Hatpins, Hairnets, and Happiness?

My next awesome guest poster while I am on a special mission is....Lula!

Lula is my favorite. We email each other multiple times a day. We text each other the most brilliant texts in the history of the world. She is just the coolest. She is down right the sweetest, most generous person ever. HI...she gave me the recipe for tomato bacon tarts...AND sent us an 80's crazy movie just so we could be cool like her. I introduce to you....Lula!

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From the minute I learned that Lauren and I shared an affinity for classic movies and fashion from decades gone by, I knew she was my soul sister. For hours I'll sit and discuss the merits of Alfred Hitchcock's films, as well as Tangee lipstick and seamed stockings, with anyone who'll listen to my babbling.

Lauren and I were discussing 1940's fashion a few days ago and it made me want to Google some of my favorite actresses from that era. So I did.

I don't know what it was about that particular decade, but seriously...the women were simply magnificent! Witness:

The beautiful Jeanne Crain,

star of such favorites as

State Fair (the 1945 version) & A Letter to Three Wives.

The lovely Gene Tierney,

Jeanne Crain's co-star in the chilling film noir,

Leave Her To Heaven.

(I've only seen it a bojillion times, I confess.)

And then my all-time favorite actress...

the person I deem the most beautiful to have ever walked planet Earth...

The ultimate movie star,

Grace Kelly.

Both Lauren and I rate Rear Window near the top of our lists of personal favorites. The plot alone is brilliant, creepy, and suspenseful, but it's Kelly's character, Lisa Freemont, who makes the movie for me. Lisa has such great style. She's the epitome of chic. Her wardrobe makes me weep with pleasure. Not even kidding.

All this beauty...all this style...it's just too delicious. I long to have lived during the days when Glenn Miller & His Orchestra performed "Moonlight Serenade," while couples waltzed across ballroom floors, resplendent in all their finery.

I was meant to wear petticoats and crinolines, pearls and French perfume, matte red lipstick with super-matte foundation, and don white leather gloves whenever leaving the house. I yearn for my husband to wrap himself in a trench coat and top his head with a fedora. And I want both of us to smoke, non-stop. Because everyone who was anyone smoked during this era. Their ignorance was bliss, clearly. (Yes, I'm glad we know better now. Don't smoke, kids. It's bad for your health.)

Yet through the gauzy veil of these dreams regarding a time long passed, I realize that as glamorous as it was during those days, there are modern luxuries of the twenty-first century that simply weren't available during the 1930's, 40's, and 50's. Things I would never desire to live without.

Such as:

*Bare Minerals

*The Goonies, Steel Magnolias, and Better Off Dead (classics, all!)

*The BlackBerry

*Lost (the greatest show on television, in the history of television. Believe it!)

*The iPod and iTunes

*Frederic Fekkai's Root Lifting Styling Spray

*Automatic windows in vehicles

*Reefs flip-flops

*Blair Waldorf and Chuck Bass

*Taco Bell

*Spanx!

*People, Entertainment Weekly, and InStyle

*Pre-shredded cheddar cheese (oh, the ease in meal preparation!)

*Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn (still love 'em, in spite of the crazed fandom!)

*Target (the mega-store as we now know it, that is)

*Zac Efron, Robert Pattinson, Chris Pine, Alexander Skarsgard, and my own favorite, Jason Statham. Ahem...

*Central Air Conditioning.

End of list.

So yes...the ladies of decades gone by were certainly beautiful, and their wardrobes were to die for. But let's be completely frank here. There was no such thing as Secret Platinum Protection Antiperspirant back in the day. Therefore, all these gals probably smelled. Just a tiny bit. And no amount of Bourjois' Evening In Paris perfume is gonna mask that stench.

I'm just sayin'.

Thus, I'll stick with admiring the faces and fashion of the forties. 'Cause you couldn't pay me to live in that decade. Sans iPod, Lost, Spanx, Target...ain't no way, y'all.