Saturday, February 10, 2007

Stickler alert - Why "devine"?

I have been hoping that I will not turn into one of those grumpy types who wanders around with a texta in order to correct spelling and grammar in public signage, and who hassles shop assistants about matters outside their control. To my shame, I think I might be.

Yesterday I happened to be in the Bourke Street mall and I wandered past the lovely windows at David Jones with all the nice new autumn/winter clothes. Normally I love DJ's. The staff are usually helpful, the refit of their ground floor beauty area is lovely and you can hide away their in an air conditioned and artificially lit cocoon and mentally spend away your entire year's pay on products that you would probably never apply.

Featured in the shop in large posters was the beautiful "god I would love to hate her but really I just want to look like her" Megan Gale as part of DJ's makeup/beauty booklet . Leaving aside that the booklet appears to be inspired by and directly rip off the Mecca Cosmetica catalogue, it is full of tempting ideas and Megan looks stunning. I would upload a photo of the front cover but Blogger is conspiring against me. You can check it out here.

Spot anything? Part of it reads "Devine Goddess Flawless Face Luminous Glow". "Devine Goddess" is the name used as a brand of cosmetics by Napoleon Perdis, this man:

Now, Napoleon here might be a OK sort of guy if you want your makeup applied by George Michael. Personally, I think he is likely to be a complete tosser. According to his website "The Napoleon Perdis philosophy is not dictated by fashion - it's about celebrating and empowering your natural beauty with products that have built-in educators and pro-tips." I'm not sure what the built-in educators are, but I'm pretty sure his eye shadows do not come equipped with a set of Encyclopedia Britannica.And they sure as hell don't come equipped with a dictionary. What is "devine" anyway? I googled this and apart from one entry that suggested "devine" meant "a beautiful woman" (methinks Napoleon wrote that), it ain't a word. It sure as hell isn't a word according to the OED.

What is wrong with the traditional spelling? What did the first "i" in "devine" do to offend Napoleon? Maybe Napoleon's clientele (those who attend the Perdis Academy and those who spend their life on the Vogue Australia forums) can't spell "divine"?

It might be alright for Napoleon and his built-in educated women to misspell words, but I expect more from DJ's. This made me quite irrationally grumpy. Luckily for DJ's I didn't deface their posters.

In my grumpy mood I wandered over to Jurlique when I was met by a snobby bitch attendant who peered down her nose at me as I was something that crawled out from underneath an Australis counter. "Ha!" I thought, "I can have some fun".Pulling myself to my full height I glanced over to her with my best "I want to spend money" face. She half smiled and asked me if she could answer any questions about Jurlique. "Ha!" I thought as I prepared to ask her about Jurlique's $3.4 million dollar fine for resale price maintenance. Then it occurred to me that it would be a bit like hitting a pigeon, she would blink wildly but no expression would register and she might flap away.

So I felt cruel and, as such, slunk back out into the daylight where my aversion to pretentious makeup retailers, wankers called Napoleon and spelling errors could be washed away by the daylight.