notes for september

tommy ton for style.com

Haven't done this in a while, dedicating this one to interesting reads I came across lately:

• "But it can sometimes feel as though there's a serious surplus of first-person writing by women who assert, often indirectly, that materialism is all right so long as its object is archival, or foreign, or handed down along the maternal line—that clothes-related joy is admissible only if it's a symptom of something more substantial: an appreciation of history, an ambition to travel, family pride...Just as Top 40 critics ascribe nonexistent intentions to the work of Katy Perry, many otherwise self-assured women seem constitutionally incapable of allowing a pretty dress to be just a pretty dress." - Alice Gregory on "Women in Clothes" (I like what I've read of the book, but I get what Alice Gregory is getting at too)
• "Of course before you go to the very top, you may want to run it by your assistant, to make sure you haven’t lost your mind; you may want to run it by someone in sales, since they’re going to have to sell this thing to booksellers. At some houses the editor of the paperback division needs to read the submission; and why not show it to your spouse, whose judgment in other matters has been sound?" - Keith Gessun on the business of publishing in Vanity Fair (found it via Jessica Stanley when I looked up Chad Harbach)
• "In Mississippi, he says, they don't make you redo the ultrasound. In other states, they make you point out the fetal parts to the patient. It's pure harassment. The purpose is to 'heighten the dilemma'." - Profile of Dr Willie Parker, who works in the last abortion clinic in Mississippi, in Esquire 
• "Can everybody not give Lee any drugs?" - heartbreaking read about Isabella Blow and Alexander McQueen in Vanity Fair
• Also, Lauren Hutton. So awesome.