, we live and die by clicks.” Snobbery’s the only thing left to cling to.

The EIC with an unlimited clothing budget, throng of assistants, and personal car service is, aside from Wintour, a thing of the past. And the famed editors who used to spark fear in us by their mere presence are now relegated to posting Reels on Instagram and writing newsletters…just like the rest of us normies.

Bye,
Your friends at Gloria

Last Christmas, one of my sons purchased a story-telling subscription for me so I could write my personal history to ultimately be bound into a book and shared with the rest of the family. The weekly questions that popped up in my inbox each Monday morning were intriguing: If you could categorize your childhood as a color, what color would it be and why? What was your relationship with your parents like as a teenager? What's a small decision you made that ended up having a big impact on your life? 

I didn’t answer a single one. Eventually, I had to tell my son that I wasn’t going to complete the project. He was more disappointed than I’d anticipated. What I couldn’t tell him is that doing so would dredge up a lot of difficult memories.

Despite growing up with loving and supportive parents, I struggled with crippling shyness, low self-esteem, and rash-inducing anxiety. The thought of revisiting the challenges I’d endured decades earlier awakened long-buried emotions that I’d worked hard to overcome and did not want to unearth again.

Over the years I’ve selected the stories to tell my children based on what’s happening at any particular moment in their lives. I’ve typically abridged the contents and left out certain details that are painful to recall. For example: the challenges of caring for my mother, who suffered a traumatic brain injury that deeply impacted how she treated me. It’s not only painful for me to recall, but also unnecessary, as it might affect how they view their grandmother.

“I don’t advocate telling our children the stark truth all the time or letting them peer into our psyches at every moment,” says author Nicole Graev Lipson, whose memoir, Mothers And Other Fictional Characters, is an unvarnished look at her life from childhood to motherhood. “As a writer, I’ve had to figure out what healthy vulnerability is and what’s too much oversharing. But sharing our struggles can be very freeing for us and can model for them how to show vulnerability and uncertainty in their own lives as well.”

Most parents want to share their stories with their kids, and an industry has emerged to help them do so. “We want to be remembered,” says psychologist Francine Toder, Ph.D. who teaches guided autobiography to older adults. “We want to know that our lives have meaning and purpose and that our kids understand how we came to be who we are through all our trials and tribulations.”

Storyworth, the company my son chose, has printed more than a million memoirs since its founding in 2013. Other companies, like StoryTerrace, Real Life Stories, and Modern Memoirs, provide professional ghostwriters to record their clients’ experiences.

The National Association of Memoir Writers (NAMW), an organization founded to help members find their voice and tell their stories, offers virtual workshops and coaching to support the process. But founder and president Linda Joy Myers, Ph.D, MFA, author of the award-winning memoir Don’t Call Me Mother, cautions that this is not a project to undertake if you’re not ready. “You’ll be exploring the labyrinth of your own self. You’ll come back out with some knowledge and then you’ll need to decide if you’re willing to share what you’ve learned, but you don’t have to unzip your entire life.”

“Adult children don’t need every detail; they need emotional clarity,” says psychologist Jeffrey Bernstein, Ph.D. “They’re interested in understanding what shaped you, what you value, and how you have made meaning out of hard moments.”

Dr. Bernstein suggests answering three questions to shape how you tell your story to your kids: Is this relevant? Is this respectful of my child’s emotional bandwidth? Is this connecting us? 

Finding a good Mother’s Day gift can be tricky, but you can’t go wrong with a great scent. This year, we’re going with fragrances from Lake & Skye, which has a cult following for its signature 11:11 scent. It’s light and airy; an easy, everyday fragrance.

You can choose from a perfume for daily wear, a diffuser for your space, or a rollerball sample set if you’re not sure where to start.

Take 20% off sitewide with code MOMSDAY. #partner

TO READ The indie book imprint Hagfish, which reissues hard-to-find or out-of-print titles, has rereleased Joan Silber’s coming-of-age-in-NYC novel In the City. It’s the story of a 19-year-old girl who moves to Greenwich Village during the roaring twenties in pursuit of a free-wheeling, bohemian lifestyle (a sort of proto Sex an the City, if you will).

TO SHOP Old Navy’s 50%-off-everything sale has the best basics at the best prices — like this crisp V-neck tee, this sexy tank, and this adorable sweatshirt. (We’re also eyeing the kids’ summer clothes while everything’s half off; future us will be grateful.) Shop it all here. #partner

TO LISTEN Instead of turning up their noses at The Devil Wears Prada discourse, the team at Vogue has leaned all the way in. Vogue podcast The Run-Through has dropped a few episodes about the movie; right now we’re listening to the conversation with “the real Emily,” aka celebrity stylist Leslie Fremar.

TO WATCH There is, of course, the film that we’ve already dedicated plenty of words to in this newsletter. For those of us who struggle to make it out to the theaters, the original is streaming now on HBO, along with Emerald Fennel’s polarizing “Wuthering Heights.”

Millennial daughters are struggling under the weight of aging-parent duties. • “How YouTube took over the American classroom.” • The thoughts of a lifelong insomniac. • Investigating Hollywood’s “secret smear machine.” • The father-daughter duo who duped the NYC art world.

_{*Gloria may receive an affiliate commission on purchases made through our newsletter.}