30 October 2009

Floridian coasts

I did something last night I thought I'd never do. We can all do the thing I thought I'd never do together, soon enough. If you want. No pressure. While doing the thing I thought I'd never do, I came across this photo of someone very special to me, doing the thing that he always does do, in a Jezebel t-shirt, which he always does wear, and white jeans, which he rarely does wear.

29 October 2009

Céléstine

In my black velvet dress with a scarf tied round my head, I'm feeling a bit like Jeanne Moreau in Diary of a Chambermaid. Let me tell you, feeling even un petit peu like Jeanne Moreau is a really glorious thing.
The Wild Unknown print, $45

Deliriously excited to see the 2010 calendars by The Wild Unknown. Confession: I have checked her site every day since October 15th, in anticipation. I know where I'll be buying mine.

Darling, Saturday

27 October 2009

Immeasurable Pleasure

press your space face close to mine, love $3.50 at www.ilovejezebel.com +
baron munchausen earrings by draugsvold, $162 at catbird

"And there I caught a glimpse of Miles, in profile: a real Giacometti, with a face of great beauty"

Yesterday, inspired by the girl in the trench, I worked by the fading light of all the Juliette Greco I could find. So weary Juliette, so pacific Juliette, so loved Juliette...

Miles didn't hear me sing until much later in New York, at the Waldorf-Astoria. Before that, to him, I was just me, a girl with a strange face, and it was me he loved, which made me happy.

26 October 2009

Night sweats

What will the electronic book do to picture books? Will there be electronic book readers to read aloud from electronic books to babies rocking in electronic cradles? This is terrible. I'm going to start stock-piling. Tomorrow, you can find me at Books of Wonder. I'll be the one in black, fretting over whether to purchase Many Moons in paperback or hardcover.

Les Feuilles Mortes

Just the other day, I saw a girl, on the street, in a Burberry trench coat with a pair of perfect cropped sweatpants underneath, low-slung patent leather flats afoot, and, crowning her look absolutely triumphant, a Paris Review tote. I'm certain she slipped upstairs, to a spare apartment, where she listens to Juliette Greco records and smokes slim cigarettes on a white-sheeted mattress on a scrubbed and shining wood floor.

Ideally: a fan and an upright library


Doing penance for a tour of the Roebling Tea Room, Aurora, Motorino, and the Brooklyn Flea food vendors. Penance involves lentils and brown rice with burnt onions and homemade tzatziki. Penance is delicious.

Bittersweets baby vamp charm: Jezebel GIVEAWAY vol. 2!

Good morning, dearests. Did I spook you with these ferocious baby vampire teeth by Bittersweets? I do hope so, as they are very scary. Though I've got a phobia about adults in costume, Halloween is near upon us and it is time to set the scene. In anticipation of that great pagan rumpus, I'm working on cobbling together a very mellow Tiger Lily costume, in accordance with a decree handed down by a 5 year old, and, thanks to the celestial jeweler, R. Adams, I'm giving away a Bittersweets NY baby vamp charm!

To enter: visit Bittersweets NY's site, and between now and Sunday the 1st, then leave a comment here, at this very post. Do make sure that I'll be able to find you, as I'm most certain you will be the winner. And, don't despair if I am wrong and you are not the winner- capitalism is not dead.

23 October 2009

Jezebel at the Brooklyn Flea- Sunday!

I'll be selling Jezebel on Sunday, at the Brooklyn Flea, under the Brooklyn Bridge, in the Brooklyn Based tent. That's in Brooklyn, by the way. Oh, and if Jezebel and the best treasure-hunting around isn't enough of a draw for you, a certain someone with the initials of M.S. will be on hand, filming for her show. In Brooklyn.

Finally, finally, I'm a gangster's moll!


Princess Margaret's personal effects, up for auction + Daisies and Daggers, a Crystal Jungle by Lauren

I made a new friend this morning. I'll introduce you to her once we've really gotten to know each other better.

22 October 2009

Paper bag player



I'm feeling a little unsure of what to say this morning, what colors to share. It was a good walk to work yesterday morning- I found a copy of Rebecca, which I've been sorely lacking. It was a good walk home yesterday evening- a small boy, careening wildly down the sidewalk, mastering the art of the bicycle was shouting "You might want to watch out!" to anyone vaguely in his path, as his father huffed behind him, proudly. I had my photo taken yesterday, by a very gracious lady photographer. As she was snapping away I squirmed awfully and my eyes welled with tears. I am truly panic-stricken in front of a camera.

21 October 2009

My castle, my books.

inside cover of my found copy of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

Continuing with World War II reading; all I want to do is spent time with The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Miles Davis, and my bathtub.

20 October 2009

Soul salves

Teepee is home and Coral nuzzled her face, and I am ready to smell like the Black Orchid I bought on Sunday with my mother. Rachel wears Black Orchid, which is exactly the sort of endorsement that I need for a fragrance. Generally speaking, in the world of beautifying products, I really just do what I am told.

19 October 2009

A modern dialogue


On the strength of its icy, clean luminosity silver has been slowly creeping its way back into my golden heart, though when perfectly bizarre Giacometti-like earrings present themselves in sterling, my first thought is, "I wonder how much it would cost to cast these in gold."

Vanishing, and the archives have, too

Turkish velvet pillow, $148

There's beauty in opposition and I think this pillow might be too perfect in my pale pale place.

My castle, my books.

Another book beloved at Politics & Prose, that I choose to ignore during my tenure there. Thank you to the neighbor who abandoned The Reader on the sidewalk.

Pre-cursor

Please keep me company today. The little snoozer on the left is at the vet, having some maintenance work done, and I'm a nervous mother.

16 October 2009

Off for tea with a little prince, and others lost

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen + helium balloon

For a moment, I thought: "he sailed off through night and day!"

15 October 2009

Quite literally, said the tortoise


With the exception of my darling Svens, my footwear is all pretty busted. Patent leather flats need to be trashed, patent leather boots need to be stretched, and so on and so on. I won't, but it'd be so nice to start fresh with these cheeky little friends.

One pointed, two points

mystery image frm Life

Excuse me for just a few moments while I order some crystals online. Max Steiner is helping me with a little, glittering project. One for you and you and you, if we make it work. He will, I know- if it were up to me alone, this bijoux fantasy would never be realized.

14 October 2009

Longing

Liv Tyler, lounging in Lucy Harmon's dress and red slippers with one of her exotic cigarettes, Stealing Beauty

Slightly terrifying, the zeitgeist of being a girl, 19, and oh god, this is perfect.

For LBG, who wears Vagabond Picnic, and JWC, under Zeus's sky

You asked.

Hannah Daisy Shuldiner Land:
She was mother to four, grandmother to eleven.
She was not as tall as I thought.
She was a smoker, with the softest, most finely wrinkled cheeks.
She was once a model, once a neck-tie designer.
She stubbed her cigarettes out on a small golden Chinese tray, later to be auctioned at Christie's (it did not sell.)
She was a hobbyist painter, and devoted to the races (horses.)
She loved violets, and variations on her blue eyes.
She gave me a bottle of Youth Dew and a sapphire heart from Hong Kong.
She had a closet of crystal and a wall of mirrors and twin beds with mauve velvet upholstered headboards and a chair that still smelt of my grandfather's pipe.
She had a temper and a long mink coat.
She hated her name until she became Nana Hannah.
She had a mother named Blanche and a daughter named Blanche.

Postscript: She died seventeen years ago, today.

I Miss You

editing suite on Fårö, photo by Stephen Shore

Will you leave me if this turns into an all Bergman-ode? I hope not. Please don't. I just have so much that I want to talk to you about, and his world has slipped under my fingernails, quietly, distinctly, and it has begun. This time, a glimpse into his private world on Fårö, photographed for us to see before its objects auctioned off, its land dispersed. His children (nine, from six mothers) were allowed to keep but one item from those he left behind (at his behest the most iconic- his writing desk, the magic lamp that inspired him in childhood to become a filmmaker, were sent to auction), value not to exceed $740 (I assume the odd number accounts for krona to dollar exchange rate, though perhaps not.) Bergman engineered it thus: the only shrine to Bergman will be Bergman's own shrine- the cinema, his cinema.

Addendum, a delicious bit:
Bergman was a fan of the Muppets, particularly the out-of-control drummer, Animal, and rarely missed an episode of Sex and the City. “The women are beautiful, and they talk dirty,” he told Linn. “Do you talk that way with your girlfriends?”

13 October 2009

The Story of My Life


Were Jezebel to take a break from her usual pale, shimmerings and tattered laces and florals, it would only be Maira Kalman for Maharam! Dining chairs do need reupholstering...

Tiger Eye

my grandmother, Nana Hannah

Last night I saw my cousin, who just returned from the Iron Man World Championship in Hawaii. I am in absolute awe of his drive and devotion. Oh, and the book he packed to help him unwind? The Count of Monte Cristo. 1312 pages.

12 October 2009

Bon anniversaire, doe eyes!


Special wishes for dear Caycee Black.

Special wishes for a closet full of dear Caycee Blacks.

Others, elsewhere.

Dearest, darling stockists.

Holly Golightly's first trip to the NYPL

I think that if the little library I spent my childhood in had not been rebuilt to better suit the 21st century, I would be able to, blindfolded, find the Nancy Drews, the Helen Keller biographies, the art section, and those strange Peanuts books with no copyright information at all. And so, it pleases me enormously to welcome the Los Angeles Library Store to the Jezebel fold.

July 22 1941


Anne Frank, watching the bride and groom next door

A moment so slender, in a life grown fantastically large in echoes and afterthoughts. It shakes me to see the still grow animate, though it ought not, as I have both imagination and a beating heart, and they were here.

ARTEMIS

Le voyage dans la lune + more Roisin Murphy at Viktor & Rolf

I made a promise to myself and that promise has been kept: for the past 48 hours I have done practically nothing, and yet so much has been accomplished. On Saturday, as day unfolded into night, a table was laid and, between stories, ten impromptu guests picked at gnocchi with roasted cauliflower and sage accompanied by fresh fig tarts with mascarpone cream. Teepee and I floated off before all the guests had left, and as KP played his mother's old Supremes records, I intently continued the dream in which a sliver of Le voyage dans la lune is captured and spread wide on the wall above the couch.

I've got a bat in my name, vol. III

09 October 2009

Scene-setting

Signing off, and thus begins a weekend of devoted and intense lounging. Wouldn't mind taking on the challenge in the above Viktor & Rolf get-up, minus those carnation-pink shoes. The twin star Dutchmen have such a sly, sly collective sense of humor; they perched a very pregnant Roisin Murphy on a dark and gleaming pedestal in Paris- precisely where all very pregnant women belong.

Reconsidering

Sloe-eyed

Norway by Hannelli

Today is a day for packing orders, by the light of our Fado moon lamp, with one eye on Faithless. Norwegians and Swedes have been plentiful on Bedford recently, which is a joy to my eyes and ears. Scandinavia House on Park Avenue was an early customer of Jezebel's, and I produced my first custom work for them- a bevy of Hans Christian Andersen inspired cards.

Too much/queasy beauty

Pamphleteering efforts expanded


While my brother is in school uptown, I am the custodian of his car. It is not the best car in the world, but it is our car, or rather his car, and we like it very much, and it was rather rude for a fellow Olive Street parker to dislodge the bumper from the chassis earlier this week.

08 October 2009

A nice thing, this you and I

from owls and moths he guards nana, $5 at www.ilovejezebel.com

Dear visitors, I'd like to have each of you over for a cardamom-rose cocktail, and stilton-fig sandwiches. Do not be surprised to find a copy of The Virgin and the Gypsy in your bag when you get home- I put it there.