What did you consider uniquely glamorous as a child?

"I'm a Woman" commercial for Enjoli

Imagine luring people into a restaurant with images of fresh fruit and vegetables!

Anyone who was able to choose their own bedtime was enviable to me.

When my Aunt took my sister to see a weekday matinee of 'The Sound of Music', circa 1967. Four year-old me thought going to a movie during the day was the height of sophistication.

Eva Gabor in the opening of "Green Acres".

A room decorated in dark wood and hunter green.

Having lunch at a restaurant inside a downtown department store.

Bain de Soleil commercials

Back in the mid-80s when I was very young, my mother would go to a clothing store about an hour or so away for her work wardrobe. She would go two or three times a year. I think you needed an appointment. Sometimes I would get to go along.

It was the Pennsylvania version of high-end glamour.

There was valet parking, and a woman would meet us at the door. She would have an index card with my mother's measurements on it. She'd ask "Has anything on your card changed Mrs. SoAndSo? No? Wonderful!" Then she would escort us to a pretty large private room with a rack of clothing in it she had already pulled. Someone would bring a diet Coke with lemon in a fancy glass and then ask me if I wanted one too. I always did. I would then sit on a big fainting couch reading a book while my mother tried on one work outfit after another.

After that, Sheila (I think that was her name) would ask "Will you be attending any EEEEEEvening events soon, Mrs. SoAndSo?" Sometimes my mom would say yes just to see what Sheila had cooked up. I don't remember her ever buying anything for the EEEEEEvening.

She would send a hefty amount of cash, though. Everything was put in fancy garment bags and then placed in the car while we got a free lunch in the tea room.

The glamour of it all was overwhelming for my little gay self.

I think about it all the time.

R9, what did your mom do that required such luxury? Was she a CEO or something?

My grandparents used to take me to a restaurant that had finger bowls and a fella that would come out between courses with a crumb scraper.

I felt like I was on Dynasty.

R9, you old so and so.

Damn, r9, that IS pretty glamorous to me.

god my list is very very long. not sure what you mean by "uniquely glamorous" however

just for starters:

smoking

intoxicating fragrance

cocktail parties

fur coats

luxurious italian restaurants

waspy country clubs

yacht clubs

certain beaches in contrast to other beaches on the cape and in rhode island

ivy football game tailgate parties or army-navy or Yale-army games

upscale small boutiques in my leafy suburbs

NYC department stores

convertible automobiles

certain ski resorts compared other other ski resorts

tennis

rowing

anything French or Italian. anything and everything...

How old were you at the time, OP?

r9 here.

The thing is, we were far from wealthy. My mother was the vice-president of a small town bank with three or four branches. We were fine, but not rolling in dough.

The store was in Ephrata, PA. It was originally just women's clothing. Then they tried to expand into men's stuff and then housewares. Then they opened a big "Artist's Studio" across the street that never really took off. The whole thing closed down in the early 2000s because that kind of shopping just wasn't a thing any longer.

The clothing was pretty much mid-range stuff that was super popular in the 80s... I remember there being a little Etienne Aigner corner with flashy scarves and whatnot. Also 1980s Liz Claiborne that was sort of classy back then.

Nothing super fancy....but they liked to put on a show,

My mom shopped at a local boutique like that in the 60s and 70s in the Hudson valley. women's clothes, makeup and hair salon. traditional service of local bourgeois ladies. It was fading in the 80s already. The ladies could find the range of clothes elsewhere.

Heavy Mediterranean furniture.

In movies, in ads, in real life, glamor for me was symbolized, in part, by women friends who dressed up and got together for an afternoon of shopping at fancy department stores, followed by cocktails and lunch at one of the nicer restaurants. Yacht parties (I actually went to one once, and it did feel so glam). People who went on European vacations. People who went to charity balls and dinners. And when I lived in the South, for a few brief years, the debutante ball tradition had such a glamorous mystique.

Trader Vic’s.

The Polo Lounge.

Pacific Dining Car.

La Scala.

And Bullocks Wilshire + I Magnin

My mother had a circa 1960 traveling suit of poison green and black boucle, consisting of a knee length straight skirt and long jacket with a beaver collar. She kept it to the end of her life, decades after she was actually able to fit into it.

Audrey in Charade. Doris in The Thrill of It All.

Rosalind Russell in "Auntie Mame" (1958). I didn't just want her in my life as my eccentric glamorous aunt, I wanted to BECOME her. A tale as old as gay time...

actress Nancy Kovack

In fashion, the concept of "cruise season" which shouldered winter and spring. I thought it was very luxurious to have a special arrival of clothes for a vacation.

Speaking of vacations, one of mine in the 1970s to Washington, DC was spent at a Best Western that had an indoor pool and royal blue satin bedspreads. To my 7-year old self, that was luxurious.

Moonlighting, especially the opening credits.

when I was a boy there were fashionable women who had two collections of jewels - real and "paste". Fancy french jewels were paste, for example Chanel, Dior, Givenchy, Schiaparelli - all costume or paste jewels. I was fascinated by the "good" paste jewels and how glamorous they were. My grandmother, great-grandmother and great great aunt had collections of both with my grandmother more fashion forward thus more outrageous costume jewels. This was all before drag queens of course. Her aunt, (my great great aunt) valued her real jewels but was a spinster and started giving them away as she entered her 70s and 80s. My grandmother would mix her aunt's real diamonds and emeralds with paste items which drove the old lady nuts.

R25

I remember the famous pool at DC’s International Inn. Was that it?

Definitely when women would remove their earring before picking up the phone on soaps..

For some reason I remember a trip to the mall with my dad at Christmas in 1985 or so (I was 5?) and he bought my mother White Linen by Estée Lauder at Bloomingdales. I found that dept and everything about it- glamorous.

Not much else.

And White Linen is still produced and in pretty good shape. In fact you could pick up a bottle this year because Estée Lauder is going to repackage all the classics they allow themselves to continue making. Doubling or tripling the price.

"Men's and women's sweaters by Tony Lambert. Furs by Christie Brothers."

[quote] Having lunch at a restaurant inside a downtown department store.

Yes! For me it was Eaton's 9th floor.

Ohh la la.

Charleston Garden was open at B. Altman into the 80s. It was downright creepy, not glamorous.

Why creepy, R34?

Nothing like a taste of Ol’ Dixie, right there on 34th/5th!

Karma is a bitch: the building is now part of CUNY, with the most diverse student body of any university in the country.

R35 it was done up in mock-Plantation style.

Thanks, R37.

Edie Sedgwick. It didn't register that she was a drug addicti with mental health issues.

I just saw a skinny exceptionally beautiful and stylish girl from east coast old money.

I don’t think the subject of glamour ever crossed my mind.

Jean Nate and it's commercials. Seemed so exciting and glamorous like a female James Bond!

I was about 5 years old and used my savings to purchase every woman in my family a bottle for Xmas.

I would dream about living in the Clampett mansion in Beverly. Hills that is, swimming pools, movie stars.

I'm a 1950s kid. My mother wore hats with veils.

Swoon worthy, mysterious, sexy. She was a beautiful woman.

Living in suburban NJ, I thought this was the height of glamor and sophistication!

They sold Jean Nate at the Thrifty Drugstore. Even I knew at five it wasn’t that great.

No so much 'glamor', but I've always been a fan of Erte, and that Art Deco era. I always wanted to be THAT woman that was in that art. And, when the Swinging 60s Twiggy Mod era came on, I wanted to be THAT woman. To me there was some similarity in style.

I have neither as I'm short and no matter how much weight I lose, I'll always look stumpy because all of my weight is in my hips/thighs.

R44 now it’s just another random faux boutique hotel…

R42 we once sat in the booth next to Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner at La Scala. And my Dad randomly said hi to Gregory Peck at the Polo Lounge.

The Khahiki, Columbus, Ohio’s tiki restaurant. You would drive for miles in pitch darkness(for evening reservations) before lit torches and tiki god statues would lure you the rest of the way into an enormous tent. You were greeted by hostesses who would place a tiki fetish about your neck before being led to the bar. I thought everything was in Columbus. Even a trip to Hawaii. It was eventually swallowed whole by strip malls and Rite Aid before being demolished. Audacious spectacle in podunk is my contribution to this post. Man,was it something. It was quite an attraction for celebrities as well. I was impressed by the wall of fame, especially Debbie Reynolds though now, given my age at the time, I’m not so sure why.

Back when we had land-lines my family had a “children’s line” and it was listed as such in the local phone book under the main line. I thought it was very posh.

Pretty sure it was no Trader Vic’s, much less the Tiki Room r45

R35 and R37, Charleston Garden was lovely. Loved shopping at B. Altman (Altman's) at Christmas with my Mom (I especially loved their Book department) and eating there.

Other glamorous moments included having lunch at Barbetta before seeing a matinees show on Broadway.

And this commercial:

Dialing the phone with a pencil

R50, ours said "teenagers"

Cigarette holders. So chic.

Earrings

CAFTANS!

A thrift shop by definition is not glamorous. No glamour there.

Air travel!

I hope you threw that boutique in their mother’s face later on OP, when you came out and she yelled “why can’t you be a REAL boy?”

Our phone line would automatically roll over to the second line when the first was busy, so we never gave out the second number. We were always at the cutting edge of technology.

[Quote] What did you consider uniquely glamorous as a child?

A splendid inquiry.

1) As a child, I considered the letter B to be the ultimate in glamour.

2) the original show opening for Three’s Company, with Valerie Curtin and Suzanne Zenor.

3) the song stylings of Leonard Nimoy.

Omg I meant r9 not OP.

My parents' tall translucent violet-colored martini pitcher with the long glass stir-stick.

The Million Dollar Movie.

Every night for a week at 8 pm KTLA would run its "Million Dollar Movie" (imagine a movie costing a million dollars! that's glamour!), and I would NOT MISS the Monday showing to see if I liked it. Back then, of course, you couldn't see movies any time you wanted to, and there certainly weren't revival theaters in my exburban neighborhood. But if a good one showed up, you could watch it five nights in a row and revel in the details.

My favorite Million Dollar Movies were "Lifeboat" with Tallulah Bankhead (I'd play Lifeboat with my cousin and she made a swell Tallulah) and in the number one spot "The Nanny" with Bette Davis.

Fondue. Before it became that 70s thing.

Running the blender for my parents’ whiskey sour parties.

I remember getting a stern talking to by Dad when I began mincing about like Mrs. Howell and speaking like Eva Gabor when I was a four year old.

The Walnut Room at Marshall Field's on State in Chicago; smoking; martinis, Boston ferns, Victoria Principal and her Ghermak commercials, Veronica Hamels (brunettes had class, blondes were whores, to my seven year old mind)

Olivia Newton-John

Holt Renfrew

[quote] I don’t think the subject of glamour ever crossed my mind.

Are you gay, R40?

On our trip to Mexico in the ‘60s, our hotel room had a fascinating built in two way radio to the lobby in the headboard of the bed instead of a conventional telephone. It seemed like something out of Get Smart! or The Man from UNCLE.

Yes, but I’m not one of those glamour gays.

R72 not an intercom? We had an intercom system in our house, but we rarely used it. We just yelled.

Chinese restaurant decor - lacquered furniture, lanterns, the murals, statues, etc. I was especially fond of one that had a koi pond with a bridge over it, inside the restaurant. Growing up in flyoverland, it all seemed very luxe and exotic.

As a lower middle class Californian I thought anything east coast old money was glamorous. Obsessed with the Preppy Handbook. 10 room NYC apartments. Summering on the Vineyard. The Kennedys. So rich you wear old clothes and drive modest old cars because that shit DOES NOT MATTER.

I wanted a marriage like The Harts in the show Hart to Hart (Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers), they seemed glamorous and romantic

We had a cleaning lady and sometimes babysitter named PomPom (French pronunciation PohPoh?) SHE told us to introduce her to our friends as The Maid.

Gave the cool old girl a good laugh.

OP, that commercial was basically the equivalent of the dynamic among the Three Blondes on "The White Lotus." Secretly each of those three women is dying for one to go away so they other two can bitch about her.

Oh, I forgot, also any product that Lauren Bacall did a voiceover/commercial for, i.e., Fancy Feast, Arby's tulip tumblers, and Hi-Point of course!

L'eggs containers and L'eggs display stands.... and L'eggs commercials too.

R40 = lesbian

OP salad bars were such a novelty in that era (perhaps) a few years prior. Look Ma, no sneeze guard!

Kidney-shaped swimming pools

Conversation pits

Frusen Gladje ads

California, international coffee mixes which was just Quick for adults. Dayton's department store. My parents travels. My rich aunts and uncles. My mom's Chrysler New Yorker.

Vacations abroad or eating out at a nighttime restaurant. But the phone being brought to the table in a restaurant in Dallas was beyond glamorous.

My mother's stunning satin pajama set, Chinese-style, with the standup collar and frog closings, its fitted long jacket/top in red and black brocade, with black satin capri pants. About 1958.

White Christmas trees all over Honolulu during our holiday winter trips during the mid to late 80's. Fake sushi displays in the windows of Japanese restaurants.

Here ya go

Serving booze out of glass decanters

A woman sitting at a vanity table brushing her hair with a fancy brush

Calvin Klein fragrance commercials

R26- You just triggered me in the best way possible - YES!!!!!Oh my god- that sound and that opening- It was so elegant. My mom watched and I was 5-6 and that is a very fond memory!

Attending any movie theater that wasn't a drive-in.

As a typical DL elder-gay, I'd have to say Lillian Russell.

Going into Woodie's in DC the day after Thanksgiving--with my grandmother--to see the CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS. Magic Time!!!!

When I was a pre-teen I'd visit my grandmother for a few weeks every summer. She was a bridge player and would often play with her female cousin and the cousin's female housemate. (Pretty sure now that those two were lesbians, but it never occurred to me at the time.) Anyway, they were well off, lived in a big split-level house and had central air conditioning (!) so my grandmother liked playing bridge there. I always tagged along and while they were playing cards in the rec room I'd park myself upstairs on their long ice-blue sofa and watch TV on their seemingly huge console set. Color TV! With a (rudimentary) remote! I would watch ANYthing -- soaps, talk shows, news, whatever -- while I drank 7-UP from a tall glass and ate Brach's peppermint candies. If the bridge game went long, they'd ask my grandmother and me to stay for a casual dinner. Once we had hamburgers on English muffins (swank!) and Pepperidge Farm cookies for dessert. I thought all this was the height of elegance at the time. (They were nice ladies and taught me several kinds of solitaire.)

I grew up in Colorado, and there was a department store called "The Denver." My mom used to shop for clothes there and would drag my brother and I along with her.

From its fancy cursive writing logo to its clean, upscale design, I thought The Denver was the height of style and sophistication.

Shelly

R92 Heather Graham with ?

I found a lot of ‘80s things upscale and “not for” my working class family. Everything from Murphy Brown to Ben & Jerry’s to Nuprin, for some reason. Anything that skewed Baby Boomer white collar was something I thought was in another class.

Off the shoulder dresses

Thin eyebrows and dark lip liner

Angela Bower's shoulder pads.

Angela Bower's stunning house (well, just the exterior).

Angela Bower's smart banter.

Yes, I loved the most glamorous sitcom mom of all time: Angela Bower. She was the boss after all.

Ok Philly

There was a old commercial for a collection of world's classical music. A distinguished gentleman, British I think, introduced selections. Tchaikovsky, other composers. He introduced them beginning with did you know the original work was the Palavetsian dance No 2 by Borodin?

I thought he was the epitome of European elegance and glamor. I would repeat his commentary word for word. I would send my brother into peals of laughter, but I really was impressed with him. Eventually I improved the bit, wearing an old robe of my father's my mother cut down to suggest a sashed smoking jacket. I wasn't fooling anyone.

I just googled around and found it. Enjoy

Flying on airplanes was glamorous.

R104 I remember that commercial!

Marlo Thomas’s hair style in That Girl.

R104 that was the second Mr. French

My mom watched several night soaps, including Dallas and Falcon Crest. I thought all the fancy booze the characters drank was just the height of sophistication. I dreamt of one day being an adult and coming home every day to fix a drink on my brass-and-glass drink cart stocked with liquor decanted from fine crystal.

This commercial for Sheraton Hotels.

Apparently the singer was well known in the day, but I was too young to know who she was at the time. I just thought she was fabulousness personified!

Democracy.

Apparently? No one I recognize.

Christian Troy in Nip/Tuck. Especially when he wore giant designer sunglasses.

when I was a child I often found glamour on the 4:30 Movie and the Million Dollar Movie, as mentioned above. Then as a teen I could go to the retro houses and discovered all the glamazon European movies, the French and Italian ones especially. The joke is this was the 70s for me and those movies weren't even that old. Dolce Vita (1960) was only 15 to 20 years old. It seemed both ancient and modern to me. Felllini glamour is exaggerated and very easy for an American gay teen boy to enjoy. Or Belmondo's cool.

cigarette holders - sorry, but they still look glam as fuck on women, but you never see them anywhere

R105 - flying WAS glamorous until the mid 80s. We always had to wear a suit - even as a child. Everyone else did too.

Now the plane manufacturer AirBus is ironically so aptly titled. It's an air bus and people treat it like a bus.

The glam of flying disappeared in 1979.

Another CLASSIC DL thread!

A couple of times a year my exurban kitchen would be transported to the splendor of the ancient Orient when my mother would splurge on a box of Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat. Even white rice was an exception in our typical American diet, so Rice-A-Roni pilaf was like a magical passport to Chinese eleganza and San Francisco big-city sophistication. Even if it was served with plain old pork chops.

[quote] Apparently? No one I recognize.

Well, if you personally do not recognize, clearly no one does or even can.

DeJong’s department store. You had to be buzzed in and they had massive bronze gates that would open for you. This was in Evansville, Indiana, of all places. I can’t find a good photo of the entrance, but it felt very important to be buzzed in (I’m not sure they ever didn’t just let in everybody). I feel like aspirational living in a good way was still a thing then, all gone now.

Bath oil beads. I think I posted before about my love of Avon Vita Bath when I was very small, and these seemed like a massive luxurious upgrade.

My grandmother’s Estée Lauder powder. Just saying Estée Lauder sounded glamorous. (My mom mainly wore Cover Girl. She thought my grandmother was a snob, and I thought she was fabulous.).

Spoked hubcaps were a sign of class in the 1970s. Go figure.

Grew up poor. A relative of mine (keeping it vague for privacy reasons) took me a few times to parties hosted by/for our city's gay mayor. Some of the ladies looked rather glamorous.

Other than that, it was all stuff on TV and movies with the exception of a few high school trips. The Golden Girls were in reruns on Lifetime. I thought they looked just stunning when going out for a night on the town.

Broadway,Going to Sak’s or Bloomingdale’s with my mother, my father’s suits, poodles, restaurants that have waiters with pepper grinders, sushi, my grandmother’s China cabinet, the airport, the mall, Vogue and vanity fair magazines

Did you jack off to Glamour as well?

From my vantage point in the rural Midwest, anything in or resembling 1960s Manhattan was the height of sophistication. Think Uncle Bill's apartment in Family Affair, or the office buildings in those Doris Day movies. As a comic book nerd, I loved that all the Marvel super heroes were based there and spent a lot of time thinking about the decor of the Baxter Building and Avengers Mansion.

Steed and Peel didn’t have a mansion; it was a townhouse.

R28

I’ve stayed there fairly recently! My son lives in DC and I try a new hotel every time I visit. It was just fine and the pool was great for a warm afternoon. We enjoyed just hanging out in the sun.

Well—I meant the bizzare indoor pool under a glass “pyramid,” which I’m sure is long gone.

When I was a child we went to Lawry's The Prime Rib once. The glamour never ended: waitresses in ye olde beefeater serving outfits, salad mixed in a spinning bowl tableside while the server drizzled dressing into it, carts with silver half-moon dishes wheeled around to dispense hot creamed spinach, prime rib sliced on another cart to your specification.

Au jus? Horseradish sauce? Plain horseradish? On your baked potato, do you want butter, sour cream, chives? Have it all!

Even the name was pure eleganza: not Lawry's Prime Rib, but Lawry's THE Prime Rib.

The glamorous Ann Blyth serving Hostess ho-hos and twinkies

R129 Restaurant Row! La Cienega in Beverly Hills.

In the 70s, men (including young gentlemen) were still required to wear a suit or sport jacket. They kept a rack full of different-sized sport coats for those who showed up without.

I lived for the salad spin as young gayling

The waitresses dressed like Hazel, not like Beefeaters.

I was considered a uniquely glamourous child.

R1…thread closed.

Unfiltered cigarettes.

Sarah Coventry jewelry.

Another place I thought was glamorous…the Westpark Hotel in Tysons Corner, VA. My grandparents would take me there for brunch after church and it was all linen napkins and shiny “brass” railings. I couldn’t wait to stay at a place like that when I was an adult. Of course in hindsight, it was just a tarted up Best Western with a prime location.

Magic Pan!

People who exclusively traveled by taxis. Chanel shopping bags. The act of cooking popcorn on the stove. Red wine. Fine China. The Jacksons.

R7 oh yeah that too.

Datalounge is uniquely glamorous in spurts.

In squirts

Grew up in LA thinking New York City was the most glamorous place on earth.

I'm an adult and I think NYC is pretty glamorous.

Everything about Doris Day in Pillow Talk. The clothes, the job, the apartment, the maid, the party line, the man ….

The Nutcracker

The Miss America Pageant

A trip to First Burger King Dublin 1981. Had never seen or tasted anything like ir..

No way r120. I can’t believe someone else from Evansville is posting on here. I remember deJong’s and their TV commercial tagline “What makes deJong’s deJong’s?…”. I don’t think my mom was a regular shopper there and I also thought that store was the fanciest one in town.

Our music 6th grade music teacher Mrs. Gardner was a high strung woman who looked king of like a toned down Rona Barrett in pastel pantsuits. One day she asked me to retrieve something from her car which turned out to be a light yellow Cadillac Seville and there was a plaque on the dashboard that said something like “Especially Designed by Cadillac for Johnny Knofringer” (her second husband, whom she’d married recently. She must have been in her 40s then). I thought how chic to have Cadillac customer build a car to your specifications.

That’s awesome, R149. My great aunt also was a teacher and weighed about 85 pounds and drove the largest Cadillac on the market at any given time.

DeJong’s was the height of sophistication, but Lazarus had the cafe with the great chicken salad. I miss unique department stores. My partner saw this thread first (he’s from Chicago, so a Marshall Fields guy, and thinks I’m basically from the Deep South) and he was like why haven’t you posted about the store where you had to get buzzed in …. In the mall …. In Evansville …. Or that place where you paid to grill your own steaks (Elliott’s Steakhouse, which also seemed very glamorous in the commercials but closed before I could eat there). If you know, you know.

Pierre Cardin

Bossa nova music

Petit fours and a candelabra with High Point in my limo on the way to The Theatre!

Also! Style with Elsa Klensch.

We didn’t have cable TV so I associated CNN with 5 star hotels and the cosmopolitan types who would stay at there. I was convinced the ladies in the Sizzler commercial would get fashion tips from Elsa, who they would watch in their hotel rooms before going out for a night on the town in Hong Kong or London.

I've talked about my grandfather's second wife before and whenever we went to dinner at their house they had an elaborate silver box with fancy pastel cigarettes with a matching heavy silver lighter on the coffee table as well as a silver and crystal ashtray. They had lived all over the world, she was Spanish, with a thick accent and as a former dancer had very theatrical, glamorous make up and hair. She had a standard white poodle named Petite. She wore jewels and furs, very old Hollywood style. I thought she was the most glamorous creature in the world

Taking off an earring to answer the telephone.

The Oscars! Dreamy Rock Hudson in White Tie. Raquel Welch in gold pajamas. In NY the ceremony began at 10:30PM on a school night! I couldn't stay up of course by my would leave our bedroom doors open so we could fight sleep to listen.

R126, R125 was referring to the Marvel superhero group, the Avengers, and not the British TV series. Context clues are your friend.

And yes, the Avengers did live in a mansion which was based upon the Frick Collection on Fifth Avenue.

Howard Johnson's Restaurants

The Chanel No. 5 commercial.

Vianetta ice cream cake. The height of elegance!

I’ll bite,

When I got sober in my 30’s, I thought it’d be a great idea to move in with a Jewish grandmother for awhile. She had moved into her penthouse in ‘61 several months after the doorman building was constructed and it is/was a dead ringer for Don’s in Mad Man. She raised a family in it and divorced, her children moved out as well.

She, or rather the building management kept all the original appliances, hers was the only building that didn’t go coop in the 80’s,

For a few months, anyway I thought it was the height of elegance living there until reality set in that she was a bitch, and had lost all her money in the stock market (why she needed a roommate)

She had rent control and my “half” of rent was likely paying the entirety of rent.

R158 it was a joke. Jesus.

Seeing the TV commercials for the 1974 version of the Great Gatsby where everybody throws themselves in the fountain. You think my parents ever threw themselves in a fountain? We didn't even HAVE a fountain!! I had to settle for tossing my sister's Barbies into the bathtub... It wasn't the same.

Power windows and seats, tilt steering wheels, FM stereo radios, vinyl tops, leather seats, & dual exhausts.

Baroness Schraeder.

Even at 6 I knew designer suits with contrasting cummerbunds outbid old curtains. "Play clothes" indeed.

Sanger-Harris in Dallas TX. My mom dragged me there, and I'd see fancy old white women in fur coats and smell the perfume. Also, all of the mannequins with their bobs and heavy blue eye shadow.

The candy counter at our local department store named Steigers. It was also our meeting place to connect with our mom at the mall.

The candies were all pastels and very expensive. I bought some once and regretted it as they tasted like perfume.

I thought Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman was the epitome of glamour when I was a young gayling. She's held up well too. I was correct.

I never tired of Diana Prince's twirling transformations into Wonder Woman, R169.

By the time I was a kid, Lynda Carter was doing contact lens commercials. I had never heard of Wonder Woman at that point, but I still thought she was elegance and grace personified.

Cognac

Stockings. The kind that needed a garter belt. In movies, the women put them on so elegantly.

HJgh heels. I loved the click click click of their heels on marble floors.

R118, my Mom would occasionally make La Choy Chicken a la King with the crunchy noodles in the separate can on top of the main can. We felt so special when she would make this!

My Mom's Bamberger's card. It had her name and address on it.

Any apartment with a sunken living room/seating area.

My sister and I used to stay with my maternal grandparents for two weeks every Summer for a few years. One day, my grandmother took my sister and I to a museum (can't remember which). We wore dresses and my grandmother wore gloves. She bought each of us a doll from a foreign county. I don't remember my doll's country of origin but I remember she wore a red sari-like outfit . I loved her.

My grandmother having her hair done every week with the trademark blue rinse (she had a beautiful grey afro).

I only answer a phone at work but I still take one earring off if I have to speak longer than a couple of minutes.

Eating at a revolving restaurant downtown.

R174 Don't forget to answer with "Sugarbakers!"

When I was growing up, I was so envious of our next door neighbors. They lived in a two-story house. Ours was a one-story. They had a separate TV room in their house with a big console set. We had a small TV on a rolling stand that we wheeled into our family room. They had a pool table. We didn't.

But the one thing I really remember as a kid, which is so stupid now, is that the next door neighbors bought Jif peanut butter, and our family bought Skippy. I remember begging my mom to buy Jif at the grocery store, but she said it was too expensive. I thought that if we could have Jif, we'd be considered upscale.

Smoked oysters

I love this thread.

The old “dialing a phone with a pencil” thread used to have me in hysterics. One of my favorites was the young boy who tied a knot in his t-shirt so it would be a bikini top and saunter through the neighborhood while all the neighbors would close their curtains.

And, of course, all us gay boys who lived to dramatically walk down a staircase.

“Going downtown shopping.“. My mother would once in a while have to go downtown and I thought that was so classy. We had a building almost 30 stories tall downtown. Big buildings meant glamour! Of course, by the time I was a kid, urban decay and urban renewal had given our downtown that one-two punch kiss of death but still- big buildings!

Technically not a child but, in HS, we had one 'rich' girl. I'm not sure what her father did but he was quite a bigwig, according to gossip. A week before Spring/Easter break, the principal came to our class to get her out. Her Dad had some business in the Bahamas/Caribbean and he was taking her out of school to go with him. She came back with a bottle of rum that we drank in punch in party weeks later.

We stopped "shopping downtown" in the 70s when the huge malls opened. The downtown stores tried to make renew in the Malls, and only a few could adjust. Usually not for long. In the 80s I used to drive through small cities on driving holidays and it was a joy to discover smallish boutiques in those "downtowns" that were miraculously on their last legs. Over with huge old stock they never liquidated until the final grisly moments. Because they were no doubt run by ancient shop keepers who believed their old stock was of "value". And indeed, a lot of old stock was far better than anything that came to replace it. If at all. For example I think it was in Savannah that we fell upon an old gentlemen's haberdashery on the Main Street, in its last days. It was obviously for the coloured gentleman and the "old stock" was TREASURE TROVE of black dandy attire from the 50s through the 70s. Just shockingly glamorous and outrageous items. It was like an upside down version of a Savile Row tailors shop. The hats! The suits! The shirts! None of these clothes were ever produced again. Although Dapper Dan made an attempt in Harlem, it wasn't the same. Many of Dapper Dan's clothes were european designer equivalents or replacements for those I found in the fine old haberdashery.

This Chanel mood created by Ridley Scott, music by Vangelis. I want to feel this way forever.

R183 here. Wrong link…

If you ain't got no money, take yo' broke ass home, you say it

"If you ain't got no money, take yo' broke ass home"

G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S, yeah

G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S

My mother had a wicker picnic basket with those wicker holders you could set a paper plate in. She only ever broke that out with her grownup friends. I think it was mainly used to go to Tanglewood in the Berkshires for summer concerts but it always reeked of high class to me.

My cardinal-bishop vestments with cape and jeweled mitre.

My childhood was decidedly unglamorous.

I don't think I ever thought about it. Once when I was a kid my family saw some friends off on an ocean liner and spent part of the day on the ship. I guess that was pretty "glamourous" in some ways, though I didn't think of it that way, at the time. More like fun.

I thought movie palaces were sort of glamorous, I guess.

The MOST GLAMOROUS chocolate!

Mine, too, r188.

The BEST film with the PERFECT soundtrack!

DIVORCE had air of glamour to me. Movie stars divorced, soap opera characters, and among my parents' friends, only the most attractive and wealthy were divorced. Then I made friends with classmates from "broken homes" and witnessed how they struggled mentally and financially.

People who used real butter instead of margarine, once I realized how much better it tasted and how relatively expensive it was. But even with margarines there was a hierarchy of brands with Imperial being on top, Parkay mid-level and a regional store brand called Teen Queen being the lowest of the low. No one wanted to be caught using Teen Queen products. People who had touch tone phones, VCRs and microwaves before we had those things really impressed me too. And anything having to do with Los Angeles was glamorous and rich.

r192 -- I watched and I welled up when the son hugged his father.

Culturally, Dynasty was the definition of 80s glamour in every way. Dallas never had the same feel - they were rich but with the ranch, South fork, cowboy hats, they didn't seem all that.

Late 80s fashion shows also dripped with glamour - more so than the 70s. I still think many of these silhouettes work - even with shoulder pads and belted waists. It looks so much more dressed up than today's fashion, which has more of a casual feel to it.

I loved the hair, big earrings, bold prints, the geometrical clothing cuts. They just looked so dressed up and made such a statement.

Oh gosh, a couple more I forgot, turning your bath towel into a turban and walking down State Street smoking a crayon (pretending it was a cigarette).

I was barely 4 years old when the Barcelona Olympics 1992 commercial would run on TV. Every now and then they would show clips of the performance of the theme song, with Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé.

I loved, loved, LOVED! how over the top it all was. It all seemed entirely appropriate to me.

Another thing that was very glamorous to me was my grandmother’s fairly big Chanel No 5 bottle. So irresistible, in fact, that I sprayed an almost full bottle in one sitting all over myself. I reeked for days!

As a grade school gayling in Central Indiana many many years ago.....watching Frances Farmer do her tv show every afternoon represented GLAMOR to me.

Even in podunk Indiana, the first spelling is glamour. An American exception to the rule.

The Pepperidge Farm collection: Milanos, Chessmen, Brussels, Bordeaux, Pirouettes.

We did not have those on holidays or when cousins came over. No, these were only for really special occasions when we had company whom we had not seen in a long time.

However, my mother did love the Ginger Man cookie and always had some on hand.

Poor Frannie—in a less cruel world she’d have been at the top of the box office well into the 40s, won an Oscar and then cashed out on TV. Sad.

Back in the 70s when my mom wore an evening gown with the sheer cape/back panels.

My mom had a Jane Fonda shag in 1972 (after her fifth kid). Tres chic.

Ok, R201 is more elegant than glamorous.

Train travel. I always considered train travel to be sophisticated and glamourous. But then you take Amtrak and its myriad delays and realize it’s better to take the damn bus.

Those little bath oil balls in bright colors.

R206 - Amtrak is still great for trips less than 2-3 hours. Very convenient. But anything more than that and you're going to be disappointed and frustrated.

For R201

I also thought the Milano cookies were very special. The packaging with the cookies nestled in little pleated paper cups. However, the Mint Milano cookies took things to another level. Tres sophistiqué.

General Foods International Coffees during the Carol Lawrence era. This ultra-processed coffee powder reminded her of the coffees she tasted in Europe, you know. An elegant lady in a glamourous world. We had some, but it was on a high shelf as it was not for kids.

Bubble baths. On TV, women would get in a tub with bubbles with candles arond the tub, soft llighting, and a glass of wine. I tried that and, after about 15 minutes, I was ready to shower off the bubbles and get the fuck out.

Isabella Rossellini Lancôme magazine ads. Yes, I may have perused my mom’s Cosmo mags.

OK this vintage Calgon commercial will make some of the flyoverstan boys in you cum in your pants from the glamour.

It has EVERYTHING.

I used to find the color version - it was divine. Seems to have disappeared.

It soon lost most of that glamour

Table side Caesar salad's in fancy restaurants, Chateaubriand. I enjoy fine dining!

Lauren Bacall selling High Point coffee

My parents were early attendees of this event and it was the highest class thing on offer in this part of the state. It's Chasten Buttigieg's alma mater and I hope he got to attend it too.

Rich Corinthian leather.

I am enjoying this thread. The need for glamor, the eye for something special, the excitement and pleasure in experiencing it, even in a commercial - little gay hearts beating!

[quote] Yes, I may have perused my mom’s Cosmo mags.

I perused my mom's Glamour mags.

When I was little, anything at home that we were not allowed to use or even touch seemed glamorous.

> A giant goblet in the bathroom filled with little round soaps carved like roses. They were meant for guests but I bet Mom wouldn’t have been thrilled if guests actually used them.

> A white rectangular ceramic box, the lid had a raised design of an eagle with lots of arrows. Inside the box were loose cigarettes. When we had company, it was one of my jobs to keep it filled.

My entire extended family was working class. But one aunt was a striver. Everything in her apartment struck me as the height of glamour, especially two things.

She had these leather chairs with chrome frames. Too big for one person. Too small for two people. She called them her Barcelona chairs.

Also, she served meat in this clear jelly. (I knew nothing of aspic then. I guess I still don’t.) I was certain the jelly was meant to be scraped away and ultimately discarded. “That’s the Madrilene, dear,” she would say, implying we should eat it. It was elegant. And gross.

My mom's 1950's-60s Asian dress. She had it in blue.

Did she work at the Opium Den?

Where are all the Dataloungers with multimillion dollar net worths? Too above to participate in this aspirational reveal? So many of you from such modest backgrounds. which is fine and fitting. I did my bit to mention the right beaches on the Cape and Rhode Island and the right ski resorts and country clubs.

When I was a kid I always wanted my mom to buy me L'Oréal kids shampoos.

Don't know why, but back in the day I considered that kids who used it were on a top level of chic.

My mother had what was called a hostess dress only hers was white lace hot pants under a matching long empire top slit up the sides to show her legs. From what I've heard she was known for her great ass and legs back then. She had the booty before it was a thing. My parents belonged to a gourmet diner club. She told me later after we moved it turned into a swingers group. The 70s were interesting.

r226, Your parents were likely swingers.

Your parents were whores, darling.

I like royal blue.

After dinner mints were so elegant.

R230 They really turn me on!

My mother's bridesmaid dresses. She had about a dozen. The family had given up on her ever getting married, but she finally got engaged at 23.

My favorite was a 1949 peacock blue number with matching shoes holding blue pearls on the tops. The dress was quite full.

At seven I cut the pearls off, deciding they were busy and tacky. That way I could wear the ensemble with pride. I safety-pinned the hem up because my mother didn't trust my with the sewing machine yet.

MARY!

I’m still trying to picture a hostess dress with lace hot pants.

Tres chic

R187, did you have a cassock and lace rochet? Scarlet watered silk? Buskins, gauntlets and sandals as well? Did you go all out with a cappa magna on occasion? Cardinal archbishops were allowed the mantelleta and Mozzetta as well when in Rome all in watered silk of course… Were you more George Cardinal Mundelein or Francis Cardinal Spellman?

Tahiti looks nice

When I was a kid, the only whiff of glamour was when the Avon lady showed up. Avon used to carry dishes, which my mom wouldn't buy because she hated to dust (eye roll), but a friend's mom (who I realize now was like a hoarder) bought *all* the red Avon dishes. I used to love going to her house & just looking at all her stuff. As an adult, those dishes look pretty cheap but at the time, they were very fancy!

Marilyn Monroe

1 ringy dingy

Sable stoles and French twists.

I was a kid during the early/mid 80s, so any woman with a fur coat (they were still permissible then) and big hair and smokey eyeshadow was what I aspired to be as an adult. Ironically I became an adult during the very minimalist, fur-is-murder, anti glamourous 90s. I never did get to use my mom's fur coats.

R242 You rang.

I begged & begged my mother to let us have a candle light supper - as all red-blooded 8 yo boys do.

She finally relented.

We had fish sticks.

When my mother would bake a cake (box, once a week), I would love to make whipped cream frosting, which I would dye pink or green or blue with McCormick food coloring. I thought that was so cool.

Oy r245 reminds me of my favorite cake as a kid. The cleaning lady made it. She'd hang out with our grandmother to watch the soaps.

She made a mix cake in a lasagna pan and then poked holes in it with a fork. Then she poured JELLO over it, penetrating the holes. After the JELLO was set, she'd frost it with her "souped-up" DREAM WHIP.

Automatic seatbelts! I remember my babysitter had them in her car and I was mad I couldn’t sit in the front with the automatic seatbelts.

Early Seventies air hostesses and stewardesses (way before "flight attendants") in mini dresses, low heeled black shoes with buckles, navy pantyhose, hats and gloves. Sashaying through the airport.

As a 9-year-old, I thought Crème de Menthe after dinner was rare and elegant.

Mummy's peignoir. I'm wearing one now.

The Sau-Sea Shrimp Cocktail that came in its fancy little glass container. So saucy and impudent and classy and expensive!

I think I talked my mom into getting it about twice a year...usually at New Year's or if they were going out on a Saturday night and the shrimp cocktail was our treat.

Red flock wallpaper.

It was a 60s and my aunt did her bedroom in it and I thought it was just davoon!

People with swimming pools, especially indoor ones were very much an indication of wealth and swankiness in the Midwest. In my hometown of about 6000 I think there were 3 or 4. I was friends with one of them and it wasn't as glamourous in reality because it made the lower half of the split level house smell like chlorine all the time.

Jello 1-2-3

To inject a slightly different tone) watching my dad shave while smoking then Brylcream his hair splashing on Old Spice putting on a sharp suit before going out.

And anything on TV set in San Francisco. Preferably Rock Hudson.

This commercial for sure.

I never knew anybody who had an indoor pool.

Those must have been a lot of work.

R244 did you have after dinner coffee on the Royal Doulton with the hand painted periwinkle?

Come on over—our house smells like a YMCA!

I’ll pass—

Rula Lenska showing friends from America around London. Rula Lenska exiting a plane and being immediately handed a bouquet of roses.

Something that just came to mind...

The bell found in hotel receptions. Gla-mo-rous!

My grandparents indulged in my gayling whims and bought me one.

Dinggggg!!

You un were easily amused as a child

I remember those commercials r260 and everyone joking about “who the fuck is Rula Lenska”? In those pre-internet days it was not easy to find out such things. She was a glamorous enigma inside of a mystery.

A formal sitting room with no TV. It would usually be carpeted in dream with uncomfortable, ornate furniture.

The only reason I would ever consider having one as an adult would be to stash non-invited visitors and vendors so they didn’t have access to the rest of my home. And it would never have cream carpet or ornate furniture.

But as a child I appreciated how uncomfortable they looked and the value of having a room that screamed KEEP OUT.

When I was about 5 my grandmother got a padded seafoam green toilet seat. Yes! You sank onto it like a cloud and it cushioned your bare bottom with pure soft luxury (and the ass heat of the person who shat before you, if you went in too soon). It seemed incredibly glamorous compared to our hard old white wooden toilet seat at home.

BUT the ultimate in toilet seat glamour was something I only ever saw in catalogs: clear resin toilet seats with decorations trapped in the resin. The most desirable one had sea shells and starfish, but they also had them with violets and other small flowers.

I just looked it up and they still make them!

No glamour there, not then not now.

Those oil drip lamps with the statue inside.

[quote]Those oil drip lamps with the statue inside.

Oh, God, one of my best friends was Mexican and his father had one of those with a nude gold lady inside where he could watch it from his chair. I found it terribly sophisticated and very "big city" for our anything-but rundown suburb.

r263, I remember that too. And then I saw her in a British television drama about Aubrey Beardsley in which she played Aubrey's devoted sister who was also his lover. Those Alberto VO5 $ paid for Rula to do some pretty cool things in the UK

[quote]As a 9-year-old, I thought Crème de Menthe after dinner was rare and elegant.

The color! My grandma would put a tiny bit of it into a 7-Up for me.

The only quality “after dinner” mint is an Andes Mint.

Beaded curtains from the 70s. Our neighbors had them and I loved walking in and out of them for my grand entrance. I begged my mom to get them, but she wouldn't budge.

A lot of stuff that my mom deemed "Tacky" those oil lamps, Mediterranean decor, Chinese laquer furniture, hanging lamps on gold chains, that one inflatable ottoman with the plastic roses inside, Caftans. Blenko glass collections, the aforementioned red, Cape Cod. Avon glasswear. Avon decorative perfume bottles. home bars, cocaine, those giant wooden console TVs, pool tables in the basement, giant hats at Easter

R272 - I used to love the ones in Wendy's but I think they got rid of all of those a long time ago.

I posted one truth. Here's another.

I was unaware I was gay or what that was. At 3 I just instinctively knew I couldn't stand my family's life, and I announced I was going to be a priest.

I took to it all like a drag queen in a Bob Mackie museum. I built an altar at seven and forced my siblings and cousins to attend Mass. I'd cut my grandmother's flowers. Scissors-cut hosts made of smashed white bread and Kool-Aid blood of Christ. My cassock was one of my mother's black nighties (I was oblivious of anything except getting the best match for everything. The silver plate sugar bowl on a stand, with lid, was PERFECT for my ciborium! I was aiming at being a cardinal. The RED!

I hit puberty early and that took care of all that! Hail Satan!

Long satin gloves with evening gowns

Women's hair in chignons or French twists - still don't know how to do it

Figure skating - all of it - the outfits, the bodies, the music, the judging, the skill. Oh my!

Perfume that smelled like women and not candy

Men's cologne that smelled like a man and not an air freshener

Ralph Lauren and his shearling coats and Chaps ads and cowboy hats

Riding in limos and the people inside waving

Going to the "theatre" - play, opera, ballet - and prepping before hand by reading the source material

Vacationing somewhere rich sounding - The Hamptons, Aspen, Lake Louise, the Cotswolds, the South of France

Eating shellfish dipped in something rich

Being on a big fancy boat

Having monogrammed items

Writing with a good quality pen like a Mont Blanc and real stationery (also, see above)

Calling on people in person and bringing them small gifts like flowers or treats and then leaving shortly thereafter

Having a housekeeper or butler (probably due to shows)

Going away to boarding school (which probably sucked but looked glamorous)

Having a small toy dog

Having both parents still together

Wearing pearls

Wearing preppy clothes like sweaters tied over shoulders or coats not on but hovering on shoulders (? It looks cool yet not functional)

Going to the fahncy young men's boutique in the Big City to buy Ocean Pacific long sleeved tees, Izod polos, and Alexander Julian shirts and ties circa 1981.

I grew up in Springfield, MA and my mom’s better off friends went to “The Cape” in the summer. I don’t know what I pictured but it seemed so far (I know, laugh) and exclusive. Then my family went camping there a few times and well, it’s not glamourous although there is lots of beauty. But it even has a ghetto area in Hyannis/Barnstable.

r277 - that just unlocked a core memory. A few years later - BENETTON! Nothing so worldly and glamorous as their ads and clothes.

And I thought I was the shit in my Girbaud coat and jeans.

R279 yeah, Benetton was very frou frou! The stores were small and had about 9 pieces in them and they were all small sized and ridiculously expensive!!!

I was too intimidated to go in them!!!

R279 I raise your Girbaud jeans with Z Cavaricci pants/jeans and a Forenza shaker knit sweater.

Dessert jelly served from a mould.

OP was never fancy R277. It was a Miller’s Outpost and May Co. basic.

I loved my mom's 70s schiffon nightgowns until she caught me wearing one as a teen and screamed her head off.

R267, that reminded me of the ashtray my grandfather had. It was one of those thick gold-colored ashtrays; the base was a three-foot high bronze statue of a woman. The ashtray itself would have been level with the arm of the sofa. Yeah, definitely elegant to me as a kid.

(I’m pretty sure his statue had clothing on but the pic gives you an idea.)

R275 My best friend's brother was obsessed with the drama and imagery of the catholic clergy. He cut some brocade drapes down to make vestments, set up an altar in their dining room. Burned candles while intoning latin and gave communion to us using Necco candies as the host and grape juice in a stemmed glass he covered with foil. He also took confessions on the back screened porch, and his penances were something. He liked to play opera records too. He would sit at their piano and pretend to play along, we were the audience who had to shout Bravo! He was all of 9 at the time. Of course, he was a gayling.

Years later, I was often surprised to realize I knew some of the melodies and words to operas I had never seen. Stayed with me.

The Avon lady. My mother’s Cosmopolitan.

Our family’s Caribbean cruise on the SS France, 1963.

Any cruise was considered glamorous back then. The France was beyond glamorous for a little gayling in a white dinner jacket nightly.

R286 I love your, and all the other, highly dramatic stories of gaylings finding their true calling so very early in life.

I was obsessed with the “night cape” my grandmother wore exactly once. Beautiful black, velvety material, set with fake (?) fur at the edges. I paraded up and down the house in that thing whenever my grandparents were out.

Our two dogs had to act as my chaperones, and they gladly played along.

Removing one earring to talk on the phone!!

R283 Ocean Pacific was very trendy and not easy to come by in a midwestern town of 5000 people a hundred plus miles away from any sort of metro area that have a store or two that sold that brand. Also: not cheap.

Too bad for you.

—-The kids at Redondo High

Does anyone still go to South Bay Galleria after Nordstrom relocated to Torrance?

Dialing the phone with a pencil.

Not draining pasta.

Dressing screens.

I thought dressing screens were glamorous, too

R275

I did the same priest drag as a young boy.

Unfortunately, i followed all the way through & didnt escape the church until i was 30.

R293 only for Kohls & returns. The South Bay Galleria is a cheap, empty shell of a discount mall now. I’m sure it will close soon enough.

The gated elevator with operator at Jordan Marsh in Boston.

Shrimp Cocktail

Feather boas

My estranged aunt was quite the character. I first remember meeting her when I was 5 or so. She swooped into Easter dinner at my grandparents with I believe her second husband, an older artist who was on the board of MOMA. She had wanted to become an actress, but she only landed a commercial or two and some walk on parts. She was an Amazon. Tall and slim, hair piled to the sky, dressed in an elegant tweed suit and enormous heels. There was the requisite dramatic makeup, eyelashes that had their own zip code, and this enormous rectangular blue (what stone is blue? I'm not a jewelry sort) ring and matching necklace. She picked me up and said "DARLING! I want to take you SKYDIVING!" Yep, I was completely entranced. It's no wonder that memory was seared into my brain. I only saw her once or twice more after that; she could have been my very own Auntie Mame.

Deep pile shag carpet: a friend of my parents that owned a business & were rich by local standards had a house with wall to wall deep pile shag in all sorts of exotic (to me) colors like black, orange, bright pink, etc. I thought it was *so* classy! Though I have to say, even though it's gone out of style, I would still love a room with bright, deep pile shag carpet

I kept asking my mother for satin for a cape.

R302 - yeah, people don't understand how popular and wanted 'wall to wall carpet' was for a time. I believe it was due to poor heating and cold floors. It was a bit insane how far they went with it - carpeting walls in vans (also a huge thing in the 70s), and weirdly putting carpet in bathrooms!!

I saw some old videos online of commercials where people had these hardwood floors and the spot goes - tired of those wooden floors? Get wall to wall carpeting instead!

I believe it was good marketing taking advantage of general demand in an expanding economy.

So I was a child of the 50's after 8 years of Mamie Eisenhower, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy seemed like the most glamorous person who could ever be First Lady. She had style, she had grace and not many people knew Jack was fucking anything that he could at that point. Seemed like a perfect marriage.

City Hall.

Boston? ;)

[quote]What did you consider uniquely glamorous as a child?

Why, myself of course! And I am to this very day.

My grandmother's jewelry box full of rhinestone pieces. Kids like sparkly things.

When my folks would have company in the 70s and we kids were relegated upstairs, we would get to have ginger ale with maraschino cherries and pretzels on the side. That was living.

Answering the phone like, "(insert last name) residence."

No; that’s common courtesy. All the kids in my house were taught to answer that way.

Regarding wall to wall carpeting -- or "broadloom" as my grandmother always called it -- my parents grew up during WWII and bought a house (the first on either apartment dwelling side of the family) in 65 -- it took until around 71 for them to be able afford to carpet the place, and it was very much aspirational as well as being in style.

By 1992 trends were turning back to wood, and the house actually had very nice ones -- my mother wanted to get rid of all the carpeting and have the floors refinished, but my father was adamant that we not have wood floors "because I'm not poor anymore." So mom gave in, and a third round of wall to wall was installed.

It took another dozen years before she was able to convince him and finally have the floors refinished instead of covered in a fourth round of carpet.

R309 is Charles Busch.

Canopy beds with closing drapes. Oh I thought those were so, so glamorous.

When I was in elementary school, my parents and I went into the city for some reason—just the three of us, none of my older siblings. We had lunch at this restaurant that slowly revolved. It was atop a skyscraper. Maybe those were a thing in the 70s? We started with a view of the eastern part of the city, and by the end of the meal, we were facing the river on the west. The waiters all wore dinner jackets and bow ties.

I thought I was the CAT’S ASS.

Elizabeth Taylor White Diamonds

Wow, R213, that was a seriously magical car in the Calgon commercial. She took off the pillbox hat and shook her hair down, and by the time she was in the bath it was in an extravagant up-do with about 10 hairpieces involved!

I do agree it had pretty much every possible ingredient of 60s glamour except a Concorde.

Callin your mother "Mother" and your father "Daddy":

- Good afternoon, Mother. Have you spoken yet to Daddy about Firenze?

*to Daddy yet

R318 There was no Concorde glamour in the 1960's.

The aircraft didn't start commercial service until well into the 1970's (Jan 21, 1976 to be exact) with simultaneous departures from Paris and London.

I stand corrected. I knew someone who worked on its development in the 60s and I assumed they'd got it going before the end of the decade.

I wish we could see R9’s mom’s clothes.

R50, they were listed as a teen telephone on our local phone book.

Cadillacs and Imperials.

Anything that was acted in a soap opera. I was particularly enamored of a male character angrily tossing ice cubes into a tumbler and pouring himself a stiff drink, while his female counterpart dramatically set the phone handset back into its cradle.

This was the life I wanted to live. I was a weird kid.

Soap operas were where I first saw women removing an earring to answer the phone, R327. As a child, I found it oddly fascinating.

I find this hilarious now, but I thought brass beds were the ultimate in luxury.

Around 1976 “Better Homes and Gardens” featured Bicentennial decorating ideas for bedrooms.

I re-arranged my shitty bedroom as well as the living room several times. My mother hated my ideas and restored the living room each time, but it was my older brother who gleefully fucked up our shared bedroom.

The stick on my toybox was holding place for the classy wood candle stick and i had to pretend the toybox was a black milk-painted hope chest.

Everything in that magazine was just the way it was supposed to be while the metal windows of our house were wrong. The treeless front yard was very wrong. The fact that it was a two bedroom brick ranch was deeply embarrassing.

What was the glamour moment, r330? Better Homes & Gardens?

We weren't wealthy by any means, but about three or four times a year, my parents would take my two sisters and me to Sunday brunch at one of the hotels in the Los Angeles area.

We'd just come from Mass with my mom, so we'd still have our Sunday dress clothes on. Dad would then drive us to some place like the Hilton in Beverly Hills, the Ambassador in the Wilshire District, the Roosevelt in Hollywood, or the Biltmore downtown. These venues all seemed so glamorous and elegant. White tablecloths, full place settings, etc. and the waiters were dressed like Edwardian butlers. I enjoyed this more than Disneyland .. lol.

Oil paintings by MANTOVANI.

The Biltmire had glamour …those other three did not.

The Merv Griffin Hilton? Jeez. My parents did the same thing, but at least we went to the Polo Lounge, the Beverly Wilshire or the Bel-Air.

R334 watching the point of this thread passing over their head from the Polo Lounge.

The Moorebecks had a tri-level house where plush emerald wall to wall carpet continued up the walls like wainscotting.

Mrs. Moorebeck was a drunk who joked about how dangerous the open stairs were.

R334 We went to those places too. And as for the Beverly Hilton, it wouldn't become Merv's till 1987, long after what I'm relating.

Mateus or Reunite on ice, that's nice.

R327 Similiar to what you are saying, the whole bit of characters in TV and film going to their personal bar cabinets and all the booze is in fancy decanters and not in the original bottles. There's always plenty of ice and posh glasses.

R3;7 you should have said so…the Hilton didn’t change—it was not ever glamorous. The. end.

R37^

When R340 was a child he thought being an absolute cunt over the most ridiculous things was the height of glamour and sophistication.

Hey! What aren't the Sizzlers only on the west coast?

I want to open a franchise in my state!

Dina Merrill in general, and in Desk Set in particular. The epitome of American glamour.

R330 that is adorable! And so creatively inspired. Did you go into interior design when you got older?

1980 Lincoln Continental Mark VI.

"Smoking" candy cigarettes.

R344 I just saw Dina in The Courtship of Eddie's Father. I had forgotten she was in it.....she was very glamorous as one of Glen's girlfriends.

And just like Eleanor Parker - once they were married she planned to send Eddie off to boarding school!

Highballs.

My siblings and I would make highballs from cola and Seven-Up when my parents had company, balanced to just the right color for a "stiff one."

Then we discovered my father's Cutty Sark, and just used that with white soda. It seemed more "elegant." We'd replace the Scotch with water. Through the green glass we couldn't tell the difference.

The day came when my father poured Grand-Uncle Gustav a Scotch and soda. Gus said to my dad, "Does this look right to you?" It was almost as pristine looking as spring water.

We were warned. My sister and I were 8 and my brother was 7.

But we were just trying to be glamorous like the grownups. The fact it was alcohol didn't even occur to us. And being wild kids no one could tell if we were acting like ourselves or drunk.

Smoking cigarettes.

Having a Princess telephone.

Sugar cubes. Every once in a while my mom would fill the sugar bowl with Domino's sugar cubes to surprise me when I had my morning tea. It was such a delight!

Brian Keith’s mid-century modern Monterrey ranch house from the o.g. Parent Trap, with its private natural lake which was semi-encased in a manmade patio of smooth river rocks

R352, that's so sweet and so bone-chillingly gay!

Jean Nate body splash

r355, Jean Nate is for people who want to take charge of their LIFE!

When my sister was in high school, she worked at the Merle Norman Cosmetics shop in the mall.

I was in elementary school at the time, and every once in a while, when my mom would go shopping, we'd stop in and visit my sister there. I thought the place was so glamorous, with pink plush carpeting on the floo, and counters displaying powder puffs and lipsticks and creams. I thought my sister's job there was the height of class and sophistication.

The Dallas Galleria. OMG

I'm going to print out a list of these for when I need to bring some glamour in my life.

Valet parking and having the attendant walk up and open your door for you. As an adult, I don't like anyone else driving my car and am afraid of unnoticed scratches and dents before I pull away.

Jaguar automobiles. Now, the company is partially owned by Ford and anyone can get one.

Houses with circular driveways or set way back off the road. With the driveway, I wonder who has to shovel or how much landscaping might be. After watching so many murder shows, I now think these homes are death traps as someone could kill you and no one would hear or help for days!

When I was 8 years old, my parents had a gold lamé comforter. I would wrap myself up in it in bed and pretend I was at some sophisticated Hollywood party. I've never had any impulse to cross dress or anything, but I sure loved that comforter.

There was an ad on TV a long time ago where a woman and her beau end the ad ascending the steps to a brownstone. I thought that was such a wonderful thing about city living.

We had a much less glamorous bunch of apartments in my downtown area that all had steps up to the front door and I wanted to live there and happily walk up to my apartment.

The Miss America pageant and Atlantic City. I went to Atlantic City (when the Trump Casino opened, sadly) and was horrified at what a shithole it was. There was a fucking rat in my room.

Tell me about it R360.

R360, you've mad me chuckle. Growing up, our house was set back and the circular drive part couldn't be seen from the street. We were burglarized one morning, as were a number of neighbors. A very smart ring of crack heads had either stolen or mocked up a white van with the ADT logo, and it looked convincingly like a security company van.

I was the only one home, and asleep in bed with my dog. They cleared the house of jewelry and other valuables, even taking the ring from my nightstand. Upon waking, I knew I was pretty lucky, and told my parents it was time to trade the dog in for a German Shepherd.

“Dressing” to go into town. My mother didn’t let us wear sneakers or jeans.

R366 Decade?

My mother's bottle of Chanel No.5.

My father's corporate Diners Club card.

A lobster dinner. Chinese restaurants where you sat on the floor.

My Aunt Jo.

I thought she was the most glamorous woman ever! She had a pageboy haircut and a pillbox hat!

She wore a scarf in her hair, red lipstick and pedal pushers. She was always having dinner parties and cooking. I thought that was so glamorous as a kid.

We didn’t do any of that. We were out in the boonies on a farm.

Car phones. And then my dad got one and I perceived it as ghetto.

The local Polynesian restaurant complete with floor show (including sword swallowing) and a pupu platter!

R369- It's Japanese restaurants where you would sit on the floor not Chinese restaurants.

Dominique Devereux and the burnt champagne.

Circular driveways

International coffees, Charlie commercials, Telephone tables, and Art Deco.

Circa age 4, toothpicks with those colored cellophane frills, especially stuck in the four triangles of a diagonally-cut club sandwich. Only seen in restaurants, of course, which was glamorous in itself.

R376 I still find Art Deco terribly glamorous.

For example this beauty in the 16th Arrondissement in Paris

Double-decker airplanes. I still do, to be fair (though I've never flown on one...sad!)

R379 I have and it’s absolutely unremarkable once you’re seated inside.

I love me some Art Deco, too! Fabulous!

Her recent death reminded me that I used to think Lar Park Lincoln was such a posh name as a week gayling...

A single glass of white wine at lunch, served in a cold glass dripping with condensation. The meal would be a slice of quiche, perhaps with a few leaves of butter lettuce on the side.

All documents laminated.

[quote] When I was 8 years old, my parents had a gold lamé comforter. I would wrap myself up in it in bed and pretend I was at some sophisticated Hollywood party. I've never had any impulse to cross dress or anything, but I sure loved that comforter.

R361! I remember you talking about this comforter on a thread years ago. You would roll around talking to guests, “Oh darling; isn’t it too, too divine; how marvellous…” etc.

Open-toed high heels

Satin, no matter where, when, or what.

Cutty Sark

Hefty Chinoise umbrella stands

Women in Dior in Yves' time there. (I didn't know that's what it was at the time. I just loved the look.)

Glasses on stems

Long-stemmed iced tea spoons

Hildegarde (My German grandmother was of the cult of Hildegarde.)

(related) Longline girdles

Members-only swimming pools

Men's smoking jackets, Indian brocade outside, silk inside

Salad after dinner, not before

Eau de Cologne No. 4711

Amber jewelry

Ban-Lon on high school seniors (when I was 9)

Bear rugs

Three-story houses. When my parents bought ours (that they afforded it came from my grandmother putting 50% down if she had three-room apartment in the house). I danced like Cinderella up and down the main and back stairs with my twin sister. In our mother's open-toed heels.

Honest.

Drink Harvey's Bristol Cream in a downtown high rise apartment.

[quote]These venues all seemed so glamorous and elegant. White tablecloths, full place settings, etc. and the waiters were dressed like Edwardian butlers. I enjoyed this more than Disneyland .. lol.

Did you drink your Shirley Temple with your pinky extended?

[quote]I wanted the energy of the confident, breezy, smart, image-conscious women-on-the-go in this Sizzler commercial. They were the height of attainable sophistication to me. My parents would call me into the room whenever the ad was on and I would stalk about in front of the TV deciding where to eat lunch with my similar chic friends.

That is adorable.

[quote] Did you drink your Shirley Temple with your pinky extended?

Like this kid.

I wish I was alive for the bicentennial craze. I’m start a dish collection @R330

My partner keeps his Bicentennial collection in a red, white and blue trunk.

Ooohh. Love that! I display my dishes. When I get a bigger apartment I will get a sideboard and put them there @ 392

R387, you reminded me of my mom’s cousin Arthur from London. He would visit us in NY every few years, always bringing with him a box of chocolates filled with Harvey’s Bristol Cream. I adored them. I don’t think I’ve had one of those chocolates in over fifty years.

Foods that were served 'Flambe'

Closest I came to it was when our deep fryer exploded :(

R395 that sounds like a Rhoda joke!

Family Classics with Frazier Thomas showed “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” that featured Rhonda Fleming in a snood.

I haven’t been able to locate the movie online, but that snood sparkled.

R385 yes and I'd pretend to smoke with a holder!

Rock Hudson and Doris Day.

R399 I wanted to live in Doris Day's high rise Manhattan apartment in "Pillow Talk."

What’s My Line.

The Las Vegas strip. I visited and thought I was in a world class city.

Going to any big city's downtown felt like I was Mary Tyler Moore making it after all.

“Stalk about” OP? Your parents told me you sashayed about as if searching for your first caftan.

Sunday bruch at Jacques in Chicago

My Grandmother's window seats.

I hope your grandmother wasn't poisoning lonely old men and hiding their bodies in those window seats, R405.

I had a thing for china tea sets from a very young age . I grew up very working class and there was little in the way of decor in our house. Hand me downs was the rule rather than the exception . Everything was practical ,nothing was pretty .This sweet old lady next door had a beautiful tea set that was her grandmothers. A lovely robins egg blue with hand painted flowers . I used to visit her all the time because she gave me cookies and would let me sit and ogle that tea set to my hearts content . Oh how I wanted to sip tea and eat lovely little sandwiches from that set. It led to a lifelong fascination with antiques and lovely china .

You were a cute little boy, R407

Did you buy yourself a nice tea set later in life?

R408 too many to count ! When I moved into this place a few years ago I counted 75 boxes of "Pretties" .That was after donating scads of boxes to thrifts as well as friends/family . Ive cut way back on buying,even I realized nobody wants 14 tea sets !

At 7, glamor was a towel around my waist, another on my head like a turban, and a slow walk from the bathroom to my room..

When I first debuted my post-shower towel fantasy, my parents gave me the what-the-hell look. My dad said, you know, only women do that. I just nodded, went to my room, and my 7-year-old brain quietly filed it under: do it in secret.

R402, I was enraptured by the ideas of cities. I loved when my mother needed to go “downtown” to run an errand and would tag along. We had one building that was 30 stories tall. It was so cosmopolitan!

Of course that city was Springfield, Massachusetts so… but I still thought it was grand.

R411 haha this is hysterical. That capital of glamor, greed, and excess, Springfield, MA!

In the 1970s, the Betty Crocker cookbook had a recipe for a thin, delicate cookie called a "French Lace" cookie. I desperately wanted to make them because they sounded so elegant. My midwestern carpenter father absolutely forbade me to make them, as I'm sure he (rightly) saw this as an indicator that his son was a burgeoning homosexual. So I never got make them, but it didn't keep me from sucking plenty of cock.

R413, with the treasure trove of the internet, here is the recipe.

Bake it and be fabulous.

R9 - great story ! Reminds me of when my mom took me to Ohrbachs or Macys mid Wilshire LA. Best part was going to the Van De Kamp restaurant. I was fascinated because it seemed “Dutch - like.” I like your mom - reminds me of mine

That White Diamonds commercial with Elizabeth Taylor ("Not so fast, Van Ryan!") — specifically the moment when the gift of her white diamond earrings makes one of the card players flip the table, and Liz retreats behind a screen, making a moue "Oooh."

R357. Never thought I would share this, but you mentioned Merle Norman. Elder straight lady here, now happily divorced.

Got married in 1984- went to Merle N for professional makeup. They gave me this sheet of paper with a big face on it, and wrote down exactly where each of the twenty or so products you had to buy, would be placed on the face.

The face was drawn using the actual makeup, and there was a legend naming the product and its price.

The marriage didn’t last, but the map of my wedding face did ! I still have it . That, and my two children made the whole bloody unhappy 30 year marriage worth it

Eunuchly glamorous?

My dear Uncle Priss.

R414, thanks for finding that. Luckily, I've realized I'm fabulous with or without the cookies, so my dad didn't hold me back.

The leading ladys of the 30ies and 40ies traveling in luxury trains . Outfitted in tailored suits, tiny ridiculous hats with a veil, a complete fox (sans organs) dangling over the shoulder. high heels,handbag,gloves, jewels - the works.

Usually they were greeted by a sympathetic host with the words "You must be exhausted!" and immediatly retreated to their rooms to change into a feathery negligee.

Lounging on a chaise they observed the maid unpacking their stuff with a steely glare, dismissing them to"... finish the rest later" because we have to go on with the plot.

Dressed very much like that, R420, Tallulah Bankhead boarded the East Coast Champion in Miami after a less than stellar run as Blanche in a revival of Streetcar at the Coconut Grove Playhouse. Williams (he wrote the play for Bankhead but she turned it down, thus making Jessica Tandy a star) was initially somewhat critical of her performance but to make amends, Williams gave her an alligator handbag as a peace offering on her departure.

Talulah took one look at the bag, threw it at Williams’ head, and declared “A lady never travels in brown.”

Except for the awful haircut, I want to be like Julie Andrews! Or an Austrian alp child, skipping and singing by and by!

Being invited in for a nightcap.

Lobster a la Risholme

R417 had the colors done! Love you.

I just remember at the start of “Big shoulders” in the eighties that my mom would hold Loreal #64 ash brown to my head to make sure it matched!

he idea that a shetered southern queen like Williams would know anything about fashion is ridiculous.

Williams was a bit more cosmopolitan than you give him credit for.

Why anyone would want “Ash Brown” hair dye is beyond me; this is, and always will be squirrel hair, folks!

French women and my German cousin (my grandmother's first cousin) Treschen (TRAY-shin), a stylish blonde of 50.

She lived in Florida but would visit us, sometimes with her sister Anna who lived in Chicago. Treschen had worked as a secretary and dispatcher for the German Army trying to hold back the Allies as they both raced towards Berlin - the Russians were granted rights to the Hitler takedown. The top brass. She worked in a tent. She was pregnant but no one else knew it. She was unmarried.

The Americans were coming, the defense collapsed, and a chaotic retreat followed. Treschen fled towards a river there, swam across, and emerged to realize the Russians were advancing on that side. Deciding she was better off with the Americans, she swam back across the river and eventually was taken into custody. An American soldier stole her bracelet and ring. She complained to his superior and got her jewelry back.

The Bennett Blue Book catalog…

The original “What’s My Line?” Cigarettes! Black tie! Blindfolds! ARLENE AND DOROTHY!

Sequins.

My mother's jewelry box, which played "The Shadow of Your Smile."

My mom's Prince Matchabelli crown perfume bottle, like this.

Airports. There was some vestige of, not glamour, but formality about flying, remaining in my childhood.

The idea of “having a drink,” like the grownups in movies and TV shows did. My parents only stocked liquor in the house if they were expecting company.

To this day I even drink milk on the rocks - the rattle of ice in a glass still seems vaguely fancy to me! When someone offers me a can of soda or a bottle of water I’m horrified.

Tableside cooking in a “fine” restaurant - crepes, tossing a Caesar salad, finishing a pasta.

Going to a fancy sit-down restaurant with my family, sitting in a booth, eating the table crackers, and drinking a Roy Rogers.

Whatever happened to table crackers?

Ooh! That reminds me of our childhood Christmas treats. My mother would buy Captain’s water crackers to eat with cheese, a blue tin of Danish butter cookies, a package of imported mixed pretzels and a tin of Almond Roca.

It was pure class.

Love this thread. I'll add another. Real artworks. When I was in grade school my mother remodeled our living room with a 'modern' painting that matched the carpet (peachy yellow) of a huge tulip with a couple of black slashes of paint. I'm sure it came from a furniture store. I detested that painting so much. Our only other decoration was a reproduction of a painting of the Christ Child, not counting the crucifixes over each bed.

My mother was so happy with her painting. I said 'why can't we have real art in our house?' She asked me, what is real art? Not wanting to hurt her feelings, I said "sculpture." She told me we did have sculpture, to go look in my bedroom where there was a sculpture on top of my dresser. I went to look. It was a porcelain statue of the BVM.

R440, it's the unstated type of cheese that makes or breaks the elegance of your holiday spread. Please tell me it was nothing less than Cabot.

I thought Elizabeth Taylor was endlessly fascinating. The public library would order books about her for me. I was about 17. I read everything about her that I could.

This wasn’t my cross. A cousin’s cousin over-pronounced Stu-BEN glass and Bell-LEEK china. I thought she was Klassy until I turned 17….

What did you have in mind R144? A suburban-ubiquitous print of Van Gogh's Sunflowers, or did you want mom to shell out for a limited edition Dali etching? (Our 70's living room had both.)

[quote]What did you consider uniquely glamorous as a child?

Cinnamon Carter

Oh! I thought of one: high-up restaurants in skyscrapers with views of the city!

Bonus if they revolved.

That was total sophistication and glamour in my lower-middle-class exurban existence.

Any event that involved a crystal punch bowl.

My mother's vintage 1960s Chanel No. 5 dusting powder.

AKA cancer in a can…

Sarah Coventry Jewelry, which was constantly plugged and promoted on old game shows.