In today’s February 21 New York Times I find out that Victoria’s Secret is going bust (!).

I have mixed feelings about this at my ripe old age of 77 as I have to point out that I never did like women’s underwear to be red.

The perennial question in these times is this one: Did Victoria’s Secret cater to women who dressed for men without consulting what women really wanted?

My wife has told me, now that she wears white sports bras, that she likes them for one reason. This is that they are comfortable.

I remember some years ago that I did a fashion spread involving Ballet BC dancers in the best room that the not-quite-your-boutique-hotel, The Marble Arch, offered us. One of the dancers had the perfect ballet dancer’s body which included a flat chest. Knowing what I know about Bert Stern’s invention of cleavage lighting for early Cosmopolitan Magazine I worked a little miracle. The dancer in question said to me (with glee), “Alex you have given me cleavage! How wonderful!”

I have written here about our manly (at least this manly one) obsession with cleavage and that fact that this obsession is based on empty space between two masses. I eschew watching the Oscars and all those other film, TV and music award ceremonies as my interest in out an out exploitation of cleavage has diminished with my now reduced sense of taste (as in taste of food). This old man prefers subtle cleavage.

In the 90s this rising star of local photography kept tear sheets that contained my photographs and I also (in pre internet times) liked to write letters-to-the-editors.

A tear sheet portfolio was important in the 70s, 80s and early 90s. Then photographers instead of showing the actual sheets (carefully removed, and not torn from magazines, or newspapers) used other methods to display their work. In some cases this involved showing actual photographs nicely bound in portfolios.

With my now two week overwhelming work in thinning out my files and throwing out  lawyers and businessmen, today I went through a large box containing most of the annual reports and brochures I had work in. Some are very nice. Under the brochures I found a pile of newspaper and magazine tear sheets including the one here that was published in the Province on March 20 1998.

I wonder if things have changed.