Here's the deal: Remember how Snooki, drunk or sober, was never seen without that Coach bag dangling from the crook of her arm? Snooki and her Coach were as synonymous as The Situation and his six-pack. But then the winds of change started blowing on Jersey Shore. Every photograph of Guido-huntin' Snooki showed her toting a new designer purse. Why the sudden disloyalty? Was she trading up? Was she vomiting into her purses and then randomly replacing them? The answer is much more intriguing.

Allegedly, the anxious folks at these various luxury houses are all aggressively gifting our gal Snookums with free bags. No surprise, right? But here's the shocker: They are not sending her their own bags. They are sending her each other's bags! Competitors' bags!

Call it what you will — "preemptive product placement"? "unbranding"? — either way, it's brilliant, and it makes total sense. As much as one might adore Miss Snickerdoodle, her ability to inspire dress-alikes among her fans is questionable. The bottom line? Nobody in fashion wants to co-brand with Snooki.

MORE> Your Guide to the Endangered "Dirty Girl" Style

As the Snookstress odyssey continues, it will be interesting to watch her bag evolution. Will Gucci send her a truckload of Goyard? Will Goyard then deluge her with Valextra? (If Snookie starts carrying a Valextra bag, it is inevitable that she will malaprop the name into "Valtrex," the herpes medication. This will doubtless accelerate the inevitable preemptive strike by Casa Valextra.)

Snooki's meteoric and lucrative ascent means that she will soon be able to sidestep the whole issue and buy her own Birkin, thereby precipitating a mass Jonestown suicide over at Maison Hermes. (Warning! "Hermes" can easily be Snooki-spoke into "Herpes.) Or will they just go to the next level and send her a super-exclusive Belgian Delvaux bag? (Launching in the U.S. at Barneys this fall, Delvaux Since 1829 is arguably the most elitist brand in the world.)

I feel a certain solidarity with Snooki, and not just because we are both 4 feet 9 inches tall: I too have been a pawn/victim of preemptive product placement, or PEPP. Let me explain: For a number of years now, I have been a loyal devotee of the Gucci shoe. They are comfy and classy, and the commitment to prominent logo placement appeals to my unapologetic nouveau riche sensibility.

Wherever possible, I purchase these sneakers and slip-ons at Barneys, enjoying as I do after 25 years of loyal service an anesthetizing discount. However, being small of foot, I am often forced to patronize a Gucci flagship in order to acquire the requisite size. Earlier this year, following a series of full-retail purchases at the Fifth Avenue store, I took it into my head to request, by repeated email, a "press discount." These attempts have been totally unsuccessful: No discount has been forthcoming. When Snooki PEPP rumors began to fly, it suddenly occurred to me that I was in the same boat as the reality mega-star: The Gucci folks would clearly prefer to discourage my loyalty rather than foster it. Snooki and I are the Typhoid Marys of the luxury branding world.

Oh! There's the doorbell! Must dash! It's probably a Fed Ex package of Crocs-anonymously sent by Gucci — in a desperate attempt to release my corrosive death grip on their sacred image.

sdoonan@observer.com

I often feel as if all my waking energy is spent dealing with the horrid consequences of some seemingly innocuous choice. Life seems to be riddled with gruesome repercussions and squalid domino effects.

As regular readers may recall, I switched to a messenger bag after my Goyard tote gave me bicep tendonitis. Update: I now find that the right ass cheek of my Naked and Famous jeans is becoming worn, courtesy of the rubbing, dangling, no-name replacement bag.

Earlier this summer, I switched to multi-functional tinted bifocals-a fetching pair of Anne Slater-blue Ray-Bans-so that I could read my phone on a hot street corner when the necessity arose. The naff consequence? I keep stepping in dog poop because the sidewalk is now a blur.

After a recent and thankfully uneventful colonoscopy, I switched, on the advice of the attending physician, from oatmeal to a higher-fiber cereal. The reaction? Three months later, my cholesterol went up 30 points. As a reaction to this reaction, I started chomping down red-yeast rice pills. (The lesbian organic crunchy alternative to pharmaceutical statins.) One large rubbery capsule got lodged in my throat while I was watching Hoarders last week. When I coughed, the tracheal convulsion broke the pill in half, releasing a cloud of red powder that rushed out of my nose and stained my new Archive 1887 Iggy Pop T-shirt. Quel désastre!

More hair-raising potentialities: If you allow yourself to become addicted to opiates, you will get high as a kite, but you will also become HORRIBLY CONSTIPATED.

Wearing really high Celine clogs makes you chic and model-tall, but your resulting inability to run fast can make you a sitting duck for butt-pinchers.

Looking luxe and über-glam in your black Givenchy entrance-maker can snag you a high-powered date, but it can also get you jacked on the subway.

Wearing a corset can render you deliciously svelte in your Victoria Beckham organ-mangling cocktail dress, but that same constricting foundation garment will leave bizarre indentations on your body that take hours and gallons of lotion to erase. Overdo the lotion application and zits will result.

Re Hoarders: I have become totally addicted to this disturbing and cringe-making A&E documentary series about ordinary people who cannot part with their belongings. The reaction? I have developed a deranged and extreme de-accessioning impulse. After every episode, I feel compelled to prove to myself that I am not a hoarder by dragging bags of clothes and piles of magazines to the trash chute in our apartment building. The consequence: My neighbors think I'm insane.

Toodles!

sdoonan@observer.com

As I careen toward 60, I find myself making increasingly desperate attempts to appear young-at-heart and switched-on. Here's my attitude: If I am doomed to become an alta cacca, then at least let me be a trendy and pop-literate alta cacca. You should hear me screeching and hooting along with "Alejandro" on the car radio. I'm totally tuned in!

Strictly entre nous, I find this latest Gaga offering to be quite subpar, à la a Eurovision Song Contest. And what's with those lyrics? The unexplained litany of Latino stud names suggests that Lady G is using this track to send out embedded reproaches to all her former hairdressers. ... Roberto! Fernando! More spit curls, Orlando! Gimme more height, Julio!

So what, when I am not pretending to be 14 years old, are my real musical tastes? This brings us to my iPod and the sordid cavalcade of geriatric nostalgia concealed therein.

My playlist, by me:

1. "Substitute," by the Who. This 1966 hit-the year the Brits won the World Cup-is literally the most perfect pop song every written. Gaga, take note of the scalpel-cut lyrics:

Substitute! Your lies for fact

I can see right through your plastic mac

I look all white, but my dad was black

My fine-looking suit is really made out of sack

2. "Peter Gunn," by Cherry Wainer. 1966 again! We alta caccas love an organ, and nothing beats the sound of the all-but-forgotten Cherry pounding the crap out of her Hammond. For extra thrills, YouTube Cherry in action. Keep an eye out for the white poodle who shares her piano stool-sorry, I mean organ stool.

3. "Claire de Lune," by Tomita. This trippy electronic version of Debussy's classic was used extensively on The Robin Byrd Show back in the '80s. FYI, the lady Byrd is still around and her boobs look great.

4. "Sound and Vision," by David Bowie. Memory Lane: me and my demented pals, Biddie, Hattie, Sweep and Broom (nicknames were big in mid-'70s London) standing at the bar in the Blitz Club and all screaming in unison "Blue! Blue 'lectric blue! That's the color of my room!" and feeling the exhilaration that comes from knowing your entire life is unfurling in front of you. And now look! There's only a third of it left!

5. "People are Strange," by the Doors. I told you I love an organ, and an organist: Doors keyboard genius Ray Manzarek was a big fashion customer at the store (Maxfield) where I worked in L.A. in the late '70s/early '80s, and he was a real gent. So there!

6. "Animal Farm," by the Kinks. Ray Davies was a visionary. This song foreshadows the whole back-to-the-farm-and-make-you-own-goat's-cheese rustic fetish, which is currently raging hilariously through our culture.

7. "Let It Whip," by the Dazz Band. I have worshipped at the church of Don Cornelius since the '70s. (He was a Maxfield customer, too!) Soul Train remains the most important style show EVER to assault the US airwaves.

8. "Arnold Layne," by Pink Floyd. It's hard to imagine a contemporary artist-Justin Bieber for example-making a hit song about a dirty old geezer who gets his kicks stealing ladies' knickers off washing lines.

9. "Sorrow," by the Mersey Beats. Nineteen sixty-six AGAIN!

10. "Les Sucettes," by France Gall and Serge Gainsbourg. This was the song that scandalized Paree in 1966. The young and innocent Mademoiselle Gall was famously and shockingly duped, by Serge and others, into singing this double-entendre-riddled song about sucking lollipops. When she realized the full horror of her sordid and unwitting collusion, she barricaded herself at home and did not go out for weeks. It's hard to imagine a contemporary chanteuse like Ke$ha experiencing this kind of embarrassment.

Re Ke$ha: I will be adding a little jejune sizzle to my remaining years by Ke$ha-izing the spelling of my name: et voilà! $imon!

sdoonan@observer.com

I am surprised there were no poofs caught in the net of that Russian spy haul last week. The connection between espionage and the "friends of Dorothy" is well documented. Paging Guy Burgess, Anthony Blount and other tweedy inverts!

It all makes perfect sense: We gays have a much greater familiarity than the average breeder with the concept of secrecy, spending, as we are obliged to do, our early years wrapped in a feather boa of undisclosed thoughts and desires. With good reason, too. If I had told anyone at my Secondary Modern School that all I wanted to do was dance the frug with David Hemmings-remember him from Blow-Up?-they would have turned me into Piggy, as in Lord of the Flies.

My gay secret life was at its naughtiest and most clandestine when watching TV. Though we Doonans might all have appeared to be staring at the same box, I was focused on very specific aspects of the program content, and getting all hot and bothered in the process. While my family was doggedly following Efrem Zimabalist Jr.'s sleuthing in 77 Sunset Strip, I was fantasizing about a kiss with Kookie, the slim-hipped parking lot attendant played by Edward Burns. While my mum and dad were white-knuckling it through Lloyd Bridges' underwater adventures in Sea Hunt, I was focused on his other harpoon, if y'all know what I'm sayin'.

This is not to say that the straight Doonies did not have their own share of secrets. For example: When I was in my late 20s, I asked my parents for my original birth certificate. They had always been evasive on this issue, proffering a range of excuses, including "Your Aunt Phyllis's seeing-eye dog ate it." I finally put the squeeze on Betty Doonan because I needed it to process my green card.

When, reluctantly and with lowered lids, she handed over the document in question, I suspected it might contain a secret or two. I was correct. His name was Mr. Jones. Between anxious puffs on a Woodbine cigarette, Betty told me that this man was her first husband, a wanker, by all accounts, who had abandoned her for some Italian broad at the beginning of the war. My mum had kept it a secret for almost 30 years, hiding any documents that referred to her as "formerly Jones," my birth certificate included.

People say that keeping secrets makes you a prisoner and releasing them sets you free. This was not the case for Betty. Her life was much better back when Mr. Jones was a shadowy memory, stuffed in a drawer. Once the cat was out of the bag, she had to deal with my relentless, stress-inducing inquisitions and reproaches. Why, when she knew how much I enjoyed a bit of sizzling scandal, had she withheld this succulent, Lana Turner-esque detail of her life?

But sometimes the discovery of a family secret can bring true happiness and genuine exaltation. Such was the case with my Jonny. When I met Jonathan Adler 15 years ago, he was  a workaday potter who thought he was just like everybody else. He had no idea how very, very, very special he was. Everything changed when, about a month after I met him, he found out that ... hang on to your chromosomes, girls! ... his grandparents were first cousins!!

Far from inducing feelings of discomfort or shame, this revelation increased my Jonny's joyous self-esteem about tenfold. He rebranded and repackaged this potentially concerning tidbit as follows: "I'm not inbred. I'm purebred."

Go, Jonny, go!

sdoonan@observer.com

You know those bulging, upward-thrusting codpieces that you occasionally encounter in Renaissance portraiture? Well, this was clearly the original source material for Thom Browne's black leather thingy, worn by a model during the fashion show at the AmFar Inspiration Awards at the New York Public Library on Thursday, June 3. Thom's penile missile really wowed the front row, Ricky Martin, Cyndi Lauper, Lance Bass, Kylie Minogue and Jean Paul Gaultier notwithstanding.

The younger attendees seemed quite bewildered by Thom's explosive bulge. The reason for this is clear. Young people today are breathtakingly stupid. Let me rephrase that so it doesn't sound quite so horrid. Young people today are not stupid, they are bright and ambitious, but they are horribly cursed with a breathtakingly narrow frame of reference and would therefore have no knowledge of Thom's original source of inspiration and would therefore just think that TB was a crude bugger whose oeuvre was infused with horrifically priapic obsessions. In other words, young people today might be bright and ambitious but they would not know a Renaissance codpiece if it slapped them upside the head. If you are cruising Zappos all day, then you are unlikely to stumble upon any mind-expanding sites about the glories and eccentricities of 16th-century male costume.

I can support this assertion with personal observations: Last week I watched a young colleague draw a blank at the words "Jackie Onassis." I had barely recovered from the aneurysm-inducing shock of this incident when, one day later, another bright and ambitious young person glazed over-like a cat taking a poo-when I described a handbag as "very Margaret Thatcher." 

Speaking of stupidity: I myself am extremely stupid. In 1963, I failed the legendary British 11-plus examination and was sent to a school with a more vocational bent. I admit it. I own it. I am shocked that, despite my documented stupidity, event organizers continue to enlist my help with live auctions. Me and my stupidity never fail to bollocks up the bids. In the past, I have cock'd things up so badly that organizers were obliged to sell their objets d'art and Tahitian romantic getaways for less than the final bid.

I am so stupid that I always forget that my primary role is to increase the desirability of the items on the block, as opposed to taking the piss out of them and poking fun at the prepared catalog verbiage. At Thursday night's live auction-hosting again!-I got totally sidetracked when a cruise line promised "unlimited shore excursions." For some reason this struck me as insanely amusing and I just could not let it go: "Come on, girls! Who doesn't love a good shore excursion?" etc.

And then there was the exquisitely thin Piaget watch, so thin, in fact, that the folks at Piaget mentioned it 16 times in their cue-card notes, causing me to speculate, unnecessarily and thoughtlessly, that their magical timepiece was suffering from a eating disorder.

I also have a tendency to become inappropriately stroppy when people stop paying attention, which they invariably do during a live auction. A couple of years back, I railed from the podium at Lindsay Lohan during a Rape Treatment Center event auction in L.A. because she kept yakking to stylist Rachel Zoe during my spiel. Afterward, she asked me why I had been mean to her. "''Cos I'm a mean girl," I replied, nudging and winking.

Lindsay Lohan should take lessons from Kylie Minogue. Gorgeous and popular and always with a great-looking bloke on her arm, Kylie has the magic brew in her purse. At the AmFar event, she was accompanied by her model boyfriend, Andres what's-his-name, who is even better-looking than her last squeeze, the actor Olivier what's-his-name.

The diminutive Australian glamour puss and I greeted each other like long-lost diminutive glamour pusses. The reason for this is simple: We are, in a manner of speaking, related. She and her sister Dannii reunited to sing their version of Abba's "Winner Takes All" on the soundtrack of Beautiful People, which, as you all know, thanks to my relentlessly self-serving plugging, is the hit BBC show based on my eponymous autobio. More unabashed plugging: Series two of Beautiful People will unfurl on Logo this coming Saturday. Minogue fans take note: Dannii appears in episode five. Plug over.

Going ... going ... gone!

editorial@observer.com

As of last week, I have an entirely new definition. Ready? Here goes: An icon is a person who can graffiti your clothing with a Sharpie while you are still wearing it and totally get away with it. If the scrawler is an icon, then you meekly enjoy being scrawled upon. If, however, you find yourself getting all pissed off and filing assault charges, or sending stroppy letters with dry-cleaning bills attached to Judge Judy (an icon herself!), then you know for sure that your attacker is definitely not an icon.

Last week I was in L.A. enjoying a post-book-signing dinner with the outrageous, generous, legendary, foulmouthed, utterly fabulous and undeniably iconic Jerry Weintraub. (His blockbuster memoir, When I Stop Talking You'll Know I'm Dead, reads like a Harold Robbins novel on crack. Highly recommended.) We were dining at Cut, Wolfgang Puck's ominously named steakhouse. Jerry, who is no poulet de printemps but nonetheless enjoys the attentions of two women-his wife, Jane Morgan, and his girlfriend, Suzie Ekins-was entertaining a group of revelers, myself included, with riveting tales of chutzpah and testosterone.

When Wolfgang stopped by our table, Jerry playfully scrawled on his chef's jacket using the Sharpie that still lingered in his top pocket. Since Jerry was head to foot in black Tom Ford, revenge was not possible. Looking for a suitable target, Wolfgang's beady eyes appraised the snowy white landscape of my Band of Outsiders tuxedo jacket ($1,824). Before you could say "Wiener schnitzel," Herr Puck went to town. After Wolfgang had satiated himself, Jerry spun me round and took his turn, emblazoning his name across my back. Jerry's old pal Bruce Willis, icon number three, then grabbed the Sharpie from Jerry and scrawled his name over my left shoulder. Within seconds, I became their bitch.

If a group of random traveling salesman had defaced me in the same way, I am sure I would have gotten my knickers in a right royal twist. But they were icons, so I was happy, happy to be turned into a walking piece of celebrity memorabilia.

The iconography continues.

One word: Iman. On Thursday, May 20, Barneys celebrated the Somalian supermodel's upcoming CFDA Fashion Icon Award with a window display homage and a lunch in the artfully transformed bra and panty department on the sixth floor.

Naturally, I decided to wear my Sharpie icon jacket. What it really needed, I had decided, was not the chemical removal of the violent, jet-black autographs, but the addition of more. And there would be no shortage of icons at the Iman lunch: Daphne Guinness, Desiree Rogers, Christiane Amanpour and-drumroll!-David Bowie were all scheduled to attend. What an icebreaker! What a conversation piece!

My dear husband, Jonny, intercepted me at the front door, just as I was stuffing some nice fat juicy markers into the pocket. In no uncertain terms, he pointed out the extreme naffness of my enterprise and cautioned me vigorously against surrendering to any similar impulses. "At the rate you are going, you will end up in a pair of hot pants on Santa Monica Boulevard selling maps to the stars' homes," he said, shoving me back in my closet, and forcibly removing the dreaded celebri-jacket. "Or manning the gift shop at the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas."

Speaking of Liberace: Jerry is producing the upcoming movie based on the iconic sequined, piano-playing poofter, to be played by (!) Michael Douglas. Matt Damon has been cast as Scott Thorson, the young boyfriend coerced by Lib into a you-must-look-more-like-me plastic surgery makeover.

As Jerry would say, "It's gonna be some iconic-ass shit!"

sdoonan@observer.com

"I'm going to Carnaby Street to get a flat and a modeling job, and I'll be back in half an hour."

These words were spoken by La Redgrave in the 1967 movie Smashing Time. The basic plot of this unsung cinematic mistress-piece revolves around the arrival in London of two adorably common trouts named Yvonne (La Redgrave) and Brenda (Rita Tushingham). Their goal? The same as yours and mine and everyone else who escapes naffsville and shleps to the big city: fame, fortune and beaucoup de pooblicitay.

The advertising campaign that lured me to this movie at the age of 16 used the slogan "Two girls go stark mod!" I wasn't disappointed. When the lights came up at the shabby Gaumont movie theater back in Reading, Berkshire-lo those 40 years ago-I knew that I had found a raison d'être. I decided that I too would go in search of a trendy Carnaby street pad and, in the absence of any modeling offers, a switched-on, groovy, pace-setting occupation.

When my childhood best friend, Biddie (a.k.a. James Biddlecombe), and I simultaneously flew our respective coops, we hung out of the train window, in conscious imitation of Brenda and Yvonne, singing the Smashing Time theme song:

"Going down to London, going down to London, we're going to have a SMASHING TIME!!!"

We rented a squalid bed-sit and set about the task of clawing our way to the middle: I dove into the mad-cap world of window-dressing, and Biddie vamped his way into the spangled West End drag/cabaret circuit. Like Brenda and Yvonne, Biddie and I were two idiotically naïve, glamour-starved funsters who were mesmerized by the fashion and fabulousness that shimmered on the horizon. And, guided by visions of our two irrepressible heroines, we quickly learned that the best defense against any disappointment/rejection is humor.

Lynn Redgrave's portrayal of the tall, loud, brassy Yvonne is memorable and utterly hilarious-YouTube the scene where she performs her hit record, "I Can't Sing but I'm Young"-but also poignant. The ability to inhabit a character so dripping with emotional ineptitude and imbue it with genuine vulnerability was Lynn's great gift. She did the same thing in Georgy Girl and was rewarded with an Oscar nomination. Vanessa's younger sister was an empathetic thespian who, despite the gravitas of the Redgrave dynasty, instinctively understood that inside us all lurks a totally uncool, bleached-blond Yvonne screaming for a bit of love and attention.

I met Lynn Redgrave at a Tina Brown-hosted do in the mid 2000s. When I gushed, she surprised me by matching my deranged Smashing Time-ophilia with equal enthusiasm. She was only too happy to talk about this under-celebrated movie and was at pains to assure me that she and Brenda, as she still referred to Rita Tushingham, had remained the best of pals. During lunch, Lynn chuckled and self-deprecated about her chemo wig and her burgeoning career as a playwright. I was left with the distinct impression that here was a woman who, despite baroque family dramas, eating disorders and cancer, still believed it was possible to zip off to Carnaby Street to get a flat and modeling job and be back in half an hour.

R.I.P. Yvonne. You will be missed.

sdoonan@observer.com

My epiphany came last week while reading A Time to Be Born, the late Dawn Powell’s searing satire about two gals clawing their way to the top in prewar N.Y.C. Halfway through the book, one of the characters realizes that the key to social success is a certain remoteness, and that “the public does not like its idols to be folksy.” Darn! No wonder I’m not being idolized.

Take last week, for instance: On the night of Monday, April 19, I skipped off to the SCAD (Savannah College Of Art and Design) Etoile awards, where my Jonny was performing the role of emcee. Movie star Michael Douglas was sitting directly behind me, looking composed but sad, as you might when you know that one of your kids is about to become extraordinarily unavailable, courtesy of the prison system. (His troubled lad Cameron got a five-year-plus-parole sentence for drug-dealing the following day.)

Delighted though I was to be in such close proximity to Kirk’s talented and still-good-looking son, I was scanning the horizon for another celeb, Etoile honoree du soir, Catherine Deneuve. My newfound realizations about the perils of folksy availability have only fueled my interest in meeting the fabulously blank cinematic icon. I am happy to report that she exceeded my expectations by being even more glacial and remote than usual. In fact, she never showed up at all. She was stuck in Paris, wreathed in Icelandic ash and Gitanes smoke.

Instead, we had Fergie, the only person on earth other than Richard Simmons who is actually more folksy and available than myself. The likable Duchess of York bopped onto the stage to receive an award for ash-bound David “Shanghai” Tang. Memo to me: Filling in to pick up other people’s awards for them is the ne plus ultra of folksy availability.

Tuesday night found me surrounded by iconic foodies—Batali, Lagasse, Colicchio—at the Foodbank fund-raiser at Chelsea Piers. Nothing says “folksy availability” quite like an iconic chef. Here is a milieu where down-to-earth affability is not just acceptable, it is positively de rigueur.

In this sea of gourmandizing jollity, the less-folksy non-foodie celebs stood out like sore thumbs: Salman Rushdie, U2’s the Edge and Helena Christensen maintained a certain air of unavailability by intermittently withdrawing from the general frivolity throughout the evening. They accomplished this by pulling out their phones and embarking on bouts of scrolling and texting, smiling creepily all the while. (It’s the smiling that works my folksy nerves.)

As somebody who regards the phone as an annoying appliance for conveying bad news and problems—“SD, you need to rewrite the copy on the Prada ad”—I find the contemporary mania for 24-hour phone diddling to be not just deeply naff but also wildly incomprehensible. Why check your emails when it’s never good news? I guess it provides the perpetrator with some kind mystique-enhancing moment of squishy self-involvement. It certainly communicates unfolksy unavailability. Memo to self: In the future, intermittently ignore those around you, pull out your phone and grin mysteriously while fumbling with the buttons.

On Thursday night, my Jonny and I went to support his author-economist brother, David Adler. (He wrote that book Snap Judgment, a spunky and highly readable challenge to the whole Gladwellian belief in spontaneous decision making.) Mr. Adler has produced a behavioral finance documentary called Mind Over Money, which was premiering at the Museum of Finance on Wall Street (it airs this week on PBS Nova).

During the Nova-sponsored post-movie panel discussion, I had little or no idea what anyone was talking about. Then, mercifully, the topic of shopping came up, accompanied by a nugget of truly startling information. Brace yourselves! According to Harvard professor Jennifer Lerner, women are disinclined to shop when they are frightened or angry—hence the plunge in purchases after Wall Street crashes or terrorist attacks—but more inclined to shop when they feel sad.

OMG! The rest of the week is a blur. After hearing this game-changing tidbit, my retailer’s brain skipped off down the rabbit hole and began concocting ever more baroque ways to make customers mournful, preferably without them realizing it. What if we dressed little children à la Oliver Twist and stationed them at the various entrances to Barneys? What if we piped in Andy Williams singing “Autumn Leaves” over and over again? The customers might shop their brains out, but what would be the effect on the salespeople? Maybe they would go all limp and suicidal and be unable to help the weeping-but-shopaholic customers?

Let’s end on a sad note and see if it catapults you, dear reader, into a clothes-buying frenzy. Here goes. True fact: Despite being a total genius—she was Hemingway’s favorite writer—Dawn Powell died uncelebrated and was buried in an unmarked grave on Hart Island. Now go shop!

sdoonan@observer.com

No, seriously. Has it ever been more mind-numbingly confusing/complicated to be a goil than it is right now? And I fear the situation may be getting worse. While men sit around farting and twiddling their BlackBerrys, the chicks writhe in agony under the increasing pressure to optimize every aspect of their lives, and everyone else’s. They are expected to look like Angelina Jolie; be as nurturing and upbeat as Maria Von Trapp; be as decisive and reassuring as Winston Churchill; and be as tigress-y and protective as Gloria Allred. The pressure to be perfect, self-imposed and otherwise is, like, totally off the chizzies. 
This past week, I was forced to confront, in no uncertain terms, the epic scale of the challenges that dog the glamour-pusses and socialites of N.Y.C. on a daily basis.

TUESDAY, APRIL 6: An amazingly good-looking group of chicks—Lauren Santo Domingo, Chloë Sevigny and Dasha Zhukova, amongst others—all showed up at Barneys for the launch of scribe-socialite Derek Blasberg’s hilarious new etiquette manual, titled Classy. Derek’s book directly addresses one of the biggest challenges facing women today: How to project the ludicrous degree of sizzling hotness that our culture demands of every female, without turning into a skank. Classy’s tips are broad-ranging and include a vital and cautionary note about the fad for Japanese tattoos: ‘You might think you got “goddess” on your hip bone, but it could very likely be “toilet seat.”

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7: The Women in Need gala at the Waldorf—my Jonny and I were there to cheer our honoree pal, Glamour magazine editrix Cindi Lieve—was full of women who clearly were in need of very little, except maybe a respite from the burden of looking totally perfect every time they appear in public. The standards of flawless coiffure and couture for the prominent New York gal have become sadistically high. Unfortunately, it is no longer considered cool to show up with fag burns in your miniskirt, à la Edie Sedgwick. FYI, girls: I hate to sound smug, but it took Jonny and me about two minutes to get dressed that night.

THURSDAY, APRIL 8: I flew to Scottsdale, Ariz., with Ashley Olsen. Actually, she was in first class and I was back by the turlets. But that’s O.K. I’m not bitter. I would rather be an F-list celebrity man, back by the turlets, than face the kind of fan onslaught to which Ms. Olsen and her twin sister were subsequently subjected.

We were headed to the new Barneys store to stage a fall fashion show of the Olsen clothing line, The Row. After the flawless defile, out came the phone cameras, flashing away. Mary Kate and Ashley were impressively tolerant of this insanely intrusive ritual. The horrifyingly naff mania for documenting social events with phone pics now includes all generations. This gruesome substitute for human interaction is assault—packaged as homage, making it impossible to remonstrate with the amateur paparazzi. Women seem to be the primary target. They are also the primary perpetrators.

FRIDAY, APRIL 9: Back to N.Y.C. at the crack of ass. If further proof is needed that being a woman is fraught with complexity, then I certainly get it on this particular morning. While I breeze through security, my colleague Delphine—a new mom with a hungry lad named Hugo waiting at home—is forced to unpack and repack a breast pump AND a massive quilted nylon bag filled with gallons of BREAST MILK!!! While I loll in the lounge reading US Weekly, Delphine has to wait for hours while her copious lactations are tested for traces of explosives.

Cheers, Hugo! Drink up and celebrate the fact that you were born a carefree little bloke!

sdoonan@observer.com
 

Last week blokey celeb chef Jamie Oliver flew round the U.S. ranting at people about their ’orrible eating ’abits, while promoting his new ABC show, The Food Revolution. Though I applaud Jamie’s efforts to prevent folks from munching themselves into an early grave, I think he could save himself a lot of shlepping and hectoring simply by adopting the Terry Doonan Method.

Let’s go back half a century: When the first fast-food burger joint opened in my hometown back in the early 1960s—it was a Wimpy!—my sister and I expressed interest. We were mesmerized by the groovy graphics, the rouge Formica and the nifty light fixtures.

“Why would you want to eat that muck?” said my dad, Terry, with an appalled expression on his face. “It’s all made from donkey dick.” As regular weekend equestrians, my sister and I were more than familiar with the horrors of both horse dick and pony dick. Donkey dick? It sounded so much worse. Even the Oliver Twist school lunches that we endured seemed infinitely preferable. Uccch! We were totally turned off. To this very day, I cannot walk past a fast-food joint without hearing a loud, braying sound in my head. Jamie, take note: Thanks to Terry Doonan and his donkey dick aversion therapy, I have never eaten fast food, and I never will.

If it’s any consolation to the fast-food conglomerates of the world, my dad’s skepticism about the origins and quality of food extended to posh restaurants. When, in later life, we dined together, he would always greet the announcement of the daily special with a dark conspiracy theory: “Chicken tandoori? They probably found some rotting breasts in a bucket out the back and are attempting to disguise the putrefaction with a handful of curry powder.” Bon appétit!

As Mr. Oliver was inciting his food revolution, I was flying round the country inciting a revolution of my own: a shoe revolution. I was zipping from Barneys to Barneys counseling/badgering customers about which shoes they should buy this season.

Upon reflection, I see that Jamie and I had overlapping missions. Though buying the right shoes will not raise your food consciousness, it can definitely help you lose weight. Here’s how:

1. Starving yourself to save money in order to pay for those Pierre Hardy gold metallic porno pumps can definitely make you thinner.
2.Wearing a Givenchy or Derek Lam gladiator sandal will not make you thinner. Au contraire: It may well make your legs look fatter. But, acting like a gladiator—all that shrieking and flailing about—will surely burn up some calories.
3. Consuming Chloe, Louboutin or Miu Miu wedges is definitely more figure-enhancing than consuming wedges of chocolate bundt cake a la mode.
4. The new wooden platforms by Celine are great for crushing organic garlic, which is very healthy and better for you than eating beef jerky.
5. Floral details! This is the season of the foot corsage. Everywhere you look, there are fabulous shoes adorned with big fluffy flowers. My fave: the Manolo “Patricia.” These horticulturally inspired enhancements are perfect for camouflaging chubby toes.

Re donkey dick:

I have a horrible feeling that it’s only a matter of time before some rustic, offal-loving über-chef will introduce artisanal, organic, locally harvested donkey dick as the delicacy du jour! Donkey dick pâté, anyone?

sdoonan@observer.com