Rick Nelson and Claude Peck dispense unasked-for advice about clothing, etiquette, culture, relationships, grooming and more.
RN: Sid Hartman and I are not exactly Close Personal Friends. In my 12 years here in Stribland, he's spoken to me only once. It was on an elevator. "Could you press 3?" he said. Still, I admire him enormously.
CP: That's four more words than he and I have shared. Why does the sports columnist spring to mind?
RN: The man is almost the age of the two of us, combined. Yet he strides through the newsroom with an enviable bounce in his step. And he's as natty as all get out. Sid makes 92 look like the new 52. Well, maybe 62. But, still.
CP: OK. Oldsters we heart. There's Philip Glass. He's 74, has the dark curly locks of an undergrad, plays piano like an angel in a trance, knows Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed and has 18 concert dates this month. And I'm dying to see the new documentary about photographer Bill Cunningham, who at 82 is biking all over Manhattan to shoot street fashion for the New York Times.
RN: I want to be Paul Taylor when I grow up. The 80-year-old choreographer still commands what is arguably the world's greatest modern-dance company, and his profusely creative output is the envy of artists a fraction of his age.
CP: Agreed. At an age when it would be perfectly appropriate for him to lean his chin atop his hands atop a cane and recall his storied past, Taylor instead presented two new pieces and a bunch of revivals for his company in New York just last month.
RN: How about Karl Lagerfeld and Giorgio Armani? They chime in at 77 and 76, and both remain iconic global fashion giants. Style-wise, I hope that I age with the grace of the latter, and not the former.
