Can fashion be timeless? After reading Virginia Postrel’s Essay, “Ralph Lauren: Still King of Glamour,” I’m going to have to say yes, it can. Comparing images of the 1980s Ralph Lauren collection to his modern collections, I barely notice a difference. A slight logo and hem change at most. Postrel writes, “If fashion is of the moment, Lauren is an anti-fashion designer. ‘I’ve never designed for obsolescence,’ he wrote. ‘I’ve designed for longevity.”

I was automatically drawn to Postrel’s piece on Ralph Lauren. The title was very light and easy-going and the topic seemed interesting enough to hold my attention. She is very articulate and persuasive in her writing. I’m no fashion expert and never have I liked Ralph Lauren more than your regular Joe, but I feel like I would like a piece of his clothing after reading her article!

I thought the article was over, but as I scrolled down, Postrel talks about how the company photoshopped their model’s heads’ to be smaller than their pelvis’s. It was even referred to as “pornography for anorexics.” This turned me off to the company but the point of the article was to say that Ralph Lauren has always excelled at being timeless. When they tried to change with the times by making their models abnormally skinny, they received open criticism from major blogs and other outlets for expression.

In comparison to Virginia Postrel’s Essay in the New Humanities Reader, I would barely know that they come from the same author at a glance. This may seem like a bad thing but I think it’s actually brilliant. She can write in depth essays, lacking no description, and then turn around and write a very light page-long article that I can imagine being published in Seventeen magazine. She is more than just a fashion critic, she is economically literate and obviously has a strong opinion. Postrel is your ideal journalist.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/22/ralph-lauren-photoshop-glamour-opinions-contributors-virginia-postrel.html