If only I had a last name that sounded fabulous spelled backwards. Arnold Issacs had such luck. In 1954 he was commissioned to create 10 dresses for a General Motors magazine ad. He charged $1,000 per dress, a vast sum in the fifties, and insisted that his name be emboldened in each ad. As the…
Touring Hungary, several years ago, I had to laugh as we passed Lake Balaton. Even being used to flowery Hungarian exaggerations, the fact that Hungary is a landlocked nation, and that Lake Balaton is the largest lake in central Europe, Balaton, didn’t seem to be “the great inland sea” that I had always heard it called. What passed as Hungary’s “ocean”…