Politics and fashion.

There's a nice article by Cathy Horyn in today's NYT about women who pick a style and stay with it (like the socialite who decided in the late 1950s to wear blue tinted glass day and night and is still wearing them and Ivana Trump with her giant beehive). Here's the political part:

To look at Laura Bush, with her neat, unvarying hairstyle and penchant for tailored clothes, is to wonder if she subscribes to Lady Astor's line: "What a boring thing it is to try to look pretty." But unlike her predecessor in the White House, who bobbed from style to style, Mrs. Bush found a look that suited her (now mostly from Oscar de la Renta) and stuck to it. She has managed to silence the conversation about her clothes, which is the boring thing.

The brilliance of being boring! Isn't what Laura Bush does (as opposed to what Ivana and that socialite do) the old dress-for-success approach that ruled in the 80s (alongside a lot of goofy, outrageous fashions)? And isn't it what men, en masse, have been doing for over a century? Pick out a plain uniform and be done with it.