Are bleached eyebrows coming back? Because I am NOT doing that again.

Let me take you back to a dark and mysterious time I’d like to call the fall of 1997. A young and not-quite-sartorially-together Miss Plumcake was a college freshman with peroxide red hair and bleached eyebrows.

Let me give you a complete list of people who thought that was a good idea:

• Makeup Artist Kevyn Aucoin in his book Making Faces (he said it would open up my face)
• Me, at the time.

Let me give you a list of people who thought that was a good idea and were right.

But it was everywhere in the September issue of Vogue.

At Prada:

At Versace:

At Balenciaga:

(Gingers can be tricky, so I looked up Marton Dorfler’s catalog. He definitely has eyebrows)

At Alexander McQueen:

At Pucci

I’m so glad Amber Valletta is still working. If you want to see how models have gotten so much thinner in the past 20 years, just look at Amber Valletta’s early covers. Not a sunken eye socket or hollow cheek to be seen.

Gucci

Jil Sander and Bottega Veneta

Readers will recognize Codie Young –the scapegoat for last year’s Topshop Photoshop debacle– as the model for Jil Sander.

And while it works editorially –although Mert and Marcus, the photographers behind many of the best campaigns and editorials, can make anything work– I cannot wholeheartedly recommend it for daily wear.

Still, it’s an interesting look. So what do you think? Would you bleach your brows?

The other day I was watching The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers: Milady’s Revenge. I love these films dearly, as I have since I saw them when they were first released. The costuming is spectacular, the scripts witty and engaging, the cast amazing, and the spirit of Dumas shines through both films.

The Three Musketeers was, I recall, the first time I saw Michael York, who has remained one of my favorite actors ever since. He was perfect for the passionate – albeit not terribly likely to think things through – D’Artagnan. With his ability to maintain equal amounts of wide-eyed innocence, terrier determination, and kid-in-a-candyshop love of all ladies at the same time, it remains one of his finer performances.

And yet I have firmly maintained for decades that the finest performance he might ever have given is one that, alas!, he never did.

You see, the instant I first read Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, I saw Michael York in Wilde’s damned protagonist. As I read of Gray’s descent into hell, I knew that York would be the perfect person to carry both the innocent beauty of the outer shell and the fiendish, decadent cruelty of the man within.

Unfortunately, nobody ever cast him in the role. And, of course, Dorian Gray is a role that may only be played by a man in the first blush of youth. Michael York is still a brilliant actor and a handsome man… but the time has passed. We will never see his Dorian Gray. The world, I think, is a tiny sliver less wonderful for it.

Have you ever just known the perfect role for an actor who never wound up playing it? Who and what? Tell me all about it!

Oh my beloveds.

Last week I walloped you all with this deathless image:

And was smacked right back in the kisser with eleven painfully appropriate responses. You did not make this easy for me. You hit me on my weak side with references to Dr. Who, tacky dances of my childhood, and superstars who make me wince.

But in the end, there can be but one winner. This week it’s the deliciously deranged BJ who officially owes me a new monitor for this unexpected offering:

And it’s also a can opener.

Congratulations, BJ! And thanks to everyone who played.

Well, I’ve been left on my own for more than 24 hours for the first time in 2012,  and apparently I’ve turned into my grandfather because now I’m just one of those people who stands in the middle of the house in her underwear looking for things.

One of the manifold splendors of living alone is when you put something somewhere, it stays put.

So if I put my teal suede d’Orsays in the oven after a Grace Jones night in mid-spring with the intention of letting them sit unmolested in their glittery glory until suede came back in season in the fall, that’s where they’ll stay.

Now I just stand flapping helplessly while Hot Latin Boy –who commandeered all Putting Away of Things after I proved chronically incapable of remembering not everyone can reach the top shelf– patiently explains that the dog shampoo is in a box marked gloves behind the yellow wok, next to my 2007 tax return. Well, obviously.

I’m determined to go through all the cabinets and drawers and make an inventory of each one in my little green notebook, so next time I need to locate my spare bottle of OPI’s You Don’t Know Jacques, my trusty notebook will tell me it’s in the Twinings Transport Bus, along side an empty Nuva Ring box, Dozer’s heart worm pills and my passport.

So that’s what I’m doing this weekend. Well that and I managed to get the last copy of the September issue of Vogue –the only issue of American Vogue I ever read– so I’ll be working on my upper body strength by hurling it against a wall repeatedly.

Next week I’ve got a review on Eloquii (hint: get some of their camisoles with a quickness), my favorite dance shoe for the fat of foot and a few more goodies.

What’s on your plate this weekend?

Advice from our friends at “Questionable Advice & Advertisements“

Sometimes  all I want in the world is a really good trench coat. One that’s tailored well enough to be a dress, but can be worn as an actual coat. With  my annual month-long sabbatical to DC coming up and two weeks in Barcelona and Rome meeting with important magazine-type people, I need some sort of water resistant outerwear.

Outwear is a real blind spot for me. I’ve got that ridiculous lynx an old admirer had made for me  –because nothing’s more practical for someone living in the middle of Texas than a gigantic fur coat– a blonde mink stole I last used as a pillow outside a rest stop in El Paso and an emerald green pea coat that smells like a lamb shank in the rain.

That leaves me with a serious trench gap, and although precipitation here is limited to the first three months of the year, I’d like to get my hands on one before I have nothing to protect me from inclement weather of Rome but prayer and a strategically-held copy of La Repubblica.

I love this shot of Glee’s Amber Riley from Essence Magazine.

Granted,  Amber is 5’3″ and I  like the trench-as-dress trope much more in editorial than I do in real life –there are always fabric and flow issues– but it works the way a trench coat should work for a big girl.

The shoes are Rene Caovilla and the belt is by Ports 1961 but the trench?

Joan Rivers for QVC.

Seriously.

Do you have any secret outerwear resources? Share them in the comments!

This post is in memory of my favorite pair of black underwear, tragically lost at sea August 16, 2012

I am almost certain no one has ever been eaten by a shark while wearing an evening gown.

Maybe on the Titanic, but they probably drowned or froze first, so hey, my totally made-up not-even-remotely-scientifically-supported point still stands.

Uh, Plummy? What point would that be?

There’s nothing saying you have to wear a swimsuit to the beach.

Up with this sort of thing!

I mean sure you probably have to wear some sort of covering, because most beaches are Not That Kind of Beach, but if you don’t feel comfortable in a bathing suit, wear something else.

Honestly, it’s not a big deal.

Of course most of you are much smarter than I am –not that that sets the bar prohibitively high– so you probably figured this out already, but if you have body shame or a weird rash or are cursed with a long torso that forces you to choose between exposing your nooks or your crannies to the public eye, you can just choose your own adventure and be a beach bunny on your own terms.

Here is a brief sampling of outfits I’ve deemed fit for the briny blue at one time or another:

• a traditional bathing suit
• a gold-embroidered lavender silk sari
• underwear and holiday colored Saran Wrap
• an evening gown
• various dresses of various lengths

True, some were bigger successes than others. Swimming in the sari, while not especially practical, was about the most glamorous thing I’ve ever done. I felt just exactly like that goldfish from Fantasia, and who doesn’t want to feel like that goldfish from Fantasia at least once before they shuffle loose this mortal coil?

Others just seemed like a good idea at the time.

I’m looking at –and slightly through– you, Saran Wrap bathing bodice, although in my defense it was nowhere near the most questionable outfit at that particular pre-discobrunch after-afterparty. Come to think of it, it didn’t even seem like a good idea then, but when you’re a straight-laced twenty year-old and a flock of gay men hopped up on ketamine and body glitter come at you with festive green plastic wrap and a meaningful glint in their eyes, you just do what you need to do. God I miss the 90′s.

–insert record scratch jerking us mercilessly back into cruel, cruel reality–

Recently, I’ve taken to wearing cotton dresses for my sunset dips.

Actually, I’ve taken to “reading Melville” which is the phrase I’ve come up with to describe swimming in the buff, since “skinny dipping” isn’t exactly accurate and “chunky dunking” lacks a certain charm. That being said, I live on an essentially deserted six-mile stretch of beach and what’s the damn point of living on an essentially deserted six-mile stretch of beach if you can’t strip off and traumatize some pelicans?

Even if you can’t blind your own seabirds, why not try donning something non-traditional for your next aquatic adventure? It’s better than sitting at home because you’re afraid of being The Fat Girl at the Beach. Just be careful if you’re in a swimming pool: chlorine is hell on a silk sari.