31 July 2009

in lieu of rose-scented candles



Monuments and Oceanographer are playing tonight at Fontana's on Eldridge Street.  After last night's festivities, I have a vision that includes listening while nestled deep in this daybed, emerging only for dumplings and sesame pancakes seasoned by members of the lily clan.  

30 July 2009

striving for truth or beauty as she talks

Ghost Gamblers EP release party at Union Pool this evening- welcome home friends.

29 July 2009

2nd Avenue


Some mornings are muggy beyond reproach, and without access to a pool, the only thing to dream of doing is to head straight for the local public fountain with a white kitten perched on the shoulder's of last night's evening gown.

28 July 2009

it must be returned to the fire that made it

19th century, italian, price upon request

While searching for the perfect moon, I came upon these alternate sources of light.

26 July 2009

A river of crystal light this rainy Sunday night



After a day searching for wedding dresses with Chell and Emma, we stopped for a late afternoon Bloody Mary, where Teepee made friends with the cutest of the gaggle of wee ones belonging to a gaggle of gorgeous Australians. I then learned that tzatziki elevates joy into a delirious wooden shoe adventure on Bedford Avenue.

More Silly Symphonies because they are just so strange, and so familiar, and I could listen to them all day and night.


24 July 2009

My Castle, my books.

Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, 1967

Reading Will You Take Me as I Am: Joni Mitchell's Blue Period. I was pretty angry with her after Girls Like Us, hoping this will repair the wound.

23 July 2009

Smitten, bitten and thank you Mark Bittman

smitten bitten by dragonfly's cocktail, available at www.ilovejezebel.com

101 Simple Salads by the Minimalist is changing by gastronomical life. I might have to start a "My castle, my salads" series.

22 July 2009

She is extremely modern.


We live not isolated in our moment, but walk amongst the living spectres of worlds that came before us.   We listen to our parents' stories of their grandparents, and our grandparents of their grandparents, a sedimentary necklace reaching back generations.  Truman Capote (1924-1984), caught the last wisp of Colette's (1873-1954) demimonde; as a young man in Paris he met the great writer and decaying aristocrats who had informed Proust (1871-1922.)  In 1935, Walter Cronkite (1916-2009) interviewed Gertrude Stein (1874-1976), mother of modernism and friend of Picasso (1881-1973.) (Cronkite/Stein interview via Bookslut)

Home Now

frm Summer with Monika

Then we spent quite a long time in Los Angeles looking for a place to live. Then Barbra Streisand called and invited us to a pool party. I thanked her very much, but said that we could not come. I hung up and said to Ingrid, it was Midsummer Eve, I said to Ingrid: "We're going home now to Sweden, to Faro for the summer." And that's what we did. - Ingmar Bergman in Bergman Island

20 July 2009

Nana rose early, for a bath and a cigarette

Ramble On

Twas in the darkest depths of Mordor
I met a girl so fair,
But Gollum, and the evil one crept up
And slipped away with her.

Now I know, it's everywhere.

My castle, my books.

at Villa Nellcote, from The Making of Exile on Main Street

Reading Exile on Main Street: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones. Pretty deeply flawed book, can't put it down nonetheless.

17 July 2009

With pearls trailing

by Maison Michel Paris, via Scout Holiday and Design*Sponge

Perfect for lounging about while reading Agatha Christie and sipping Turkish coffee. Perfect for perching atop a bevy of lovely ladies in lieu of matching dresses at your nuptials in an Umbrian castle.

Eleanora Fagan gone away, 50 years ago today



We slept very little during those days, and I could swear that at times we walked straight up the middle of Fifth Avenue in the sunshine, just myself,
her, and Michel, alone in an empty town. A town where, after the blast of the saxophones and the flourishes on the drums and the brilliant explosion of her voice, now, by a strange process of saturation, there was only the echo of our footsteps on the pavement. I could swear that I saw New York at midday totally deserted except for this great lady...who, having quickly hugged us, would disappear into one of those long black, dusty limousines... -With Fondest Regards, Francoise Sagan

16 July 2009

My precious

rings circa 1880s-1920s frm Erie Basin

I'm more inclined towards bracelets but Erie Basin consistently tempts.  

The Second Dawn of Dunphy

110 Livingston Street, 1933

Joyous morning when you wake to an email from a dearest telling you that she is moving, with husband, to Brooklyn. Even more joyous when you realize that they are moving to a building designed by McKim, Mead, and White and you can wildly dash around researching the former Elks Lodge, like the modern-day Auntie Mame you plan to be to their junior league.

Quotidian

hers: Lancome le Crayon Kohl
his: Levi's 511s

15 July 2009

The Violet Hour

Peter the Great's 19th century pharmacy turned Baccarat wonderland, image frm Vogue Living Australia July/Aug 08

One summer when we were living in Brentwood Park we fell into a pattern of stopping work at four in the afternoon and going out to the pool. He would stand in the water reading (he reread Sophie's Choice several times that summer, trying to see how it worked) while I worked in the garden. It was a small, even miniature, garden with gravel paths and a rose arbor and beds edged with thyme and santolina and feverfew. I had convinced John a few years before that we should tear out a lawn to plant this garden. To my surprise, since he had no previous interest in gardens, he regarded the finished product as an almost mystical gift. Just before five on those summer afternoons we would swim and then go into the library wrapped in towels to watch Tenko, a BBC series, then in syndication, about a number of satisfyingly predictable English women...After each afternoon's Tenko segment we would go upstairs and work another hour or two, John in his office at the top of the stairs, me in the glassed-in porch across the hall that had become my office. At seven or seven-thirty we would go out to dinner, many nights at Morton's. Morton's felt right that summer. There was always shrimp quesadilla, chicken with black beans. There was always someone we knew. The room was cool and polished and dark inside but you could see the twilight outside. -The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion

Curiosity, Beauty

14 July 2009

All perfumed

We two, at the Social Club.  I am usually shy about such postings, but Chell made magic.

Lady of the Lanterns



Heeding my call, a little lady came to visit my kitchen this morning.

My castle, my books.

1897 life study drawing by E.H. Shepard from Gurney's Journey

I've got a gifted copy of The Wind in the Willows lingering from high school.  High time I read it. Did you know that E.H. Shepard, illustrator of both The Wind in the Willows and Winnie the Pooh, was married to Mary Shepard, illustrator of the PL Travers' Mary Poppins?  I did not, know I do.  

To strike, to smite, to sting

Brigitte Bardot and a very lucky guitar

Who knew a guitar pick is properly called a plectrum? Not I.

13 July 2009

Professional Hobbyist



I spy The Brothers Bloom. It seems to be a frothy mix of Blake Edwards, Hal Ashby, Wes Anderson- 3 fellows I like quite a bit. (via The Great Lakes Goods)

Bat Babies

at home with Ann Wood (look close. closer.)

new from Mon Petit Fantome- Hush Little Baby

I've got a bat in my name.

The fourth Age

Greta Garbo, Wild Orchids

Friday: Basement Band played the Highline Ballroom, plotted sources for a friend's vintage wedding dress over nightcaps. Saturday: brunched with Amal and Jeff at Aurora, lazed through Main Drag, grew shiny-eyed looking at Camille Hempel's rings, Bloody Mary at the Rabbit Hole, continued on, more friends, the Feast of Giglio, backyards, rain. Sunday: Point Lookout, then we watched them sail off in the very last boat.

10 July 2009

I scream softly


I've been rather uncharacteristically frustrated with the shabby behavior of some girls around town recently. I've a good mind to take to pamphleteering, and I do believe the place to begin might be Union Pool (delicious though their tacos may be.) I don't normally enjoy declarative apparel, but this just says it all. One can decidedly be a violent, sensual, sensitive lady.

09 July 2009

"I did it with orchids, mostly"

V.N., the child, already fascinated with butterflies, and likely girls, too (frm Russia Now)

Playboy will publish the first excerpt of Nabokov's almost lost novel, The Original of Laura.  Nabokov had a long history with Playboy, and literary editor Amy Grace Loyd sent droves of orchids to Nabokov's agent, Andrew Wylie, in reference to Ada, or Ardor, a completely mysterious book I was lost in, and return to, in abstraction.  I think I will revisit this summer.  (via the Guardian)

Throw me

eating pineapple at their wedding, 1953

Doing design work last night, I was kept company by some pineapple and a bar of dark chocolate with chilies and cherries. They were loyal companions, both kind to me and to each other.

08 July 2009

Garlands for a girl gone

Queen Katherine's Dream, William Blake 1783-1790

I've been watching The Tudors (hail, hail Netflix and their instant viewing magic.)  Yes, it's tawdry and the acting is questionable, and the history more imagined than not, but I shall not apologize.  

detritus, washed up on sheer, shallow shores

Crystal lamp shade from a stoop sale, lamp base gift from dear McSokols, stool $5 from Brooklyn Flea, peacock rescued from sidewalk demise last week, black patent leather boots from Zara, nude patent leather and black lace Fendi boots $25 from thrift store.

I am a rather terrible photographer.

07 July 2009

If this be she

Elizabeth Taylor is on Twitter.  

With marble underfoot

Marie Claire Maison via The English Muse

My nearest, dearest, the painter-educator Elizabeth Deull, came to dine last night. I prepared goat cheese and strawberry with arugula on French sourdough, Amal's Lebanese white beans, and sugar snap peas and cherries in a soy chili dressing (inspired by a dish at the now defunct Queens Hideaway.) We drank pink wine, and hovered in the mid 90s with Portishead. This morning, Teepee is still sleeping off the effects of the past weekend (she is snoozing in the recesses of my closet, cat-like) and I am listening to Freddie Hubbard, and scheming about how I can approximate the imagined feeling of passing through this perfect foyer in this perfect lace top with a melange of a seashell necklace or 3, an old, threadbare blouse and some rose body oil purchased in Pennsylvania Station while waiting to board the Port Jefferson line.

06 July 2009

Lux Lotus

Too pleased to have received an order from the Lux Lotus herself, and too too pleased to have been included in her morning post.

God, I love you


Isabella Rossellini, meet Esther Williams, meet Jacques Cousteau, meet Kinsey.

Teepee rejuvenating after a holiday with sweet peas


03 July 2009

02 July 2009

The Beaches of Agnes




Cleo from 5 to 7 is one of my favorite movies; looking forward to this new autobiographical film by director Agnes Varda.

Violet the Libertine, dressed in forest mint and moss


I just did a custom version of Violet the Libertine, so I decided to print a few extras. They're up in my Etsy shop- remember to also visit the full Jezebel line at www.ilovejezebel.com.

01 July 2009

Georgian Shadowplay


Ruben Toledo painted three covers for Penguin Classics- this is my favorite.

In the event you are a millionaire's baby born in July

18k frog ring, 1960s

I've picked out some jewels for you from 1st Dibs, featuring your birthstone, the ruby (not a particular favorite of mine.) Let me know what you get.