And not a single mention yet of AIDS; in a Wrangler ad, a model’s speech bubble announces, oblivious: “I’m Positive.” In these magazine pages, it both is and is not the 1984 of my memory.
“Priceless flotsam they seemed to us then,” Elizabeth Hardwick once wrote, recalling her youthful fascination with old jazz records.
I’ve long felt the same way about magazines, old and new.
Old magazines are cheap time machines, archaeologies of collective desire.
Find a print issue, specialist or popular, preferably more than 20 years old (though 10 may do the trick), and read it from cover to cover.
Persons:
Kate Bush, won’t, ” It’s, Roland, ” Elizabeth Hardwick, Joan Didion, ”, Hardwick, Alberto Giacometti, Gordon Parks, William Klein
Organizations:
Vogue
Locations:
London, New York, Dublin, ., Mexico City