New word: "masstige."

Seeing it for the first time today as a new entry in the OED. It's a portmanteau of "mass" and "prestige," and it means "A class of mass-produced, relatively inexpensive goods which are marketed as luxurious or prestigious." Examples:

2005 Fashion (Canada) Oct. 70/1 It bags were templates for a hot new category, called affordable luxury or ‘masstige’, fusing mass and prestige.

2006 Time Out N.Y. 14 Sept. 51/1 Luxury designers Sophia Kokosalaki, Thakoon Panichgul and Vivienne Westwood each created a limited-edition line for masstige footwear label Nine West.

I thought "It bags" was a typo at first, but I assume it's "it" as in "It girl," which actually has its own OED entry. It means "A woman who is very famous, fashionable, or successful at a particular time, esp. (chiefly U.S.) a glamorous, vivacious, or sexually attractive actress, model, etc., or (chiefly Brit.) a young, rich woman who has achieved celebrity because of her socialite lifestyle." Interesting. Didn't know "it girls" in Britain were different from "it girls" in the U.S. The original "it girl" was Clara Bow, who starred in a movie called "It."



And here, in the unlinkable OED, I see "it," the adjective, identified as coming from "it girl" and "Designating a person who or thing which is exceptionally fashionable, successful, or prominent at a particular time, as it bag, it couple, it gadget, etc." and the oldest example is an "it bag":

1997 Sunday Times 2 Nov. x. 12 Her range of It Bags are attracting a loyal following, especially among supermodels.

And, by the way, in very old speech or regional dialect, "it" was used as a possessive adjective the way we use "its." Shakespeare's "King Lear" has the line "It had it head bit off beit young." And the King James Version of the Bible had "That which groweth of it owne accord..thou shalt not reape." In 1986, there were at least some Scots who'd say things like "It had a mouse in it paw."

"Rehearsals sap my pep... tell me what I have to do and I'll do it."

Said the actress Clara Bow (in 1929), who did it like this:



... in "Kittens" (1926). And this:



... in "Wings" (1927), which was the first movie to win the "Best Picture" Oscar. Bow said it was "a man's picture and I'm just the whipped cream on top of the pie." When Bow was criticized for her bohemian ways and "dreadful" manners, she said :

"They yell at me to be dignified. But what are the dignified people like? The people who are held up as examples of me? They are snobs. Frightful snobs... I'm a curiosity in Hollywood. I'm a big freak, because I'm myself!"

In 1931, when she was 26, she got married and retired from acting. She moved to a ranch in Nevada, and lived until 1965.

I'm reading about her this morning, after clicking to her Wikipedia page from the Wikipedia page "Pin-up girl," which has a list of "Notable pin-up girls" sorted by decades, beginning with the 1920s. I was researching the topic of pin-up girls after Meade called attention to this current ad:



We had a conversation about the nature of 1950s pin-up style, and it got me looking for the classic Betty Grable pin-up, which I think it emulates — peeking back over a raising shoulder and smiling as if to say Go ahead and look at my ass. Grable's pic is the one pic that appears on the Wikipidea "Pin-up girl" page, but I was interested in seeing the first pin-up, and the first couple names on the 1920s list didn't click through to a pin-up style picture. Clara Bow's did. If you count this:



Tell me what I have to do and I'll do it. She's only 15 there. Can you just hear the photographer directing her how to arrange her fingers and where to move her shoulder and even her eyeballs?