*My middle daughter Charlotte is quite the home baker and I thought I’d share her reflection and recipe for what she is calling: Macky’s Millionaire Slice ™ If there is a dessert scale that says “cookie” on one end and “candy” on the other, millionaire’s shortbread would be smack-dab in the middle. It…
Here is a really good article on fashion educators explaining the significance of students learning the history of fashion: https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/education/why-fashion-cant-forget-its-references Some of the teachers are Burkean — learning from the genius of the past — but many of them reason: you cannot make something new and thrive in fashion unless you know how not…
V&R is a book about the ethics of the fashion industry. As such, it is a sub-species of business ethics. I am currently reading Bad Blood, the story of Elizabeth Holmes and her fraudulent blood testing company. Fawned over by the media and celebrated as America’s only self-made female billionaire, Holmes, almost from the inception…
I thought readers might like to get a sense of the ideas in my new book, as well as a peak at how academics go about trying to get a book published. What follows is the book proposal I put together to send around to presses. The idea is to try to help the editors…
This article reports that faculty at the prestigious fashion school Central Saint Martins turn a blind eye to students who have their collections made by professionals (https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/vbjv89/how-do-you-really-measure-the-success-of-a-fashion-degree). The work load and the pressure to excel tempts students to pay others to do the handcraft part of clothes construction. Getting such help can run as…
Is it weird? “This sounds really weird, but I feel like God has given me so many beauty dilemmas so I can help people,” says Ms. Kattan. Huda Kattan built a beauty brand from a blog. With 250 million dollars in sales last year, the Iraqi-American who runs the company from Dubai is…
A revised version of this post will appear in September at https://voegelinview.com/ ~~~~~~~~~~~ In his Letters, Tolkien often mentions working in his garden. He was a keen plantsman: “I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size). I like gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food…
In the original post I used the ethical theory of the Scottish philosopher W. D. Ross to assess whether Anne Wintour’s effort to rehabilitate Marchesa was ethically justified. It is not. New information has emerged on how the company’s financing is tied to a company of Weinstein’s (https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-harvey-weinstein-secretly-involved-in-marchesa-his-wifes-fashion-label-8). This further cements the complicity involved. …
If there is a television drama that runs close to the themes of V&R it is Granada TV’s Brideshead Revisited. Closely tracking Evelyn Waugh’s brilliant novel, the 1981 adaptation by the north of England television company is commonly regarded as one of the best TV programmes to have come out of Britain. I have…
Prince Charles is, in effect, an advocate of Max Scheler’s estate (V&R Chapter 4). A well-known defender of the countryside and farming, he is also an architecture critic and over the last few decades has been responsible for the development of a model village, Poundbury. The cognoscenti were, of course, snide about his effort…