Nearly every one of the 1,374 pages in the J.C. Penney catalog from Fall/Winter 1977 hammers home a single word: value. Dress shoes are “Pretty to Look at... Supple and Comfortable to Wear... and Sensibly Priced.” Coordinating separates “mix and match with classic ease. Nicely tailored with rich fashion accents” and…

There is a clip from Fashion Television, CTV’s long-running fashion show, that I think about often. It’s of Marc Jacobs’s FW 1997 runway, which featured all the expected names from the era: Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Linda Evangelista. He showed lots of sheer shifts that season, models strutting along with their hair…

Since the dawn of the modern cosmetics industry, makeup manufacturers have been selling systems that promised to fix your face in its entirety. But few modern brands are quite so thorough as the offerings of the 1930s that promised to guide you to the ideal face—though the power of science!

For years, while hunting through the Getty database for photos to illustrate various posts, I have been stumbling across this photograph. Every few months I stop and ask myself: What is happening in this photograph?

A PBS documentary on Mae West—national treasure, fur stole icon—will be released on June 16, which is not a moment too soon. If hours of footage of Ms. West spitting bawdy one-liners like “A hard man is good to find” isn’t a balm for our grubby, unshowered souls, what is?

Legendary gossip columnist Cindy Adams provided a brief scare about a longtime New York City institution this morning, with a column headlined: “Copacabana is gone after 80 years.”

Several weeks ago, having embraced the excuse to swear off zippers and buttons for the foreseeable future, I bought a few pairs of discounted yoga pants. When they arrived, I excitedly ripped off the tags and tried them on, only to discover an inexplicably dramatic crotch seam that divides as the thin, clinging fabric…

You know what you can still do for Memorial Day, even if you’re stuck inside? Replicate this spread of “Calorific Afters,” from around 1960, which includes “Fresh grapefruit, summer fruits and ice cream sundaes for the sweet toothed.” Pair it with this 1957 barbecue menu and you’re all set to kick off your the…

Did you know that Princess Margaret was a water-skier? Somehow, this is very in keeping with everything we know about Princess Margaret, and the only surprising thing is that she never figured out how to chain-smoke while doing it.

My husband emerged from the basement the other day, glowing and incredulous, and exclaimed: “Did you realize you can actually do a whole, legitimately good yoga class right at home?” A one-time college athlete, he used to hit the gym daily. But now, weeks into quarantine, he remains impressed by the endless…

A federal judge in Virginia has ruled that a salvage company specializing in artifacts from the Titanic can retrieve a telegraph machine that broadcasted calls from the ship as it sank. My question is: What about retrieving some of those ghosts?

“I did not know Hillary had a creampie fetish,” a friend of mine replied in the group chat, prompting me to either scream or wince or emit a feral combination of the two as the chat descended deeper into chaos. I had been sending select snippets from Curtis Sittenfeld’s new novel, Rodham, a speculative look at how…

The Library of Congress, it turns out, has an absolutely amazing collection of midcentury roadside ice cream signs, all of which are making me desperate for a soft-serve cone and a cheeseburger, and now I am passing that longing on to you.

Reliving the events of the 2016 election holds little appeal four years after the fact. Donald Trump presidency’s felt unfathomable then, and now the abysmal decision-making of his administration is the nation’s shared burden. Fantasizing about what might’ve been is just depressing. But Hillary Clinton’s most ardent…

Look: I’m not going to say you should dump two tons of sand on your living room floor, install some UV lamps, and call it a beach vacation, but I’m just going to put it out there as an option and let you use your best judgement.

During my youth, one of the best things my mom could tell me was that we were going to spend the day at the Palisades Mall in West Nyack, New York. The place felt huge; it had a Ferris wheel overlooking the food court and there was also a Chili’s on the fourth floor. But the worst part of any mall trip, inevitably, was…

While this summer is mostly likely going to be extremely weird and unpredictable, it feels nice to do some normal things, like root around through your closet and assemble some aggressively seasonal looks for when the temperature finally cracks 80. Let’s consider some inspiration from the archives, shall we?

Archie Mountbatten Windsor, great-grandson to the Queen of the United Kingdom, nearly dove off his mother’s lap while she was reading, in pursuit of a different board book—then threw that preferred choice to the floor. Meghan briefly locked amused eyes with his father, who was laughing behind the camera. The video was…

Is every antique doll haunted? No. Are they almost universally creepy? I’m so sorry to report: yes.

It’s hard not to see the context of how we live in now everywhere you look, even back. I watch a movie that features a club scene, and I think, “How can they stand to be so close?” I read about the so-called “plague years” of the AIDS crisis, and my mind instantly draws parallels (and contrasts) with covid-19. It’s…