I’m not interested in Royalty, but I love old photographs.   Today I came across a forum for people who are obsessed with Royal families and it is a motherlode of vintage photos.

An unexpected bonus is the number of arguments that break out between the people who post there. I wonder if people have to argue in online forums. Maybe it’s just the competitive nature of people who are proud of their expertise.

My husband reads a forum for audiophiles and he says they don’t argue there.   I’m surprised that guys who can tell the difference between five different masters of a Jimi Hendrix record can accept each other’s opinions without jockeying for authority. But moderators are there to end discussions, so who knows what would happen if the posters were left alone to boast about their rare Japanese boxed sets of obscure Eric Clapton demos.

Check out “Alexander Palace Time Machine” for amazing photos and petty arguments! Start here.

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* According to a forum regular, here are the Royals who are worst at being Royals:

Prince Charles of Great Britian.
Camilla, The Duchess of Cornwall.
Prince Harry of Great Britian.
Princess Anne of Great Britian.
Crown Prince Philip of Belgium.
Prince Joachim of Denmark.
Prince Albert of Monaco.
Victor-Emmanuel of Italy, Duke of Savoye.
Marina-Doria of Italy, Duchess of Savoye.

Lately, I keep reading about “What Goes Around Comes Around,” a vintage clothing shop in New York where hipsters get their old jeans and military jackets.

The first time I heard about this place was a piece in Time Out about style mavens. The co-owner and “style director” of WGACA is a guy named Gerard Maione who exemplifies everything I hate in a man.   You know, arrogant, vain, self-congratulatory, fame whore, perpetual five o’clock shadow a la Richard Nixon (or that guy in Entourage) and a preening fashion style.

Everything about his screams douche.

While I’m mad, let me also say how much I hate stores like this one. They’re selling an old Stones t-shirt for $795, which is just stupid. The real problem is that they ruin things for regular people who used to find treasures in thrift shops. Thrift shops are plundered by “pickers” who sell the good shit to vintage stores, and voila, there’s nothing left but Forever 21 and Old Navy crap. Fuckers.

I’m still mad!

How about this: a fatwa on “thrifting” as a verb. or “thrifted” as an adjective?

For a long time, I’ve been thinking about introducing some of my more obscure Objects of Hatred, for anyone interested in post-graduate Hating. I’m talking about raising the bar for those who seek more people to hate besides Chloe Sevigny or Selma Blair. That kind of hating is child’s play, after all. Everyone hates those two, it doesn’t take any brains or discernment.

My first Object of Hatred in this advanced curriculum is the one and only horror known as Liz Goldwyn. She is the granddaughter of film mogul Samuel Goldwyn and therefore has a huge trust-fund. She has used her buying power to divest eBay and the auction houses of all the best vintage gowns on the market.

So unrelenting is her hunger for more vintage finery that she courted some aging burlesque artists in order to get to their priceless spangled costumes. In her documentary about them, she pretends to have some kind of sociological interest in stripping. What she really wants is to get her hands on the clothes. The best part of the documentary is when a savvy old stripper tells her to forget about getting any of her outfits. She sees right through the horrible greed and manipulation.

I hated Liz Goldwyn before the documentary and I hate her each time I see her name. She recently “sourced” some crappy vintage sweater clips for the shop Opening Ceremony in Los Angeles. When I saw them, I sneered to the sales person, “Did you know you can get these at the VIntage Fashion Expo for around ten or fifteen dollars?” Liz has priced them at something outrageous but I’ve forgotten the figure.

Now to make matters worse, I’ve come across a video clip of Liz visiting the guest house of Tony Duquette, a brilliantly over-the-top designer whose close friend Hutton Wilkinson manages the Duquette estate. If you watch the video, you can see how much Liz wants to keep the jewelry Wilkinson shows her.

She has ‘designed’ her own jewelry for Barneys, and it looks like Duquette-on-a-budget. I fucking hate her. Too much money in the hands of an acquisitive narcissistic bitch like Liz Goldwyn makes the world a tiny bit worse for the rest of us. She has plundered the earth’s finite stores of Vintage treasures, and now she’s messing with Tony Duquette.

I hate Liz Goldwyn and now you can, too!