Friday, August 20, 2010

Timelessness might have begun in 1961 and take the Form of a Giraffe called Sophie

Timelessness is a reassuring concept overused particularly by fashion people to increase sales and/or indulge their own consumption - depending on the season and the year the necessity to own certain time-adapted timeless objects over other time-adapted timeless objects varies (these days the timeless things are Burberry trenches, Chloé bell bottoms, Hermès Kelly bags and Cacharel re-editions of their liberty print collections - and if they aren't timeless right now wait till next season) - yet recently I came across an object that might just be the closest thing to timelessness: Sophie la Girafe.

Yes, it only appeared in 1961, and yes, it was mostly a success in France - which, relative to the dawn of time is short and to the size of the planet small - but even after the slue of inventions in the past half century by the toy industry - that in the US alone makes 21 billion dollars a year, - Sophie remains as perfectly enjoyed in my mother's baby hands as in three-month old baby Eva Madeleine's.