Although considerably less likely to sleep with me than his comedy partner –and previous Monday Hotness– Hugh Laurie (and I can’t say with real honesty that the Laurie odds are incredibly high as it is) Stephen Fry might actually be my favorite of the two and for that reason, and many many more, he is today’s Monday Hotness.

I came across the rampant twitterer when I was but a wee lass when Jeeves and Wooster made its way onto public television, so it’s only fitting we start our Monday Hotness, coincidentally featuring three of my favorite things on earth: Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry and cocktails.

He came up through the Cambridge Footlights, along with pretty much every other British comedy genius (including most of the Pythons, the Goodies, Mitchell and Webb, Punt and Dennis plus Douglas Adams, Emma Thompson and a bit surprisingly, Germaine Greer).

…admit it, he’s kind of working that outfit.

He’s also directly responsible for three of my favorite all-time series: the aforementioned J&W,  Kingdom wherein he plays Peter Kingdom, (a solicitor in a small East Anglia fishing village full of eccentrics –think Gilmore Girls, but smarter and slightly darker– with a car even more bitchin’ than mine, the first season is available on Hulu)

He’s also the host of Q.I., the funniest panel show I’ve ever seen.

Q.I. stands for Quite Interesting, and although I could try to explain it, you really need to watch a clip for yourself, a surefire hit for all my beloved Pain-in-the-Ass Pedants.

(this might not work because of the New Evil WordPress)

Fun Fact: For fans of Emma Thompson’s Oscar-winning Sense and Sensibility screenplay, you have Stephen Fry to thank for that. Apparently the night before La Thompson was supposed to submit the screenplay, the file got corrupted. Knowing Fry was a technogeek, she jumped into a taxi in the middle of the night, wearing just her night things and hauled her entire entire computer to Fry’s house. It took him eight hours to fix it and the world was once again made safe for bonnet movies and puffy shirts.

Plus he has the best wryly amused charmingly supercilious gaze of all time:

If I could make this face, I’d never make any other.

Fry also has the good sense to be interested in my favorite eras, namely the late Victorian through the 1930s.  He portrayed Oscar Wilde in the film Wilde (as pictured above.  How have I not seen this movie?! Especially with the beautiful Jude Law as Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas his Special Gentleman Friend.)

He’s also responsible for adapting the screenplay of one of my favorite novels, Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh into the film Bright Young Things, which he also directed to great success. It really is such a gorgeous, engrossing, pathetic film. Plus you get David Tennant with a bristly mustache.

Plus, he loves his color. I love a big man who isn’t afraid to wear brights.

And just when I thought I couldn’t love him more, Stephen Fry joined Mark Cawardine, co-author with the late Douglas Adams of one of my favorite books of all time Last Chance to See to retrace 20 years on, the search for the endangered animals Adams and naturalist Cawardine set out to find in 1990.

Back in 1990, when Adams first started his adventures in the wilderness, Fry was living in Douglas Adam’s house and was an unseen part of the action, serving as home-base for the novelist’s communications.  As you know Adams died entirely too young in 2001, so Fry’s follow-up and homage to his friend is an especially touching tribute.

Thomas Jefferson, who had the decency to do many sensible things like write the Declaration of Independence, create the Library of Congress, found the University of Virginia (well okay, jury’s still out on this one) and –most importantly– grew up in my part of Virginia, is know affectionately as TJ all over his old stomping grounds, but on the University of Virginia campus he is know exclusively as Mister Jefferson. It is a sign of respect.

In that vein, please note we will refer to today’s Friday Fierceness, editrix and icon par excellence Diana Vreeland strictly as Mrs Vreeland.

I don’t think I can overstate how much I love Mrs Vreeland, so let me try to paint you a picture:

Whenever faced with a sticky situation, I have an imaginary dinner party in my head (because I am, as well we know, completely mad). I go around the table and listen to my five regular guests argue out their opinions.

Here’s the guest list:

Jesus –the free space on any ethical bingo card

Mister Jefferson — for that diplomatic polymath touch

Socrates –an ethicist who damned the torpedos

Sheriff Andy Taylor –for gentleness and the people’s touch

Mrs Vreeland –for wit, vision and a healthy sense of the ridiculous

It’s hard to say where to start with Mrs Vreeland, because my admiration runs so deep.

Yes, she was a great editor, the best Harper’s and American Vogue ever had.

Her influence in the publishing world is still felt through countless people she discovered, inspired or worked with, including the most powerful big girl in fashion, Andre Leon Talley, her protégé.

If you’re a fan of Audrey Hepburn movies you’ll probably know Kay Thompson did a note-perfect homage in Funny Face as Maggie Prescott, the larger-than-life editor of Quality magazine. “Think Pink” was doubtlessly inspired by Mrs Vreeland’s famed quote: “Pink is the navy blue of India”

After the entire scene is painted pink, Maggie Prescott is asked why she wasn’t wearing the new “it” color she championed, since everyone one else was. Her perfect Mrs Vreeland line was a dismissive “I wouldn’t be caught dead.”

Mrs Vreeland wasn’t pretty. With her enormous nose, tilted pelvis and mannish features she came down on the laide side of jolie-laide, which always makes for the most interesting beauty. I’ve always said Sarah Jessica Parker must have a copy of the editrix’s playbook somewhere, so it was no surprise when SJP posed as Mrs Vreeland for Harper’s in March.


Her memoir D.V. should be required reading for every man, woman and child with even a glimmer of intellect or style.

It’s a tremendous read that begins with a perfectly aged Mrs Vreeland applying a back plaster to young Jack Nicholson’s naked backside, slides through her relationship with Wallis Simpson, Jackie Kennedy, Balenciaga and hits every note along the way with pizzazz (a word she made famous but probably did not coin. She became editor of Harper’s in 1937 where the word first appeared in print, attributed to a Harvard Lampoon editor.)

Here, just read the first page:

(click image to enlarge)

How much of the story is true? Probably more than she gets credit for, but it doesn’t really matter. Memoirs aren’t autobiographies.

So what can big girls learn from the reed-thin Mrs Vreeland?

She knew how to occupy space.

We all occupy space, that’s science. Learning how to occupy space is an art. I don’t suggest adopting her trademark pelvis-tilting swan slouch, but learning how to hold your body with unapologetic grace and power –even if it’s not traditional grace– is, like diamonds and the herp, a gift that gives forever.

When she sat in a chair, she didn’t perch on it trying to take up as little space as possible, she was in that chair.

It all comes down to honesty of being.

Mrs Vreeland was honest. She wasn’t necessarily factual but she was honest. I was astounded after my interview with The Daily Beast went public because dozens of my beloved readers thought I was actually a team of gay men because Plumcake couldn’t possible be real.  I loathe dishonesty of personality, especially in publishing. That’s not how I roll. I am what I appear (although I am more than I appear, like the rest of us) and I have Mrs Vreeland to thank for that.

She liked what she liked, said what she thought, wore what she pleased –usually black with wild statement pieces, which might be from ancient Greece or the costume shop around the corner– and knew she was the most fabulous creature on earth.

She didn’t pretend to fit traditional beauty, and that was fine with her because her concern was elegance and elegance was something far broader than black sheaths and knowing what fork to use.

“The only real elegance is in the mind; if you’ve got that, the rest really comes from it.”

She had a vocabulary of elegance. When describing her hunt of the perfect red:

“All my life I’ve pursued the perfect red. I can never get painters to mix it for me. It’s exactly as if I’d said, “I want Rococo with a spot of Gothic in it and a bit of Buddhist temple”…About the best red is to copy the color of a child’s cap in ANY Renaissance portrait.”

…and Mrs Vreeland did love her red. Her crimson nails and lips set against her kabuki white face and black lacquered hair, and of course her famed “Garden in Hell” living room.

I could go on and on, but I’ve been drinking tea since 8:00 this morning and there are tides in the affairs of men that reallyneedtogorightnowzomgow.

So have a fabulous weekend, have fun, be glorious and remember:

“I’m a great believer in vulgarity- if it’s got vitality. A little bad taste is like a nice splash of paprika. We all need a splash of bad taste- it’s hearty, it’s healthy, it’s physical. I think we could use more of it. No taste is what I’m against.”

We are all deeply saddened to lose Patrick Swayze who died from pancreatic cancer –a particularly evil sort– this week at 57. Rest assured, the Monday Hotness WILL be Johnny Castle, who catapulted my entire female generation into puberty, but I truly believe his best role was Miss Vida Boheme, in what may actually be the single greatest film of all time, To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Love, Julie Newmar.

“Well pumpkins, it comes down to that age-old decision: style… or… substance?”
“Internal combustion, the ultimate accessory.”
“A car? Mary Alice Louise, no. This is a land yacht.”

“I think tomorrow is a “Say Something” hat day.”
[referring to Diana Vreeland's memoir DV] “Read it? My dear child you should commit entire passages to memory!”

“Oh! No one say anything frivolous for the next few moments. I am having a significant experience.”

(I love how this outfit is a wink to Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in the cross-dressing buddy film that started it all, Some Like It Hot)

“I want you to believe in yourself, imagine good things and moisturize, I cannot stress this enough.”

and most importantly, the last line has been my personal credo for years:

Larger than life is just the right size.

Make it fabulous, or Angela gets it.

Oh.

My.

God.

BECKY.

I am DYING here. DYING.  A black sequined MESS JACKET??!!!

I..I just don’t know what to say. I mean you have a dream, you work hard and someday you hope, just hope, that something like this would happen…I…I promised myself I wouldn’t cry.

Let’s see it in action; perhaps not exactly the way I’d wear it but you’ve got to give it to Lady Sov props for personal style.

According to Diana Vreeland, who is right up there next to Jesus and the guy who invented gin in my personal pantheon, Gertrude Stein was one of the best mannequins in the biz. “You just can’t take a picture of [that] old broad.”

I’m not going to spend time telling you about Stein because everyone in the whole world should go out and read her letters, writings and biography. I don’t necessarily agree with every single thing she’s ever written but she’s too important and influential to ignore.

“Let me listen to me and not to them.”

“It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realise the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger. ”

“Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting.”

“A masterpiece… may be unwelcome but it is never dull.”
“A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself.”
“A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables. ”

“An audience is always warming but it must never be necessary to your work.”
“A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.”
“I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed.”

“I know what Germans are. They are a funny people. They are always choosing someone to lead them in a direction which they do not want to go.”
“Considering how dangerous everything is, nothing is really very frightening.”
“Communists are people who fancied that they had an unhappy childhood.”

“Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you completely in anything.”
“Do not forget birthdays. This is in no way a propaganda for a larger population.”
“Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.”

“I don’t envisage collectivism. There is no such animal, it is always individualism, sometimes the rest vote and sometimes they do not, and if they do they do and if they do not they do not. ”
“Is it worse to be scared than to be bored, that is the question.”
“It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing. “

Francesca was just now researching low-priced knee-length party dresses for our internet friend Megan, who will soon be a bridesmaid, when she (Francesca) came upon this LBD from JC Penney:

Unfortunately she cannot post the larger picture, nor the image of the cowl back, because JC Penney makes the photos on their product pages all Flash-Player-y and complicated and non-downloadable. But click here to see.

Is it not pretty? And it flatters almost any figure, Francesca thinks.

That is all.