Creating Glamour in the Age of the Algorithm: Jeri Mae James on Beauty and the Vintage Revival

Where most ordinary scrolls on Instagram are dominated by aesthetics of minimalism and algorithmic visibility, Jeri Mae James stands apart as an arbiter of glamour and magic, a thoughtful practitioner engaged in preserving and reimagining what vintage beauty can encompass. As a creator Jeri is deeply invested in protecting cultural legacies whilst making space for those historically excluded from them and as an artist, she balances the demands of social media with long-term ambitions in film and screenwriting. She's someone who believes glamour, unlike conventional beauty standards, is something we can all deliberately create for ourselves. We spoke with Jeri about the power of glamour as self-creation, navigating the tensions between preservation and progress, and what vintage aesthetics offer our current cultural moment.

Image credit: Jeri Mae James

To start, it seems your craft and beauty practices are really rooted in this idea of glamour, do you consider this idea of glamour to be more attainable and malleable than conventional beauty standards? And within this, does glamour (particularly ‘vintage’ glamour) function as a kind of creative power, particularly in digital spaces where there’s so much emphasis on aesthetics being natural or effortless?

Well, I would say it's definitely a power because I think beauty standards, as we know them, are always changing. I feel as though sometimes we’re always trying to catch up with beauty so we can participate in its standards. Whereas with glamour, much like elegance, there's an allure to me in that these things are sort of amorphous. Glamour is not defined by a set of measurements, and I think it stands still because you can create it yourself deliberately. In this way, I feel as though it speaks to something below the surface of a person as when you see a glamorous person, they’re not a singular age, or body type, or hair colour. Glamour itself is as much an inner creation as it is outer as it can be a sense of humour, or a point of view. Glamour also of course can be beautiful, but beauty isn’t always glamour.

Social media platforms like Instagram often invite audiences behind the scenes, making the process of transformation and self-creation highly visible, somewhat in contrast to vintage aesthetics of glamour where the illusion was central. You’ve mentioned not being particularly fond of showing the behind-the-scenes process, so how do you navigate the tension between preserving the fantasy and meeting an audience that's genuinely invested in seeing how it's made? And technically speaking, how has working across modern platforms affected your relationship with the craft of makeup itself?

I like to think artists and magicians have something in common in that they really don't like to reveal their secrets, and their goal is to ultimately make everything look easy. So it's a tightrope you walk between being too mysterious, where people feel they can't connect to you, and overexposing your process and losing the magic of it. It's funny, because on the one hand people say they love vintage glamour because the stars were mysterious and magical, and on the other side they’re on a celebrity’s Instagram trying to see what they had for breakfast. That audience, rightfully so, is interested in the process and I want them to feel respected. On the other side, I don’t have a desire to become a teacher of these practices – I want to be the artist. So there is still this continuous struggle between preserving the magic for people who are really here for the end result, without totally neglecting the audience that's more interested in how it works.

Old Hollywood is often framed as uniquely repressive, particularly in its rather exclusionary beauty standards. As someone who actively keeps these aesthetics alive, how do you see the vintage beauty community navigating questions of inclusion, what shifts have you witnessed, and what would you still like to see change in how we appreciate and practice these aesthetics?

Well, I think for one, it's very important to be a safe space and be open to other points of view while lifting up people that might not have the same opportunities you have based on any number of exclusionary practices. There's something really special about the relationship between Old Hollywood and social media. With classic Hollywood, the stars presented to you were chosen by a group of men sitting in an office and you had no say in who you were meant to admire. Social media changes that entirely as we get to decide who we want to boost. What I find particularly meaningful is that a lot of young people who have never seen these old films are being introduced to that world through creators who look like them or who they genuinely identify with. I think that's really beautiful and special.

Image credit: Jeri Mae James

Shifting towards the fashion side of things, do you think there has ever been a sense of gatekeeping within the vintage community around ideas of period accuracy and doing vintage 'right'?

Well, as far as the gatekeeping goes, I have never let anyone tell me what to do, so I tend to not have had much experience with that, although I do feel there are people that feel very comfortable in this rigidity. But to me, I feel that rigidity, if you are not careful can become a uniform – and I like to be free. So I think in terms of these aspects of fashion, I’m just really not inclined to take people that put weird limits around what people can and can’t wear seriously.

There's been a notable resurgence of vintage and archival fashion, particularly among younger generations. What do you think is drawing people to the past right now, is it purely aesthetic, or is there something about our current moment that makes looking to the past feel necessary?

I think that behind so much of this is the desire that people have to feel that what they wear or what they purchase or what they consume is thoughtful and human. And I know that that sounds kind of ridiculous because of course it's meant for humans, but I think in our culture right now there is a shift towards minimalism, and a desire to streamline everything. I think the enduring allure of vintage fashion is that it was not only incredibly detailed and thoughtful in terms of the silhouettes and embroidery, but that these details corresponded to the inherent joy within these pieces. The quality of the fabrics, the linings, and the stitching all feel so tailored to be used by us, as people, not as consumers.

So much of your work is rooted in thoughtfully protecting older cultural legacies. How have you brought that ethos into your practice, and how do you think we can better honor the complexities of the past without reducing it to just its most iconic elements?

For me, it always comes back to the human element in giving people their money's worth and making them feel cared for. I think social media can accidentally make creators feel like they're performing for validation, but what I really want is to give people that Old Hollywood magic. What made it so special was that it worked on two levels: on the surface, you had the frivolous, joyful details like the wild dance numbers, the costumes, and the spectacle, but underneath that, you had incredibly talented people with real institutional knowledge about the technical processes which created these. My goal is to preserve and learn as much as I can about what made those things so special, and carry those technical and magical elements forward, even as other aspects of my work naturally evolve.

Image credit: Jeri Mae James

You've mentioned Marilyn Monroe as someone who gambled on herself to break barriers, are there lesser-known stars who are central to your work that you think deserve a revival?

Two figures come to mind immediately. The first is Mae West, a self-made icon of hard work, glamour, comedy, and female sexuality who didn't even enter film until she was in her 40s. The second, especially as it's Black History Month here in the US is Eartha Kitt, I named my cat after her, so she's never far from my mind. A lot of young people probably only know her from Disney, which is a shame, because her life story truly encapsulates what it was like for those pushed to the fringes of Hollywood. She faced enormous cultural adversity and remained so human, and strong throughout. I'd love to see her receive more recognition beyond just a few pieces of iconography because she's such a fascinating woman.

Thinking about self-creation and the iconographies that inspire you, as you move towards making your own films and screenplays, what kinds of worlds and stories are you hoping to build? Are you drawn to reviving or reinterpreting figures and periods from Old Hollywood directly, or do you see yourself bringing those sensibilities into more contemporary or imagined settings?

I'm very inspired by Old Hollywood, not purely aesthetically, although it's stunning to look at. That beauty was a combination of everyone in their field giving it their all, with studios that had the manpower to have just the most incredible people in each department. For myself, I'm really inspired to make the world how I see it, and it does come through an Old Hollywood lens, I find that I'm drawn to writing for older periods of the last century or so, purely because a lot of the comedy and interesting things that happen in stories can't be fixed by a smartphone. A lot of our problems nowadays are more internal, but I'm really drawn to more external things. The hard thing about writing contemporary stories is that a lot of problems can be solved with just ordering an Uber. I would love to bring back screwball comedy also, and take applicable modern problems and put them in a scenario which might be a little bit older.

Social media often rewards a very specific kind of visibility and engagement, how do you balance the demands of platforms like Instagram with these longer-term creative ambitions in film, where the process is so much slower and more collaborative?

It's actually one of my biggest struggles. The algorithm likes consistency, and the thing I want to be known for is quality, and quality takes time. If I posted consistently, I could acquire visibility, or even 'fame', but I don't want to be known just to be known. I want to be known for something, and that something is quality. So it's this constant push and pull where you get punished on the platforms for not showing up consistently, and so you spend all this time working on something you really want people to see, but if you aren't consistent, they won't see it. I really struggle with it, so don't let me fool you that I have it under control.

Image credit: Jeri Mae James

Building on these slower and more collaborative processes, you've recently released a book. What drew you to working in print at this stage in your creative practice, and what were you able to express through written words and static images that feels different from what you accomplish in your other work?

I wanted to make something tangible that appeals to all the senses, not just sight and sound, but something people can actually hold. A physical book is such a focused and intentional thing where you pick it up and you decide to start reading. The allure of creating a book was, firstly, getting out of the online space into the real world, where it could belong to people instead of just being consumed by them. And it felt like something completed, whereas online, it's always on to the next piece of content. There's so much you can do with a physical thing, in terms of the tactile feedback, and ultimately it's just nice to have something outside of the computer that I'm able to give people.

Looking ahead, do you see vintage aesthetics remaining a niche but growing community, or do you think we're already incorporating these practices into mainstream beauty and fashion without necessarily realising it, and do you think the philosophies around glamour that you subscribe to offer a way forward for some of the issues we're grappling with in mainstream aesthetics today?

As time goes on, vintage keeps collecting more decades, there's always that moment where you think, wait, that's not vintage, I've lived it. But I think the reason certain eras maintain their appeal is because there's something very classic and very human in the design of things. As we move through this technological age, people still express themselves through art and feel connected to it, and I think there will always be a continual remixing, for example you had the 80s doing the 40s, and right now there's a resurgence of several eras at once. What's particularly interesting with social media is that groups of people can take something like Edwardian fashion and put a modern spin on it, reclaiming different meanings out of it for different communities. Fashion is always cyclical, but it's also ever-changing.

Finally, where do you see your own creative practice going from here, and what would you like to see more of, both within your work and within the community more broadly?

For myself, I really don't feel like I've gotten anywhere near as good as I want to be. We're always chasing the idea in our head. So I'm continually trying to learn as much as I can, read as many books as I can, and put things into practice, because certain things are very special and very detailed, and survived many eras of innovation only to be lost to trends. I just want to be someone who has that knowledge at hand, whether I'm creating something that looks authentic or taking vintage styling and giving it new context for the modern moment.