Some gals at dinner the other night were saying how bangs are back. Naturally this got me thinking about Louise Brooks.  Also about a book I used to flip through at Powell’s back when I hadn’t the dough to buy new books.  It’s called KiKi’s Paris and it’s about the Paris scene in the twenties when Hemingway and Picasso ruled the roost.

But about the bangs…We used to call this haircut “The Louise Brooks” or “The Lulu” and here’s why:

And you probably noticed a few other currently trendy looks in there too.  The nerdy guy with round glasses plays in every indie band that ever comes out of Glasgow.  There’s surely a picture of him in an attic somewhere that he must look pretty bad in by now cuz he looked just fine last year in that Vampire Weekend video.

There seemed to be a lot of movies being made in the twenties and thirties about young, pretty, working class girls hooking up with horrible old rich men.  International travel by cruise ships had maybe spread the new American classless society to London, Berlin and Paris where a shiteload of films were being produced.  The great depression probably fueled the fire.

Here’s a video Gothman made from my favorite movie about a poor girl getting destroyed by a rich pig.  Of Human Bondage,  starring Bette Davis and my periodically favorite actor of all time Leslie Howard:

I will be making a whole section on Leslie Howard, arguably the coolest man who ever lived.

COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR