On Wednesday the New York Times posted this great fashion slide show, partially in homage to Mad Men.

It’s fabulous through and through, and photographer Douglas Friedman paid great attention to detail– the supersaturated colors, typesetting (aka fonts chosen), and even a photoshopped faux-magazine texture all really mimic contemporaneous ads. I love the colors of the clothes (green gingham!) and the expressions on the model’s face.

The most glaring difference between then and now, at least to me, was how ripped the model looks in the last ad. Models and movie stars in the 1950s and 1960s simply did not have six packs that (over)developed.

For example, check out this low-quality screen shot of William Holden in Sunset Boulevard: More »« Less

I know, I know, I’m the last person in the entire universe to get on this bandwagon*, but still: damn, who the fuck is Lady Gaga, and what fucking planet is she from? Her songs are absurd dance explosions, her fashion is already the stuff of legend, and her videos are like super-condensed tiny little films that reference everything from Hitchcock to Minnie Mouse.

*Thanks, Marla!

They combine the superglam pop fashion sensibility that’s come to dominate celebrity culture since the passing of grunge (see:  Gwen Stefani, Beyonce) with the grotesque, disturbing, Uncanny Valley sensibility that was once found in the videos of Marilyn Manson. You can find any of them on youtube yourself, though (I particularly recommend “Paparazzi” and “Bad Romance”), so instead I’m going to show you a couple of things that you might not see otherwise.

Lady Gaga is a fantastic songwriter, of course, but that superslick production almost disguises what a talented musician she is. For all the vocoder she employs, woman has got a pair of LUNGS. Check out this video of her playing piano and singing a stripped-down version of “Paparazzi.”

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I think we’re slowly sinking into a fashion low tide. The marvelous Bill Cunningham of the NYT recently informed us that if grey isn’t the new black, it’s the next closest thing. Likewise, the Sartorialist has been documenting nigh countless incidents of it around the globe.

I don’t fundamentally have anything against grey. It matches every other color, and can look downright dashing. But what world are we living in where even Carine Roitfeld is caught wearing it head-to-toe?

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I sure love me some Edith Frost, and earlier tonight I was craving her song “Cars and Parties.” I did what you do when you want to hear a song but don’t have it on hand, and asked my good friend Youtube.

Now I feel like I know Chicago pretty well-- I used to live there, and have a lot of friends who live there now, but I sure had never heard of Chic-a-Go-Go. It’s a sweet cable access DANCE PARTY program, along the lines of SOUL TRAIN or AMERICAN BANDSTAND, except it’s in Chicago, hosted by an awesome woman named Miss Mia and her sock puppet friend Ratso, and often features kickass indie rock bands lip-syncing along to their own songs, while all-ages guests dance with them.

There a number of reasons that might explain what I’m about to show you. One might be that because it’s an all-ages cable access program, guests are instructed to dress accordingly. Or this might just be Edith Frost’s natural vibe. I’m personally choosing to categorize it as “pre-9/11 fashion,” a sensibility that lacks our jaded, modern-day influences. Regardless, I sincerely hope that you enjoy it, both for the special something that the song contributes, and for the many extra extra special somethings that Edith’s maraca and dance skills add to the mix.

LIFE has recently made their archive of images available to be searched via Google Image Search. I was digging around today, and decided to see what they had in the way of Elvis. As expected, there were a number of photos of him in uniform, and a few of him tearing it up onstage. What I could NOT have predicted were a lot of images that looked more or less like this:

Evidently LIFE did some sort of photo-essay in 1957 about how popular it was for TEENAGE GIRLS* to get their hair cut & styled like the King’s**. There are a number of photos of one girl in particular,

1. “getting her cut like singer Elvis Presley”
2. “examining her Elvis Presley hair styles” [sic]
3. “showing off her Elvis Presley-like hair style to her friend” (who looks a lot like her grandma)
4. “talking to an unidentified man”, and finally
5. a man looking at two teenage girls with Elvis Presley hair styles

I know that 1957 was a very different time, being half a century ago, but can I take a moment to just say

LESBIAN
I mean seriously, did these girls go get their hair cut like Elvis so they could then go to sock hops and MAKE OUT with each other? Did they sit in front of mirrors and masturbate, thinking of Elvis? Did very confused 15 year old boys sit in their rooms with pictures of Elvis, masturbating and thinking of their girlfriends? And how did the BOYS get their hair cut?

Getting your hair cut like your sex idol does take out the middle man***, I suppose. It’s a widely accepted fact that Elvis was smoking hot, but I guess this is our proof that his hotness cut across the board, muddling the boundaries of gender and sex and confusing the shit out of everyone. Elvis! I salute you.

*presumably straight teenage girls, at that!
**the King being Elvis, not a drag king.
***literally! ha!