"This year’s idea is distance — in clothing, in manners, in art — a heightened consciousness of irony and effect."

"We seem to be passing from the age of touchies to a time of politesse. The direction in interpersonal behavior in the sixties was toward breaking down the walls between people. Look for people to start building them back up. An important aspect of glamour is invulnerability. Being fashionable demands a certain stylization of one’s inner emotions, the discipline which taste imposes. You can expect to see emotion vented in more traditional ways — through eloquence and wit — as public rage and undue candor become uncool. What we lose by this decision is all that psychologists have said about the relationship between emotional release and health. What we gain by this decision is a heightened sense of style."

From "Entering the Age of Swank," by Richard Goldstein in New York Magazine, on the front page today, but originally published in the September 17, 1973 issue.