Both punks and flappers are at the center of popular culture right now, thanks to the Met Ball using punk as a theme and the Costume Institute's exhibition "Punk: Chaos to Couture." There is also that little art house flick, The Great Gatsby, which brought flappers back to the mainstream....

Elizabeth Wurtzel has quite a piece in this week's New York magazine, in which she laments how her life -- despite her early successes -- has added up to a whole lot of nothing. Like most people, my initial reaction to Wurtzel's piece was eye-rolling annoyance. Even with...

A holiday weekend is coming up, which means that a lot of women will be spending time with their significant others. In the interest of keeping relationships intact during this time of togetherness, I thought about the ways we, as women, take a few too many liberties with our men...

The Great Gatsby was supposed to come out in theaters this Christmas, but has been moved up to Summer 2013. Perhaps because of this, designers overtly embraced the flapper trend, beginning with Ralph Lauren and Marc Jacobs in their Spring 2012 lines last year. (It makes sense that Ralph Lauren...

Yesterday afternoon I took my son to a birthday party for one of his preschool classmates. 3-year-old's birthday parties resemble frat parties in many ways, what with the loud music and everyone running around like a crazy. (There were no kegs, though.)

The mom at this party was overt...

A lot has been written this weekend about the Beastie Boys in light of Adam Yauch's death. After watching a lot of their videos I also realized something else: They were the original hipsters, and in a good way. Long before Paul's Boutique was just another cafe on the corner...

La série télévisée Mad Men a été le sujet de conversation numéro un lundi dernier. Les attentes du public envers la cinquième saison, qui vient tout juste de débuter, ont été les plus importantes dont je puisse me souvenir. Rien d'étonnant à ce que ses costumes, ses intrigues et sa...

On Monday morning the water cooler conversation is going to be all about Mad Men. The plot! The clothes! The Jon Hamm! This has been one of the biggest build ups to a television show that I can remember in a long time, but I'm not sure I'm totally on...

Back in January, Kurt Andersen wrote a piece for Vanity Fair about how popular style has been in a holding pattern over the last 20 years. Instead of moving design and style forward, for some reason, we are hitting repeat. He cited some good examples, which put the...

The stereotype of chick lit is not always a good one: It's often viewed as beach reading with predictable characters and storylines. There also is often a shoe or a martini on the cover.

There's also the name: chick lit. The quasi-alliteration hardly inspires a reputation of serious reading....

Summer in Manhattan means a lot of things: Mister Softee trucks on every corner, giant cockroaches on subway platforms, and free movies in Bryant Park. It also means prime rental season in the residential real estate market.

For the past two years, renters have enjoyed plenty of perks: free...

A few weeks ago I had what seemed like a straightforward deal: two young professional women were looking for a two-bedroom share in the West Village. For $2,800, we found a 900 square foot third floor walk up. One of the bedrooms was larger than the other, but it was...

Last week I rented an apartment to a 22-year-old guy who was new to Manhattan. After the lease signing he lamented about having to use his father as a guarantor. I told him not to feel badly about it, he was fresh out of college, after all. It was par...

Summer is high season in the New York City rental market, and this past weekend I was reminded of that. I had two guys and their mother in from California, and on Saturday afternoon we put in application for a two bedroom apartment. We even had a back up unit...

When I was a kid, there was nothing more exciting than when my mother would come in with the mail and say, "You've been invited to a birthday party!" Inside a bright envelope was a pretty card and a request that I fete a classmate. As I got older invitations...

When Bridget Jones' Diary became a hit in the mid-1990s, it spawned the lucrative chick lit cottage industry. True, romance novels always existed, and Jackie Collins had a corner on the trashy beach-read. But chick lit, with its urban career gals as protagonists, was a modern alternative to the bodice-ripping...

There was a lot of hoopla last week about the massive layoffs at Nielsen, including the dismantling of venerable brands Editor & Publisher and Kirkus Review. E&P even managed to be a top five trending topic on Twitter. Everyone was aghast that it was shut down, and after over 100...

Back in June I had my first baby, which, as it should be, was a very happy occasion. The boy was healthy, large and loved to sleep in long stretches. Having a summer baby was a fantastic turn of luck as well, since I was able to spend my afternoons...

Back in February I spent some time with a guy friend named George who had just been dumped. He had spent almost a year and literally tens of thousands of dollars on numerous IVF treatments in an effort to have a baby with his 43-year-old fiancee. (He's almost 50.) One...

This morning I stopped in a bagel shop on 76th Street and York Avenue and ordered a bagel and a cup of coffee. I was dragging, I had writing to do. My blood sugar felt like it was in the gutter.

"Decaf coffee?" The counter guy asked as gave my...