Debate parties, HOT and so are the Webb Sisters

Before certain papers report a cardboard trend story of the following fact, allow me to state it first: Debate parties are the latest ticket du jour. The Box, the oft decadent lounge more apt to stage strippers, fire eaters, midgets, Madonna, and Jude Law, hosted one last night. I won't add a lot of stale quotes to support this trend. You can get that in Sunday's paper.

So moving on, as pundits on PBS call for more debate poetry rather than prose and prescribed politics, I call attention to one Canadian poet moving around Europe right now: Leonard Cohen. The man who wrote, "So Long Marianne, Suzanne, and Hallelujah" still looking sharp in a fedora and jacket, still brings us together in a deep husk via words and stories and feelings that tie humanity across the globe.

L- R: Charley and Hattie Webb: My pick for style "it girls"When Tom Ford threw a party for the launch of his fragrance two years ago, one of his PR reps asked me who would be an A list musical act to feature in a sophisticated salon. "Hands down, Leonard Cohen." I answered. Ford's original choice was Justin Timberlake. He went with Jennifer Hudson. Cohen didn't even strike a cord. I probably spent too many afternoons on a porch swing in Tours France hearing my foreign host, a hippie graphic designer named Daniel sing Suzanne too many times. Still, I hope that Cohen opens an American leg of his tour, especially since he's employed two gals called the Webb sisters to sing along with him. I submit that these twentysomething ladies-- both British musicians, a harpist and a pianist among myriad other instruments -- replace the Olsen twins as style icons.

Not only are they gorgeous, they sound like angels or Kate Bush, whichever comes to mind first. (Any of you boys remember the ethereal Ms. Bush? How many wet dreams happened under her guise? So many of you kept her posters over the bed in the late Eighties and early Nineties! Puts lip synching Britney Spears to shame!)

I know Vogue will rip me off on this one. I'll be winking when that March issue features these two lovely Webbs. But I'll also be smiling that talent reigns out, as will hopefully happen in this presidential election. Remember, you heard it here first! Talent, not image or mainstream might should prevail. The only Bush we should recall fondly is Kate.

[Cross-posted from It's That Time Again!, a blog by Susan Miriam Kirschbaum, the art and fashion world's Jewciest commentator.]