Tuesday, July 25, 2006

I sold my diamonds

I love these Fabrikant ads that run in the Old Grey Lady a few times a week. Apparently, they're this jewelry concern who'll pay you cash for your old diamonds... that you just have laying around.

I know a only little about advertising, but within that discreet bundle of knowledge is the fact that you have to know who your potential client is when crafting an ad. The dissolute (a favorite vocabulary word of the Salad's these days, as we careen towards the Apocalypse) recumbent lady in the ad above is just hanging around her Upper East Side townhouse, wearing that Chloe dress from last season, wondering what to do with the buckets of diamonds that her coked-up architect husband keeps buying her to distract her as he carries on an affair with his 19-year-old intern from Bridgehampton. Which is just as well, because she's so Ambiened up that the last time she felt anything even remotely resembling an erotic urge was two years ago at the Spence "Class of 1990" reunion, when she accidentally brushed up against that server, Eusebio, as he was bringing out the crab and hearts-of-palm canapes.

Or something like that. The other ad the Fabrikants run feature and 80-year-old dowager with pulled skin and a David Gest-like look of surprise that accompanies an overlifted brow, who courteously shares with us "I sold my diamonds to Andrew and Peter Fabrikant." And thank Christ! If there's one demographic in the United States that's severely underserved, it's wealthy old social register matrons from Manhattan.