Issue 6 / Letter from the Editor: Where has all the GLAMOR gone?

Where has the glamor gone? A question I am faced with every time I open Instagram or browse fashion magazines in the store check-out line. It’s proven time and time again that fur, feathers, or a sparkly made-up face make glamor not.

Glamor is provocative but not unnecessarily or purposefully contrarian. And it's not idealized or cloyingly pleasing prettiness. Glamor exists in a realm of its own. An eternal space where beauty from out of this world meets a raw, sensual earthiness that is very much of this world. It’s a vision of truth and it clicks when you see it. You say to yourself “ah, that’s right,” and you don’t really know why, it just is.

Glamor isn’t just couture dresses and Paris city streets (necessarily), it’s rhythm and joy of all kinds–think Josephine Baker doing the Charleston, the lyrics of Donna Summer’s McArthur park, or the Art Deco buildings of Downtown Los Angeles next to the real McArthur park.

Glamor is the realness of the stuff that connects us all mixed with the stuff that makes us yearn and hope for more. Glamor is not created and it is not earned, it just is.

So why does it seem not to exist anymore? Where did it go? How do we find it again? I know one thing for sure–glamor is not on the outside where its barren and everyone is lost. So that leaves just one place–inside. Glamor is inside of you, me, us. In that one place that connects us all. Glamor lies in your inner jewel, your heart. While the truth of your glamor may yet evade your mind, once you find it, it is necessary to share it.