If there was ever a time to think of spring, now is it: only a few days after Friday’s snowfall surprise.
Elle‘s spring fashion issue spells out the trends (elaborate heels, neon colors and surreal prints) for those who don’t want to major in fashion. Even so, we had to wade through 400 pages of ads before getting to the meat. As usual, Elle’s essays for the 30-plus crowd spend a lot of time contemplating aging, plastic surgery and the state of marriage. Holly Millea – the magazine’s resident plastic surgery junkie – complains when no one notices her eye lift. Has she seen the cosmetic nightmare that is Jocelyn Wildenstein? Liberal presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich and his hot wife Elizabeth can’t keep their hands off each other, prompting Elle to write a voyeuristic piece about this mismatched duo.
As you might expect, Vogue is even heavier on fashion – and ads – than its competitors. The spring “power” issue takes on women who stand out for one reason or another, including actress Drew Barrymore and TV icon Barbara Walters. While we’re not sure we agree with all their power players, we give the mag credit for trying new and different faces. One fresh choice is Wendi Murdoch, the wife of News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch. (News Corp. owns the Post.) We discover that Wendi, who doesn’t usually appear in the spotlight, has the same concerns about balancing work and family as the rest of us – but manages to still look great in her fashion shoot.
It’s baaa-aaack. This month’s W declares that polyester, once the stuff of punch lines, is making a comeback among the fashion elite. “One of the most maligned materials in recent fashion history – derided as tacky, scratchy and even smelly – has undergone a sly rehabilitation,” Miles Socha writes. Japanese design mavens are the material’s leading champions, but it is also popping up in the spring collections of Louis Vuitton’s Marc Jacobs, among others. Also inside is a muddled look at “unexplained infertility” – a phenomenon loosely defined as a couple’s inability to get pregnant after a year of trying with seemingly nothing wrong with their reproductive systems.
Harper’s Bazaar ponders an inconvenient truth: global warming is wreaking havoc on the fashion seasons. Lisa Armstrong writes that with temperatures all over the thermostat, getting dressed has never been harder. It’s now about “seasonless” dressing. This year’s spring/summer collections are filled with unseasonable touches like all-weather fabrics, and fall colors like copper and brown. But Armstrong argues the rise of sandals in December is not all about climate change – it’s also about fashion rebellion. There’s also bad news for shopaholics: $500 is the new $300 when it come to shelling out for designer duds.
This week’s New Yorker looks at the vexing impact of tougher detention policies on the families of illegal immigrants. Writer Margaret Talbot writes the detention of immigrants is the fastest-growing form of incarceration in the US – a byproduct of the end of the government’s “catch-and-release” program, which had allowed undocumented immigrants to remain free while awaiting their court dates. Ex-inmates of facilities like the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas – a former medium-security prison turned immigration-detention center for families – report that inmates are forced to wear prison-like scrubs, husbands and wives were not allowed to sleep in the same cells, children are not allowed to have toys, and schooling is limited.
New York puts former first daughter Chelsea Clinton on the cover this week. Lloyd Grove argues that she’s making a strong impression in her first turn on the campaign trail as a public speaker on behalf of her mother’s presidential bid. He calls her an ideal amalgam of her parent’s political talents and speculates that with her mother’s discipline and her father’s charm, she could conceivably keep the Clinton dynasty going, if she’s up for it. But there’s not much reporting to suggest she wants a career in politics. Also inside, Robert Kolker retraces the steps of Sean Bell and the NYPD detectives charged in his death on the night their paths crossed.
Time looks at the dwindling number of Democrats in Texas and how that could spell bad news for Hillary Clinton‘s presidential ambitions, which are riding, in part, on her ability to take the state. David Von Drehle writes that many of the middle class voters in Texas who helped hubby Bill take the White House in 1992 have since gone to the Republicans. Meanwhile, those who are left – college kids and liberals, borderland Latinos and urban African Americans – may be lining up for archrival Barrack Obama. And this just in: mega-movie star and cover guy George Clooney is pretty down-to-earth for an Oscar-nominated actor. In a twist on celeb interview formats that is both amusing and calculated, he goes to writer Joel Stein’s house for dinner and even fixes Stein’s carbon-monoxide detector.
Newsweek gives cover treatment to health officials’ intriguing hunt for an addiction vaccine to block the intoxicating effects of drugs and trains the body’s immune system to bar them from the brain. The article gives hope to the notion that willpower-in-a-pill may be just over the horizon. Also inside, Michael Isikoff looks at the ongoing controversy around The New York Times’ recent story on John McCain‘s possible relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman. Newsweek spoke to two close associates of McCain who claim they warned him in 1999 to stay away from her. Though it doesn’t do much to clarify the situation – the mag admits it is unclear whether or not these are some of the same sources who spoke to the Times. And neither source offered evidence of an intimate relationship between McCain and Iseman.