Comparing how Ina Garten is covered by the New Yorker vs WSJ
(It talks about money.) And, things to read, listen and shop.
READ: Ina Garten’s profile in the New Yorker, by Molly Fischer and Ina Garten’s profile for WSJ magazine by Ellen Gamerman
With a memoir to spruik, Ina Garten gets two major profiles. Did her PR team okay that with both teams, arguing that each have different audiences because of the conventionally polar opposite political views, I wonder?
You can get the highlights from her memoir from so many online media publications that have hashed-out headlines about her brief separation from her husband and a difficult relationship with her parents. What I find more fascinating is how these deeper profiles delve into why a certain identity has an appeal.
For the New Yorker, it’s her warmth, vivacity and affluence, yet, people don’t hate her for being lucky and rich.
From the beginning, her style was indulgent and inviting rather than polished and showy. “She’s the aunt that everybody wishes they had,” Kerry Diamond, the founder of the food magazine Cherry Bombe, told me. “She’s funny. She’s rich. She’ll let you eat the chocolate cake your mother said you couldn’t have.”
On the other hand, WSJ focus more on her family and friends — she always has people popping around for a bite to eat.
Like Martha Stewart and Nigella Lawson, she is not a classically trained chef. But where Stewart’s food suggests wealth and Lawson’s suggests sex, Garten’s suggests connection.
So she’s rich for the New Yorker, but more ordinary for WSJ? You don’t need to be a mastermind to draw your own political conclusions from that.
WSJ is also much faster to pick up on “social media” trends, far more so than the New Yorker who I fascinatingly manages to tackle social media through a more esoteric lens. WSJ mention trad wives (as does Garten’s Vanity Fair Q&A) and calls Garten and her husband Jeffrey #couplegoals. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has noticed the Wall Street Journal overall as a publication really lean into internet trends and more clickbait-y headlines even if they seem ephemeral. WSJ also delves deeper into the relationship side and how Garten and her husband fell into conventional marital roles of homemaker and breadwinner, to Garten’s frustration. I wish there was more about this, and if WSJ brings up trad wives, actually explores the grey areas of this ‘internet trend’.
You get a bit more in her Q&A with Vanity Fair:
Have you heard of the Trad Wife movement?
No, what is that?
Okay, so it's largely social media driven, but it's women who are returning to what they define as a traditional wife’s role of dressing up very nicely when the husband comes home, doing all the cooking, cleaning, staying home with the kids. And it’s created this divisive conversation about where we're at with feminism.
You know what I think of as postfeminist, is that women can do what pleases them. And if somebody wants to do that, then I applaud them for making that decision. The difference is, we're not in prescribed roles. If somebody wants to stay home with the kids and make a wonderful life for themselves, I mean, yeah, why not? It's not right for everybody, and it doesn't mean that everybody has to do that. To me, post-feminist is women who are strong and feminine. And that's what I'd like to be. But other women might like to be something different. Feminism is about each woman choosing for themselves. So there's nothing to me that is dissonant.
I happen to like things that are traditionally associated with women, which is cooking and design and gardening. I like those things, so I’m very happy doing them. But I’m choosing to do them, and I think more and more men are choosing to do them, too. The lines are blurred. I think women can do “masculine” things like build things and run the family finances. And more and more men are cooking and doing design things and gardening. I think that's really the goal of feminism, that everybody can choose the kind of life that they want to have without barriers. It doesn't have to be divisive. There’s no reason for it to be divisive.
New Yorker is far more sardonic and speaks about her wealth with a knowing wink which sets their publication apart each and every time. WSJ breezes past her privilege, casually mentioning how she used Metropolitan Museum of Art’s lighting designer to advise on how the food on the shelves should be lit as an example of her exactitude and love for her food shop, not as a luxury. From the New Yorker, about how Garten put her own money into her first book:
She also decided to hire her own publicist, food stylist, and photographer, at a cost of some two hundred thousand dollars. “Let’s invest in it as though we were starting a business,” she remembers telling Jeffrey—and, thanks to his time as an investment banker, they could. “I mean, the store made some money,” she said. “But certainly nobody was getting rich running a food store.”
In this current climate is seems so much more pronounced, though, perhaps it has always been like that and it always seems more exaggerated when you’re in it — that there is a lot of talk about whether someone has privilege or not, and whether their success is deserving. (Cue New York Magazine’s issue about nepo babies.)
I’m undecided about whether I would read this book — I’m fascinated by her popularity, though it seems very American-centric and not something that reached Australia (unlike someone like Nigella Lawson, who seems to be a bit Ina 2.0 in some aspects). And while I cook a lot, I haven’t cooked many of her recipes — she lost me when she melted some vanilla icecream to use that as custard. Custard isn’t that hard to make!
Though I am fascinated by Garten’s friendship with Nancy Meyers, as covered by the New Yorker:
Meyers and Garten met several years after the film came out, when the director spotted Garten having lunch at ABC Cocina, in Manhattan. Meyers recalls having “blabbed nervously,” but she and Garten soon struck up a rapport. Meyers would text her about recipes. They share an aesthetic kinship, and offer their audiences a similar fantasy of Boomer affluence—a world of spacious interiors furnished in unassuming good taste, with high-thread-count sheets and fully stocked refrigerators. So aligned are their styles that, when Garten visited the director’s house, Meyers told me, she complimented the kitchen-counter barstools. “Ina,” Meyers remembers telling her, “I copied yours.”
Maybe I’ll read it for that.
READ: An interview with India Mahdavi, the design world’s colour guru on HURS
Because I’m a bit tired of all neutral everything. I’m thinking a lot about taste, recently, and how you need a bit of ‘bad taste’ mixed in to make things interesting. This is what India Mahdavi has to say about it:
I think of taste as a form of harmony. Sometimes having disharmony is as interesting as having harmony. Too much taste kills the taste, too much harmony is boring. To be tasteful is a concept that's slightly bourgeois for me. I find beauty and taste in things that are supposedly distasteful because there's a reality and an authenticity to it. I can relate to many different people's tastes because what I'm interested in is seeing a personal vision of something that enters other people's worlds. I try to work on harmonies and it's like a musicality more than anything else. The way I work with colors, is the way a poet would work with words. It's a rhythm, a vibration.
I’m thinking a lot about taste right now.
LISTEN: Becoming you by Suzy Welch podcast
Suzy Welch is business journalist-turned-professor and Harvard alumni who teaches a class at the NYU Stern School of Business called ‘Becoming you: how to craft the authentic life you want’ which sounds… suspiciously self-helpy- for a tertiary business school. But what I like about her approach is that it’s grounded in practicality; yes, find what your passion is, but your aptitude and skills in it are just as important, AND, it needs to be something that is required by the economy so you can have a financial stable career out of it. I may have lost some of you by now, but I’ve started listening to her on a whim and although she can get a bit rambly, she does have some worthwhile pearls of wisdom. Oh, and she tells a very funny personal story in the episode I’ve linked above (Apple podcast) and below (Spotify).
(Also fascinated with her backstory of running off with Jack Welch when she was the editor of Harvard Business Review and the ensuing scandal.)
EXPLORE: Yael Aflalo’s new brand, Aflalo, is now available to browse and shop
Truthfully, I’m having a bit of issues navigating the website (I can’t click onto any products at the moment for example though it was fine for me a few days ago).
From Lauren Sherman’s newsletter about it:
In our conversation, Aflalo emphasized the word “flattering,” which has fallen away in the vernacular, alongside “nude” and “slimming,” when describing her clothing. The reality, of course, is that most people do want to wear clothes that make them look good, and most clothes do not make them look good. “They’re either too androgynous, or too revealing, or very feminine, and not as focused on fit for a healthy, normal-sized body,” she said.
SHOP:
REALLY into this draped top from Zara. It’s a hit-or-miss kind of piece that photographs well for the website, so I’ll have to try it on first. It looks a bit like that draped top from The Row that Jennifer Lawrence wore.
I LOVE sequins and embellishments so I LOVE this skirt that has landed at Blanca. There’s a matching top if you want a more dressy look, but I love the idea of wearing it with an oversized shirt or a knit and dressing it down.
This is not at all seasonally appropriate for the southern hemisphere but the shape is pretty classic save for the added texture of the fringe detail which really makes it. It’s new season Mango, which is where I’ve been shopping from a LOT recently.
I’ve been asked to find more tops that are work appropriate — I have this one in black and love it, and the white is on sale. It fits 1/2-1 size larger so go for your regular size or even a size down if you have narrow shoulders/waist.
If you’re after the Massimo Dutti suede jacket but can’t be bothered messing around with their terrible international shipping, this one from Madewell is great.
A terrible photo (my bed is messy etc), it’s dark because I did this when I got home, this is not the best outfit pics and I need to work out some consistent set up BUT I received this Lioness dress I linked to last week and it’s SO GOOD for the pregnancy bump. I sized up in the black but kept my regular size in the cream. The lighter colours are slightly sheer so I’m undecided if I’ll keep it, but the black is so easy to wear. And on sale for a stupidly low price.
That’s all from me! Hope you enjoyed!