Just another day at the office, with a guy dressed like a tube of Great Lash.

My time at Allure was epically fun and challenging.

We joined as kids and we were drop-kicked into the magazine ocean, where we would sink or swim.

I, along with my soon-to-be best friends, were good swimmers.

No one had to teach us how to take initiative. We bowed to everything we were asked to do—something I would realize didn’t come natural to Millenials.

I remember asking the Millenial crew to write a quick blog that we needed ASAP for allure.com, something I would have jumped at the chance to do as a newbie.

Not this crew… They scoffed at my request, “too busy” to care.

“But you’ll get a byline! You’ll practice your writing for a nationally published magazine with a circulation of millions!”

“Sorreeeeeey!” they’d squeal.

That is, until I grabbed the most promising of the crew, my assistant, and asked her to come to my office, where I informed her that she’d forever be my assistant, making $25,000 a year, and doing nothing that she’d come to Allure for.

She accepted the assignment and did a great job—but, more importantly, she changed her willingness to do whatever was needed. And this rubbed off onto the rest of the crew, like a creamy hyaluronic acid mask.

I was so thrilled to start writing and see my name in print. Just being on the masthead was a thrill—to me, and to my mom, who would point out my name to people while waiting to pay at ShopRight.

But to have a byline meant that I could actually write… not just for the school newspaper or for a college independent study, but for the world. I had street cred now, and I wasn’t about to toss it aside like a wadded-up napkin.

I was a freshman at Connecticut College when Allure launched in 1991—and I devoured its oversized pages. It was so beautiful, but also painfully ugly at times, a nod to women’s struggle to be beautiful.

It had a journalistic approach to beauty, something that had never been done.

Beauty had always been touched with kid gloves. So delicate, so precious, such a sweet little thing that beauty “copy” always read like a barf-fest to me.

And I wasn’t alone: Linda Wells had established the voice of a new generation of beauty lovers—Gen-Xers who had been labeled slackers, but who had figured out the world on their own, a resilient bunch that didn’t want to conform, that questioned everything, and that trusted no one.

Here, finally, I read about the new Revlon ColorStay lipstick launch, with the helpful note that it lasted all day but felt like dried paint on your lips.

YES!!! The truth in beauty had been born!

I would later come to learn that Allure had not only lost all advertising from Revlon for itself, but for all of Condé Nast—something that would become a badge of honor (and swell into a moment of panic) for all writers and editors at The Beauty Bible.

Allure was for bad-asses, for those who thumbed their noses at fawning lovers of beauty. And it was always on a quest to find out why a trend, a product, or a spa or salon service was having a moment.

This was particularly appealing to me.

As a toddler, I used to freak myself out by staring into a big mirror and questioning why I existed. This was a question that Burt and Ernie never addressed during their squabbles.

But this was a question that led me to major in philosophy and psychology at Connecticut College, and would continue to plaque me until just recently (but more on that in future posts).

I’d also always been obsessed with TV, movies, Atari, Barbie, Legos, LiteBrite, books, games in the backyard, making mix cassettes, puppet shows that I’d write, music I wrote and sang—all of it.

I was, and still am, a Dyson for the details in the zeitgeist.

And I realized in reading Allure that—what made its point of view unique—was its astute take on said zeitgeist, at any time, and its interpretation of how it was influencing the way we were looking and dressing.

This was before “influencing” was a sad, depressing thing.

So I took to Allure pretty quickly, albeit with times when I was late with assignments and then would be banned from writing the next month.

But I always hoisted myself back into the ring and became a regular writer, and then an editor, and then the associate beauty editor after year one, the beauty editor in year two, and the beauty director by the time I was 26.

I used to lie about my age once I was the beauty director, not wanting anyone to question whether or not I was capable of having such weighty responsibility at The Beauty Bible.

In traffic, complaining to my friend about the lack of AC in our cab.

I was responsible for thinking up the ideas, editing, rewriting, and selecting the products for most of what was a thick magazine at the time.

This task didn’t sit well with me at night as I closed my eyes. The nightmares were vivid and otherworldly—predicting panic, failure, and a return to my parents’ New Jersey home.

Oh, man. It was rough.

But each day, I’d spend an hour putting together my outfit, I’d trot out and to work in bare legs and Manolo stilettos—the weather didn’t factor into the dress code of Condé Nast until opaque black tights by Wolford came into style a decade later.

The ‘90s were a decade of natural everything. Nude legs and rosy makeup; sleek, low ponytails; demure jewelry; a black, beige, grey, and camel color wheel for your clothes and shoes.

Carolyn Bessette (later Kennedy) was the equivalent of the missing kid on the milk carton in the eighties. The one we all looked at as we ate breakfast and, in this case, the one we wanted to be. (Not the case with those poor kids on our milk cartons.)

Carolyn oozed understated elegance, with the scent of enormous wealth, but never in an overpowering way.

She was quiet, subdued, restrained—what would come to be known as a much more powerful voice for women than that loud, colorfully obnoxious voice and uniform of the Guidettes of my childhood in dirty Jerz and the working women in their bad suits and Reeboks commuting to secretary jobs in New York City.

When I joined Allure, I arrived just in time to distribute and ship the tens of thousands of products that had been sent in for the first ever Best of Beauty issue, to be published in October of 1996.

It was astounding to see so many balms, and lipsticks, and creams, and eye shadows, and shampoos.

HOLY SHIT was all I could think back in May of 1996, my pupils dilated like I was on one, big, colorful shroom trip.

None of the other assistants at the time were willing to help me. Not because they were assholes.

They’d spent a year calling companies to get all the stuff. This was the time for them to sit back and relax, to write and make spa and restaurant reservations for their editors.

I was screwed.

But I was resourceful.

I asked our managing editor if I could bribe my college friends with products and lunch and dinner in exchange for their help in sending out the products to contributors and experts, and bagging up the stuff for the staff to test.

He said yes and my friends were thrilled.

Testing products would become my full-time hobby for the next two decades at Allure and beyond, at Revlon, for my consulting clients, at CEW (the renowned beauty networking .org), and for my writing.

I’m loving Top Gloss from Amika hair care right now, and E.L.F. Brow Gel (the clear one).

The E.L.F. stuff is only $5 and better than the M.A.C. brow gel, which flakes in my dark brown hairs.

And Amika’s Top Gloss is the light shine mist I’ve always wanted. It’s totally weightless, doesn’t feel sticky, makes my hair look expensive, and smells really nice.

I’m not a fan of fragrance anymore, having given away my vast collection of pretty bottles because of bad allergies.

But this scent doesn’t make me gag or have to blow my nose, so that’s a win

Testing products is fun and frustrating. The staff of Allure is more than just a little familiar with how to treat rashes from the stuff.

Still, it’s a treat, and always gives me plenty to talk about.

Even in my therapy sessions or on line at Whole Foods.

Once women learn of my past, I find myself fielding questions from them: all of my thoughts on cream bronzer (I love Saie), mascaras (get CoverGirl LashBlast), Botox (doesn’t hurt, but I don’t bother with it anymore), fillers (feel like fire is being injected into your face, over and over again), and plastic surgery (I can only report on the surgeries I’ve observed and the liposuction I got from my then boyfriend, Dr. Steven Teitelbaum, in Santa Monica).

That lipo balanced out my hips with my small waist, not trimming them to match (“I’m not turning you into a little boy,” Steve said, disappointingly.)

But my hips and thighs shaped up to look great, my tailoring bills dropped, and I got through the recovery with only Tylenol—not wanting to take Percoset for the pain because I was afraid it would make me nauseous.

I was also at Allure for the first Beauty 101 intro tutorials for newbies, the Readers’ Choice Awards portion of The Best of Beauty, the Breakthrough Awards (which lauded the most-advanced product launches of the year), and a few fun ideas that I turned into franchises for the magazine and website.

I loved creating packages—easy-to-read, bit-sized, info-packed stories which would come to replace long-form writing as our collective attention spans diminished thanks to Apple iPhones and things like Google.

I got to express myself in every way possible, question everything, hate-on whatever sucked, and give a big old spread to anything that made our staff cheer.

This Substack is my way of greasing that part of my brain once again. I love writing, but find myself often using my skills and knowledge to help brands re-fine, re-define, and just plain old fix themselves when nobody cares about what they’re making or saying.

This isn’t to say I don’t enjoy consulting… I actually love it and find that my editorial wizardry and insane imagination and creativity take me very far with clients.

I come from a whole family of creatives (I’ll only address the living people):

My niece, Lucy, is 11 and makes her own jewelry.

My niece, Willa, is 13 and makes animated shorts that she draws, narrates, and edits together for her YouTube channel.

My sister, Karin, is the vp of primetime animation for the 20th Century division of Disney—where she gets to oversee the production and creative development of The Simpsons, Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers, American Dad, etc. and helps to greenlight new shows with her boss. She takes the girls to table reads for The Simpsons and Bob’s Burgers when they’re out of school.

My brother-in-law, Bob, is an Emmy-winning writer, creator, producer, and director of animation for Disney—always working on his own possible shows and movies at home for the powers that be and asking us to do the voiceovers.

My mom is the ultimate crafts-lady, having started out as a biology teacher who then founded a booming macrame business when I was born in 1973, later becoming a financial planner, then retiring around 60 and taking up quilting and card games with her friends.

My dad is an extraordinary photographer, having started out as a biology teacher, as well. Then he moved onto creating a television news station and production house at the high school he taught at in the ‘80s. He later moved into technology when computers became a thing in the ‘90s and 2000s, herded middle-school kids as a principal, climbed his way up to being the associate superintendent of a large school system, created a job as the director of technology for that school system—then peaced out at 60, buying a beach house in Pawley’s Island, SC, and taking photographs of birds, bees, nature, and the general scenery.

So we’re a wild bunch!

Thanks for subscribing, and there’s more to come.

Until next weekend, blast my favorite song of the moment, “Year of the Cat” by Al Stewart (I was inspired by Ryan Murphy’s use of it in the movie “Running with Scissors” and his new FX show “The Shards”).

Fun tales with nostalgic looks and music tracks, just like I hope this column and my earlier piece,Substack - So this is how I begin, bring you Ziggy-level happiness.

If there’s anything you’d like me to write about or pull back the curtain on, just leave a comment for me on this and my other posts.

Bye!

But the movies? They’re perfection.

The characters are true to the life I lived, one of glorious rides in the backseats of large, dark Mercedes Benzes and Lincoln Town Cars (thanks Big Apple Car—the official ride service of Condé Nast).

Anyway… In the movies, I’m a mix of Andrea and Nigel, the flamboyant—but behind-the-scenes—creative director. Loving every minute of the drama and working fastidiously to make the editorial machine run as effortlessly and beautifully as possible, but clenching when I had to give speeches, go on television, or present to potential advertisers.

Sure, I was good at the public stuff and I totally looked the part, but I much preferred playing second fiddle to Allure editor in chief Linda Wells, the iconic founding editor (a word she absolutely hates and which was banned from publication).

So watching The Devil Wears Prada movies is always a thrill, taking me back to NYC, Paris, downtown, uptown, inside of my tiny and sprawling apartments, and into the back seat of one of those grand Mercedes.

Yup, I’d come a far way from my parents’ house in dirty Jerz and my first car, a used 1987 Jeep Cherokee that was later stolen from the parking lot of the Little Falls ShopRight grocery store by a car-theft ring. The grey lunch-box of an SUV was later returned before boarding a ship to Brazil—where, apparently, Jeep Cherokees were the bomb. I leveraged my loss to gain a one-year-old Audi A4. Sweet!

Ok, I’ll get to the point. The Devil Wears Prada 2 was great—not the classic that the first movie was, but still worth seeing.

The crew got it all correct, except for the magical, dreamers-for-the-win ending, which isn’t cheesy and is a great-big-middle-finger to the nihilists who’ve created AI because of their own self-hatred, hatred of humanity, and existential angst.

All the cool peeps at Runway hate the AI dweebs, just as my friends and I do.

It’s incredible how nihilism has overtaken America, right down to the looks on many actors and actresses faces.

I mean, who can take these overly injected and surgifiyied “things” seriously when their expressionless, age-free “heads” bob around like their some kind of rudimentary AI humanoids—precisely the industry that they claim will one day snatch up their roles in movies and television.

I’m not sure if I was supposed to get this alternate take from The Devil Wears Prada 2, but my mind really wanders all over the place.

My wormy brain finds totally random facts and connects them—not like a conspiracy theorist, but like a shopgirl at a high-end boutique, tying up this bundle of random facts with a perfect bow.

It was awesome to see that the movie even captured the McKinsey turds who frequented Condé Nast back in the day, extorting many millions to solve all the company’s problems with a simple solution: lay people off. In the film, our favorite characters refer to them as “the undertakers”—which is fitting.

Said undertakers were always hired by the old, bloated white guys running Condé Nast. They were idiots. One guy had been responsible for the subscription blow-in cards that would fall out of magazines and leave a mess, all the while massacring forests of trees.

Blow-in guy became the CEO of Condé Nast, and like several other of his media cronies, now exists as a stain on the industry—a living version of a poop smear on the bottom of a pair of Asics sneakers.

Unlike our horror show of a world, the good thoughts and journalistic integrity of Andrea, Nigel, and Miranda Priestly win in the end. And that’s exactly where I think society is headed today.

AI is hated by pretty much everyone. Everything analogue and on-paper is being devoured by people of all ages.

We’ve come to our senses and now just have to wait out those dweebs, who inevitably will freeze themselves, or at least their heads, someday soon.

As one dweeb in the movie says something to the effect of, “One day soon, we won’t need our necks.”

Maybe you won’t need one, my frozen friend. But the creatives are keeping their necks and holding them high, so we don’t drown in the swamp of crap media and AI everything and so that we can rise up to re-take the world—80s-style.

Oh, and we’ll be doing this with our aging faces—kept in tack with excellent skin-care products alone. We’ll be sure to glance down on your frozen heads with our beautiful necks, knowing that it was people like us who made the world so breathtaking and exhilarating in the first place and will continue to do so in the future.

I love writing and have been doing it for years, yet starting a substack is still daunting.

A little about myself. I’m the former beauty director and…

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