Before I started reading ARABELLE SICARDI, I don't think I'd ever thought critically about beauty. I'd noted, of course, that women were expected to wear make-up and men were discouraged from doing so, but I'm not sure I spent much time wondering why that was. As SICARDI explains in an essay for MATTER, that sort of blithe indifference is a luxury only men are afforded. The history of make-up and beauty rituals is one tied to misogynist violence, domination, and possession. Beauty, as SICARDI says often, is terror. But, she posits, it needn't always be this way: "Beauty is failing us, because gender already has. But what keeps me coming back to it is that I still think it can be recovered. I think beauty can mean more than what it was ever meant to, that it can illuminate parts of people they didn’t know they had or deserved or even wanted." An essential read... Check out our interview with ARABELLE, too... Speaking of beauty, performance, and labor, another VICTORIA'S SECRET FASHION SHOW has come and gone, and despite all the hype, the show's ratings tanked, dropping over 30% from last year's. Read up on the brand in the latest REDEF Fashion Set: Victoria's Secret's Wide-Winged Empire... Missed the opening of SAINT LAURENT's TOKYO flagship by a week, and having seen some photos of the finished space, I wish that hadn't been the case. The giant, shoe-dispensing slot machine gives it a sort of heroin-chic PEE-WEE'S PLAYHOUSE vibe...