The Crush Letter No 213: My Armani Suit, dishing on David Flint Wood’s new rum, Billy Joel, The Roses & moth ball holes
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Hello Crush,
Thank you for being here.
I don’t know about you, but I’m rolling into fall like a flat plank.
I spent most of the week with my parents, where my father spent one day in a hospital emergency room, then came home and fell in the middle of the night trying to go to the bathroom and then, the next day had a visit from the EMT for breathing difficulty. Unrelated, but all age relatedailments. It’s a heartbreaking way to spend time with my father, obviously. It’s a heartbreaking way to think about how he is spending this last period of his long, vital life.
Things seem stabilized today.
Everyone I bump into who asks how my parents are has their own heartbreaking story of caring for their aging parents. It’s the tough period so many of us are in right now.
Nothing more to say about that for now.
Let’s skip over to my story about Giorgio Armani’s death. (Somehow I thought that would come out more funny than it actually did.) Or really, to my Armani suit, which I write about in today’s CRUSH Letter because of Armani’s passing this week.
I have an Armani tuxedo suit that I got over twenty years ago from Barney’s, where I had developed a relationship with a salesperson named Claire. In They All Came to Barneys, Gene Pressman‘s tribute to his family’s empire, he writes that “Everyone shopped at Barneys: the glamorous and the difficult, the young and the old, celebrities and celebrities in their own minds—and our salespeople, many of whom thought they were celebrities, too.”
That last line made me laugh, thinking of Claire. She was a former Calvin Klein model with a tasteful eye who I relied on to help dress me for a decade. She had the attitude to match the store, which is to say the certainty that her sensibility was superior. Buying anything she recommended made me feel like she was sprinkling me with fairy dust.
I still wear the Armani tux she picked out for me over twenty years ago, in 1999. When I slip it on I sometimes wonder where Claire landed once Barney’s closed. Some place good, I hope.
But then again, other than Barney’s, Claire didn’t believe there was any place good.
In This Letter.
+R.I.P. Giorgio Armani. By Dish Stanley Clothes have power. Nobody knew that better than Barney’s. Or Armani.
+PrimeCrush & Chill: Grown Up Love Stories Worth A Rewatch: As Good As It Gets. By Christian Pan The creator of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, and The Simpsons as well as the producer of Big and Jerry Maguire, James L. Brooks’s filmography reveals a consistent interest in stories asking what forces keep people together despite all of our differences.
+dishing. David Flint Wood’s new rum; Billy Joel; Leanne; The Roses; how to fix moth ball holes & a kick-ass recipe for naked dauphonaise.
+Social Media I Loved This Week. +Our Song of the Week
R.I.P. Giorgio Armani. By Dish Stanley
“Barney’s wasn’t a store—or not just … things you’d see there first and only. Armani before Armani was Armani, before the $2 billion global business and the one name status; when we found him, he was a handsome guy called Giorgio with a rinky-dink office in Milan.“
- Gene Pressman, They All Came To Barneys
My black Giorgio Armani tuxedo suit wasn’t the first extravagant purchase I bought at Barney’s. That was a Jil Sander winter coat I wrote about a couple weeks ago in The Belt Is Metaphorical. In that, I share the story of my first time shopping at Barney’s, which was the first time I met Claire, a tall willowy brunette with straight shiny hair cut in a razor sharp bob who was a former Calvin Klein model.
My relationship with Barney’s, and with Claire, blossomed after that first visit. It led to me buying my first ‘investment suit,’ a lightweight four-season dark grey Jil Sander suit. That suit was what we’d now call “quiet luxury.” Its elegance was so subtle and understated that I was able to wear it once a week for a decade. (It was also that well made. Worth every penny.)
A couple years after buying the Jil Sander suit, when I needed something snazzy for a black tie party that was a quasi-professional function. It was the fall of 1999 and I had recently moved from New York to Boston to marry my late husband. New city, new life, new job, new coworkers, new friends. I wanted something I’d feel great in. I called Claire, of course. She sent the Giorgio Armani tux (shown above) to my office overnight.
Continue reading here
PrimeCrush & Chill: Grown Up Love Stories Worth A Rewatch: As Good As It Gets. By Christian Pan
In this column, we reconsider stories about love. Between grown ups. Christian Pan is a writer based in New York City. Since 2021, he has published sixteen novellas and over a hundred short stories exploring the erotic imagination. In addition to book & film reviews, he hosts the Pulse Session for the monthly podcast All the Filthy Details, and is a founding author of TheoReads.
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, Greg Kinnear
Released: December 25, 1997 (USA)
Basic Plot: Best-selling romance novelist Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson) has difficulty forming intimate relationships with anyone due to his obsessive-compulsive disorder as well as his bigotry until he becomes entangled in the lives of waitress Carol Connelly (Helen Hunt) and neighbor Simon Bishop (Greg Kinnear).
Summary: While author Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson) may be able to capture the language of the heart on the pages of his purportedly best-selling romance novels, in real life he is misanthropic, homophobic, and racist. We first meet him in the hallway of his apartment building chucking Verdell, a tiny pet dog, down the garbage shoot multiple floors to the basement. When asked by the owner Simon Bishop (Greg Kinnear), a gay visual artist who lives next door, if he has seen his dog, Udall lies before going to his favorite restaurant, where he is waited on by Carol Connelly (Helen Hunt), the only one amongst the staff and customers who can tolerate the writer's constant stream of belittling comments to everyone in sight.
Udall slowly reveals to himself and the world that he does, in fact, have the capacity to care for others through a number of unexpected circumstances. First, he takes care of Verdell for a few weeks while Simon recovers in the hospital after surviving a particularly violent robbery at his home and studio. Then, learning that Carol´s young son (Jesse James) is suffering from a chronic illness, Udall hires a private doctor (Harold Ramis) to take care of him–and so she can return to work and continue waiting on him with his daily breakfast. Finally, when Simon is evicted from his apartment due to lack of funds in the aftermath of the robbery as well as the hospital bills, Udall takes him into his spacious apartment, offering him his guest bedroom.Despite her better judgment Carol finds herself cultivating tender feelings for Udall, confused by how someone who has helped her son so generously can at the same time be so rude and self-centered. Knowing that he must tell her how he feels, and encouraged by his new roommate and friend Simon, Udall goes to Carol´s home in Brooklyn in the middle of the night and declares his vulnerability before sharing a passionate kiss on the sidewalk. He has made a few tiny steps towards being decent, but both are encouraged by his growing awareness and small steps towards change.
Why Re-Watch: Director James L. Brooks' career in film and television frequently features stories centered on unusual characters paired on screen. The creator of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, and The Simpsons as well as the producer of Big and Jerry Maguire, his filmography reveals a consistent interest in stories questioning what forces keep people together despite all of our differences.
Continue reading here
dishing.
things that are getting me off these days.
The Roses. I don’t want to break your heart, even a little, but my Mother and I were so excited to see Olivia Colemen and Benedict Cumberbatch in the remake of the ‘divorce-com’ The War of the Roses that we rushed to the theater last week when it opened. That’s how excited we were about seeing it. We couldn’t wait for it to stream. And I’m sorry to say that it’s flat. So flat. Inexplicably flat. Even though the acting is, as one would expect, exceptional. All the funny scenes are in the trailer (as they say).
Leanne. I was looking forward to whatever follow-up might come next from Leanne Morgan after a girlfriend and I got such a kick out of watching her Netflix comedy special I’m Every Woman together last winter. Her new series about a midlife woman going through a divorce is just okay. Kinda funny, and if you’re looking for something that simply hits the ‘feel good’ button, consider it. Or you might be better off just waiting for Unspeakable Things, her next comedy special, which is reportedly airing in November.
Piano Man. I was so moved by And So It Goes, the two-part Billy Joel documentary. The first episode is particularly good; it tells the story of the emotional, financial and professional chaos of his early days struggling as an artist. At one point when he didn’t have enough money to buy his then-girlfriend (later wife and business manager Elizabeth Weber) a Valentine’s gift he wrote her a love song (Just the Way You Are). I hadn’t remembered how brutal the music critics were to him. Seeing things turn around for him after the tough early years (although, as we know, the chaos continued) is made sweeter by knowing where he came from (and through).
Idle Assembly. I tried David Flint Wood‘s new rum — “equal parts restraint, romance, and very good taste” — even though I don’t like rum because, well, he’s so damn effortlessly cool. Also, the name Idle Assembly and its origin story are so coolly inviting. (The marketing is aces.) It goes down smoother than other rums. More smoky, less edge. I liked it, trying it made me feel swift for a few minutes and I think that if you actually like rum you might love it?
This naked dauphinoise is the perfect recipe to build a fall dinner party around. I mean, yummo! Atlanta Thompson, the private chef of @the_fussyfoodie, says it is her most requested recipe. Watch out for your fingers on that mandolin!
I started doing this standing core work-out. It’s only been a couple weeks (LOL), but I can say that, to start with, it feels like so much less of a big deal to just avoid getting down on the floor.
This is how I fixed the moth ball hole that I discovered in my favorite caramel-colored cashmere sweater when I pulled it off the shelf for the early fall weather.
Social Media I Loved This Week
BEFORE YOU LEAVE SOCIAL MEDIA I LOVED, STOP EVERYTHING & WATCH THIS! We could conjure up a version of this for midlife. HYSTERICAL.
Song of the Week
Piano Man by Billy Joel
In my last CRUSH Letter I told you that I would be updating the site and moving over to a subscription model. That bit about the subscription model is still to come. With all the sleepless nights and distracted days spent with my father this week I haven’t gotten to it yet.
Have a wonderful week, CRUSHes.
Dish
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The Crush Letter
The Crush Letter is a weekly newsletter from Dish Stanley curating articles & intelligence on everything love & connection - friendship, romance, self-love, sex. If you’d like to take a look at some of our best stories go to Read Us. Want the Dish?