Look Sharp!
On the eve of the Emmys, The Style Files speaks with author Hal Rubenstein about his new book, Dressing the Part: Television's Most Stylish Shows.
Hal Rubenstein is the dean of style and culture journalism in New York. He began in 1971, writing for Model Circle magazine, and in the early 1980s, he served as the restaurant critic for Details, a downtown monthly magazine edited by Annie Flanders, and published on newsprint. (This was long before Condé Nast bought Details, turned into a menswear glossy, then shuttered it.)
“Emma Peel’s a dominatrix. It’s that simple.”
In the late 1980s, Hal wrote the New Yorker’s The Edge of Nightlife, an unsigned column in the front of the book that was a must-read for anyone under 30, anywhere, including yours truly in Washington, D.C. He also founded and edited a fab pop-culture and style magazine, underwritten by Malcolm Forbes, called Egg.
After that, Hal served as the menswear director at the New York Times Magazine—the same time I was the magazine’s Paris-based style writer, thus how we met, sitting next to each other at fashion shows. He was then scooped up by the legendary Time Inc. editor Martha Nelson to be the fashion director for her new magazine, InStyle. And he has written several books, including The Looks of Love, and bestselling 100 Unforgettable Dresses. Soon, he’ll launch The Happy Grown-Up, a newsletter and podcast about living fabulously over 50, to which I say: Hear! Hear!
Hal's latest book is Dressing the Part: Television’s Most Stylish Shows, a gloriously illustrated book published by HarperCollins.
To write it, he told me, “I lived in the Paley Center for about three months and watched somewhere between 500 and 700 hours of television, not counting my lifetime of watching television.” With the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards tomorrow night, and Hal sitting down with New York fashion doyenne Fern Mallis at the 92nd Street Y on January 22, I thought I’d ring him up to talk about TV’s influence on how we dress.
How did the book come about?
My publisher suggested I do a book on Bridgerton, and I said, ‘It’s lovely and it’s gorgeous.
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