Kennedy’s astute command of her celebrity changed the role of the first lady for good. Shedding their ceremonial mantles, her successors have been equally savvy in sporting their ideologies through style to communicate a purpose and champion the social causes most important to them.
.. No other first lady has made as much of an impact on the fashion world since Jacqueline Kennedy. Skilfully mixing timeless elegance with relatable style, Michelle Obama is a fashion icon for the 21st century. An advocate for American design, she yields the power to boost a clothing brand simply by wearing one of their designs. (J. Crew’s stock price, for one, jumped 25 per cent after she appeared on The Tonight Show in one of the brand’s ensembles).
How to Sell a Hijab in Malaysia
But her choice soon became something else, as well: a lucrative source of attention for herself and her multimillion-dollar online-retail startup, FashionValet, which already sold hijabs and later came to include her own line of scarves and a stationery brand. Yusof is now among the growing number of Malaysian women who are trying to revolutionize the hijab’s contentious image. While the scarf has tended to be viewed primarily as a marker of Islamic duty and identity, and sometimes, especially in the West, of female subjugation and oppression, in Malaysia women are free—even encouraged—to inject glamor and prestige into the hijab, and to make money from it.
.. In her posts, she tells readers that choosing to wear the hijab should be an upgrade to their lives. “She is changing the whole reputation of the head scarf,” Farah Alia Razali-Tyler, a law graduate, told me. “When people thought of the hijab, they thought, ‘I don’t want to look like a makcik’ ”—a frumpy older woman. “Now they’re saying it’s okay to be more modern.”
All Hail the Achievement Beard!
The achievement beard—a marker of triumphant lassitude, the victory lap after a long job well done—has been gaining currency in recent years among men who might like to move through the world noticeably unnoticed. It has become standard issue for an entertainer on the comedown from a high-intensity career: Stephen Colbert donned a seaworthy achievement beard during the nine-month hiatus between his first show and his new post in Letterman’s stead, and Jon Stewart has been growing one since stepping down from “The Daily Show,” in August.
.. The beard is a self-presented lifetime-achievement award, a modest way of underscoring what few people would dare to miss.
.. The achievement beard is definitionally low-maintenance.
.. The achievement-bearded Letterman is unlike the Letterman we know.
The Midwest, Home of the Supermodel
One theory, which Clarke heard from a fellow scout, is that the Midwest is home to a disproportionate number of people whose ancestors were the vertically gifted Northern Europeans.
.. The Swedish and Norwegian immigrants who came to the U.S. in the late 19th century settled mainly in Iowa, Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Wisconsin. Countries like Norway, Sweden, Germany, and Denmark have minted some of the tallest people in the world for centuries. Some researchers refer to this as the “North-South gradient,” with people living in the colder European countries having, on average, a couple inches on the people living in warmer ones.
.. That means it behooves scouts to work where there isn’t much competition—like the vast, open plains—and to seek out girls and boys who aren’t already tied to a modeling agency.