Articles 2025
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Saved by the Closet
We've got so much stuff that it's easing the slump.
The Wall Street Journal, "Commerce & Culture", October 23, 2010
Americans have a lot of stuff—so much, in fact, that getting it under control has become a major cultural fantasy. Witness the Container Store, whose aisles of closet systems and colorful boxes peddle dreams as seductive as any fashion shoot. Or consider shows like "Clean House," on the Style Network, where hosts cajole, browbeat and bribe homeowners into getting rid of half their things and organizing the rest.
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The Bike Helmet Wars
The Wall Street Journal, "Commerce & Culture", October 09, 2010
Poor Barack Obama. He can't take a simple bicycle ride without attracting criticism.
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No Free Locavore Lunch
The Wall Street Journal, "Commerce & Culture", September 25, 2010
Michael Pollan, the best-selling author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and a leading advocate of buying locally grown food, recently upset many of his fans by daring to put numbers on his oft-repeated prescription to "pay more, eat less." Eight dollars for a dozen eggs? $3.90 for a pound of peaches?
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Fashion as Art
The Wall Street Journal, September 11, 2010
Fashion Week's move to Lincoln Center reflects a growing recognition of style as culture.
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Fashion as Art
Fashion Week's move to Lincoln Center reflects a growing recognition of style as culture
The Wall Street Journal, September 09, 2010
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Live Longer and Prosper
Is "adaptive reuse" the secret to responding creatively to extended old age?
Big Questions Online, August 30, 2010
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Shanghai Shangri-la?
The lost glamour of World's Fairs
Big Questions Online, July 22, 2010
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Home Is Where the Heart Is
The Wall Street Journal, May 04, 2010
A longing for the perfect life in the perfect environment can make real-estate listings as evocative as novels. Review of Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House by Meghan Daum
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Indecision-Making
Review of The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar
The New York Times Book Review, April 17, 2010
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A Power to Persuade
The deeper meaning of glamour
The Weekly Standard, March 27, 2010
After C-SPAN reran a 1999 BookNotes interview about my first book, I received an email from a disappointed viewer. He was chagrined to hear that I was editing a website called DeepGlamour instead of writing “more serious nonfiction.” Glamour, he implied, is a trivial subject, unworthy of consideration by people who watch, much less appear on, C-SPAN.