All Virginia Postrel Quotes
- Like John Kennedy in 1960, Obama combines youth, vigor, and good looks with the promise of political change. Like Kennedy, he grew up in unusual… American
- When Baby Boomer women started choosing hotel-like birthing centers over hospital delivery rooms, hospitals quickly wised up. Now even rural hospitals offer well-designed labor-delivery-recovery suites. Baby
- Unlike painting, sculpture, or music, typefaces must be useful to someone. Fortunately for designers, the digital age has produced new problems to solve - developing… Age
- At the basic consumer level, the profusion of fonts appeals to a culture that celebrates expressive individualism. Appeals
- Standardized sizes made inexpensive, off-the-rack garments economically feasible. They gave shoppers a reliable guide to finding clothes in self-service shops. Clothes
- Clothing creates the illusion that bodies fit an aesthetically pleasing norm. And that illusion depends on getting the fit right. Garments that bunch, pull, or… Aesthetically
- The Dallas model, prominent in the South and Southwest, sees a growing population as a sign of urban health. Cities liberally permit housing construction to… Accommodate
- The mobile middle class gravitates to the cities where housing is affordable. Affordable
- Even before Sputnik, scientists and policy makers worried that not enough Americans were studying science. American
- Behind the criticism of fashion as an artistic medium is a highly ideological prejudice: against markets, against consumers, against the dynamism of Western commercial society.… Art
- Clothes are unique sculptures, dependent on a supporting human form and created to move. Clothes
- The Elgin Marbles were supposed to be on the Parthenon. For many works of art, a museum is an artificial setting - a zoo, not… Art
- Lofts were never supposed to be homes. They were vacant old factories and warehouses, taken over by artists looking for cheap space and good light. Artists
- Our eyes and brains pretty consistently like some human forms better than others. Shown photos of strangers, even babies look longer at the faces adults… Adult
- We know beauty when we see it, and our reactions are remarkably consistent. Beauty is not just a social construct, and not every girl is… Beautiful
- Airline glamour never promised anything as mundane as elbow room, much less a flat bed, a massage, or an arugula salad. It promised a better… Air
- The glamour of twentieth-century air travel helped to persuade once-fearful travelers to take to the skies and encouraged parochial Americans to go out and see… Air
- Before it became a ubiquitous part of urban life, Starbucks was, in most American cities, a radically new idea. American
- Chains do more than bargain down prices from suppliers or divide fixed costs across a lot of units. They rapidly spread economic discovery - the… Across
- The elements that create glamour are not specific styles - bias-cut gowns or lacquered furniture - but more general qualities: grace, mystery, transcendence. To the… Audience