Glamour has always been an illusion — but never an innocent one. Long before cinema and pop music, it existed as a strategy of power: carved into marble, painted onto canvases, embodied by gods, heroes, and sovereign families. Beauty and authority were fixed into icons meant to last, to dictate, and to fascinate.
With Hollywood’s Golden Age, from the late 1920s to the 1970s, and the rise of pop music and stars in every domain, glamour became a universal dream: a mirror for everyone’s narcissism. No longer reserved for elites or ruling classes, it entered the collective imagination, shaping sex appeal and identities, and electrifying creativity.
By the late 1980s, glamour had turned into a commercial nightmare. It glorified success, domination, money, and visibility. It was mostly reduced to a formula — polished, standardized, triumphant. Mystery disappeared. Seduction turned into consumption. Glamour lost both its tension and its danger.
When…