Evening of Champions.

Kurt Vonnegut, 2006

Listen to Kurt: Don't spoil the party! Please join in the Evening of Champions, a night devoted to Kurt Vonnegut, organized by The Periodic Label and Monuments (the band in which my boyfriend plays some pretty ferociously gorgeous guitar).

artwork by the sensational Miss Julia Durgee

With your sheets like metal and your belt like lace

the Tribeca Grand, where I would like to live

Glass Tears, Man Ray 1932

I like the idea of these pillowcases rumpled against a monochromatic bed on a Sunday morning, with the record player whirling lazily and near-silent in the kitchen, as KP plays his acoustic as Coral listens intently. The bedroom floor will be covered with discarded sections from the Times and a round of magazines and a stack of books and the coffee will flow and the Kobo Grapefruite e Tabaco will burn. I'll briefly daydream about this vision as I sit in class on Sunday.

In the hall there hung two Watteaus.

The Marc Jacobs spring '08 show reminded me of this quote from The Pursuit of Love, by Nancy Mitford:

Meanwhile, preparations for the ball went forward, occupying every single member of the household. Linda's and my dresses, white taffeta with floating panels and embroidered bead belts, were made by Mrs. Josh, whose cottage was besieged at all hours to see how they were getting on. Louisa's came from Reville, it was silver lamé in tiny frills, each frill edged with blue net. Dangling on the left shoulder and strangely unrelated to the dress, was a large pink silk overblown rose.

These are looks for Louisa.

A beggar's banquet.

"bernice spoke latin with alacrity"

Inspired by an idea in the Kirsten Dunst guest-edited issue of Lula, I just moved my Library of Congress Division for the Blind and Physically Handicapped-issued record player into the kitchen right next to my desk, so that I may whistle while I work. At the moment, I'm listening to Nina Simone: Live in Europe. Yeow, Nina, you make me want to move. And Lula, dear Lula, you make me want to nest.

Your name is a marvel, Kenya Hunt.

What a lovely surprise I found in Metro, on an otherwise ordinary Wednesday morning. I smiled all the way through the Union Square Greenmarket. Thank you, to the gloriously named Kenya Hunt (an appellation worthy of Evelyn Waugh), for the nod.

I watered my Guitar Player and he sprouted into a Photographer.

After two weeks watching Blow Up repeatedly, we took our show on the road and created the baddest photography team in Southampton, PA for the wedding of Mr Jezebel's sister. Our pièce de résistance was our killer photography assistant- she's the one in hot pink. Her day rate demands enough time to watch Sleeping Beauty and hands to cover her eyes when Millificent turns into a dragon. Very reasonable.

J.J. Leigh, I'd very much like to eat bon bons with thee.

And Alber Elbaz, too.

A Metropolitan history, via glorious commerce.

Bemelmans Bar, The Carlyle Hotel
(murals by the creator of my beloved Madeline, Ludwig Bemelmans)

Dulken & Derrick, where Eleanor Roosevelt bought her silk flowers

I really love this guide to NYC shopping at House and Garden (found via design*sponge). It is a perfect marriage of old and new and is deliciously quixotic, like these images of New York.

This is New York, Miroslav Sasek, 1960

nyc print, Matte Stephens, 2007

Lovely Rita.

Breaking news over at Domino, from one of my British Blonde girl crushes, Rita Konig- a list which, in addition to Ms. Konig, includes Dusty Springfield, Marianne Faithfull, Kate Moss, Sophie Dahl, the Mitford sisters (though mostly the dark-haired genius, Nancy), and Julie Christie. Here, here, and let it be known that this vagabond stationer has been known to scrape together all the quarters in the bottom of her beaten purse (all right, I'm a bit of a neat freak and don't really leave coinage lying about but story-telling, story-telling) in order to purchase British Vogue for the full $10, $10 I say they charge on this side of the turgid Atlantic, just so I could flip precisely to Rita's column and dream, dream, and scheme.

Julie Christie

Marianne Faithfull

for green eyes, leonard and leonard disposed of cigarettes.

Leonard in 1931

Of all the beautiful words I have read by Virginia Woolf, these struck me as being amongst the most plaintive. They are excerpted from a letter to Vita Sackville-West, quoted in Virgina Woolf: A Biography by Quentin Bell, and were written seven days before Virginia was to set off with Vita for a vacation in France, leaving behind her husband, Leonard:

"I am melancholy, and excited in turn. You see, I would not have married Leonard had I not preferred living with him to saying goodbye to him."

Leonard in 1966

And speaking of Virginia's dear Vera, I am selling a first edition of her Saint Joan of Arc in my etsy shop .