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Flock of seagulls hair trump1/9/2024 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() "We're very careful about who we accept in the magazine." "Everything that's in here is chosen because its a marketplace ideally suited for the best of the best," he tells me. And while there isn't some sort of independent evaluation of these claims - a Shar-Pei Quality Assurance board, say - ad director Sedler assures me he keeps close track over who advertises in the magazine, and doesn't hesitate to reject ads that don't live up to his exacting, Trump-like standards. Once in a while - a very long while - the advertisers let slip a tiny bit of doubt: In its RR ad, a clothier called Ascot Chang tentatively suggests that its ascots are only "perhaps the best." But RR discourages this sort of hesitation, looking down on advertisers who don't see themselves as offering the tippy-top of the line - whether they're talking about scale model trains or Shar-Peis. never mind.) A company with the irritatingly whimsical name of "Beau Ties" declares that it delivers "perfection to bow tie lovers." Another company promises "the most innovative aquarium furniture ever." Yet another touts "the finest motors and control systems for interior window treatments." (What's next - a yacht shaped like a cake? Cuff-links shaped like. One ad promotes "the most luxurious parfum in the world," another "the world's finest scale model train." An upscale bakery offers "the best and most unusual cakes in the world" - including one cake that's shaped like a yacht. aren't the only folks declaring themselves to be at the top of their respective heap. The ad assures RR readers that these strangely unsettling objets-de-body-part are in fact "the finest 14K two-tone gold cuff-links" in the world - which makes me despair a little for the future of the two-tone gold cuff link. offer up cufflinks designed to look like cigars - but which in reality look eerily like severed penises. Nothing is too obscure to merit the most extravagant of superlatives. Why settle for an ordinary dog when a company called Baggins can deliver up "simply the finest Shar-Pei you can own," with "Adult Wrinkling Guaranteed." Why settle for a plain old Harley when you can own Confederate Motorcycles' America GT, "the best damn motorcycle on the road today" (and one that is "Expensive. Just as porn promises the hardest, the hottest, the biggest, the wettest, so the Robb Report promises only the finest - as its advertisers insist again and again. In the place of big-haired, hard-bodied, pontoon-breasted hussies, the Robb Report offers up tantalizing pictures of stereos, cigars, yachts and watches. But the Robb Report, which began its life more than two decades ago as a Rolls Royce tip sheet, is far more hard-core than anything ever imagined by Hef. The comparison with Hef is not made idly, for the Robb Report offers a kind of pornography for the very, very wealthy - only without all those naked people to clutter up the pictures. But while Hef's style of sexual utopianism is looking long in the tooth (as is the man himself), '80s-style excess is still tenaciously clinging to life - and nowhere more tenaciously than in the pages of the Robb Report. Just as the swinging Hef - pipe in his mouth, playmates in his hot tub - was once the symbol of an idealized state of perpetual bachelorhood, so The Donald remains a symbol of '80s-style excess. Hyperbole, chutzpah, and singing superlatives are all hallmarks of the Trump personality that translate well to his casino hotels and yachts and planes and luxury apartments." Writer Linda Marx defines for her readers the essence of Trump: "a fascination with flamboyance, an obsession with opulence - he is a man who believes his own braggadocio. "The Donald is back," the editors croon - and, it goes without saying, he's badder than ever (as is his hair). Indeed, a recent Robb feature celebrated the triumphant "return" of this most flamboyant '80s icon. Each issue of the fat, slick monthly assures its readers - some 300,000 of them, mostly male, with an average household income of $755,000, according to advertising director Rick Sedler - that in the circles that really matter, gratuitous displays of wealth and cheesiness will never go out of style.īlackwood's '80s are the decade of Culture Club and Flock of Seagulls the Robb Report, by contrast, harks back to the decade of Dynasty and Donald Trump. Like former MTV veejay Nina Blackwood, who was last sighted pimping a collection of "retro" hits on late-night TV, the readers of the Robb Report for the Affluent Lifestyle have squatted down in the midst of the 1980s and refused to leave.
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