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 .

The Dollhouse.

Have a look at my little dollhouse apartment at design*sponge.

Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jezebel, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.

Just when I thought it wasn't possible for this week's New York Magazine to get any better, what with an article on Wes Anderson and then this amazing Williamsburg power broker in the Look Book wearing a genius get-up of dress I own in green and some gorgeous costume jewels, it got bettter.

If you were riding the F on Tuesday and somewhere around Delancey a black-haired girl clutching an Egyptian embossed bag yelped, it was me, and I just read this from the interview with Jennifer Jason Leigh:

We're at (Greenwich) Letterpress, a stationery shop on Christopher Street, so Leigh can purchase thank-you notes she and (Noah as in he who wrote The Life Aquatic and wrote and directed The Squid and The Whale) Baumbach can share as a couple. But although the store is filled with eccentric designs she likes...she can't decide what to buy..."This was not a good idea, with my personality," she moans, fretting over some tiny cards without envelopes. A pink-and-blue motif of glittery eggs is too girlie. "It's fine for me, but Noah's not sending this card. I'll tell you that right now. This would be more his thing," she says, picking up a feral-looking owl escaping from a battered cage. "My mother would love this card, too. She has a great sense of humor; she loves Edward Gorey."

Sound familiar, anyone?
It's "hyacinth knew the vicious royalty of sweet decay!"
Hip hip hooray!

Jezebel (and Marcel Dzama, too)

My mother and I headed over to Bloomingdale's Soho last night to visit Jezebel. Mixed boxes of "grenouille, vanquished!" and "titania kissed thy fair, large ears" are available at the Soho and 59th Street Bloomie's in the New Museum pop-up shop.

down to the river to pray

I was Egypt-mad in March. It began with a purchase of an old Life magazine with Liz Taylor as Cleopatra on the cover, continued with a viewing of Death on the Nile, a hunting down of an old Vogue article about Christian Louboutin's mad dash to Cairo as a youth, a search for the perfect copy of The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, the loss of one achingly perfect Egyptiana bag on eBay, the naming of a card, and ended with...Passover.

"seven gentlemen wore trembling wings from cairo"

Clea (the final volume of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet)
purchased at a book stall in istanbul

Are you there God?

The rotary phone provides the perfect amount of earthliness to this scene. It makes me think of Six Feet Under and Greenwood Cemetery and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and the love affair of O'Keefe and Stieglitz.

(image from John Galliano)

You can take me with you.

I would very much like to attend this party.

The Innocent Voyage.

I returned, last evening, from an annual visit to Cape May with my lovely ladies. We played skee ball and drank champagne, two marks of a Very Fine Weekend to me.

I discovered a wee little shop, tucked under our hotel called Mother Grimm's Bears . The Mother turns one's old furs or wedding dresses into melancholy, Edwardian-faced teddy bears. She'll even turn the monogram on the inside of a fur coat into the paw of a bear. I'm having my bridesmaid's dress from her parent's wedding converted into a bear for my new baby niece.

leaves and wings

I. Love. Books.
Brooklynites have a glorious tradition of leaving unwanted treasures on their stoops for neighbors and passer-bys. I swoop in and spirit them away.

It gives me a particular thrill to find evidences of previous readers stowed inside old books. The first image is from The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, source forgotten, the second a copy of Jane Eyre purchased at the Woodstock Library sale.

in a pale, pistachio dressing room jezebel schemes

Dear Visitors to Jezebel's haphazardly maintained blog-
I am thinking of attending Parsons for their certificate program in interior design this fall. Do you know anything about it? Know anything about being an interior designer in 2007? Know who owns this truck I saw outfitted with a chandelier and brocade roof and small Flemish painting on the dashboard? No? That's okay. Really and truly, though, any pearls of wisdom will be treated like the jewels they are. Please either email jezebel@ilovejezebel.com or leave a comment.
yours truly, Jezebel

one day, i will have an army of lace-makers

Until then, Coral does the job valiantly.

I rest my head on a pillowy star

On Tuesday night I sat on the floor of the Warsaw with the Basement Boys , Serena Jean, KP of Monuments. We ate pierogies under a disco ball and waited with 393 others. I felt like Heart's Dreamboat Annie should be blaring and peach schnapps ought to have filled the flask.



Wilco played for two hours and closed the set with a nod to Mermaid Avenue, Brooklyn. A macrame owl guarded the stage. I feel convinced that J. Tweedy ought to be corresponding on "hyacinth knew the vicious royalty of sweet decay". I've made up a package and will address it to Wilco, Chicago.

art star craft bazaar

come say hello!
(and buy something, too!)

for details: artstarphilly.com

jezebel doesn't live here anymore, or the ladies who launched

in booth 1742 while jezebel furiously caffeinated,
mr. jezebel hid behind the plant called "the lady didn't know."

across the way, were the glamorous and kind-hearted up-towners, tracey and ade.
(shoptracepaper.com)

and down the row, were the chic ladies of superdeluxe, whose decoupaged hypatia i covet so.
(superdeluxenyc.com)

the emperor does have new clothes, i swear it!

jezebel tees and totes have arrived. dress the entire family in our finery as we now stock onesies as well as kiddie and adult tees. the range will be available for purchase at jezebelstationery.etsy.com in short order.

like a wild, black-eyed sicilian widow clutching her breast

I want this chair so badly it hurts.
Ouch. Ow. Oh.
Dolce & Gabbana for Kartell

(photo from design*sponge for House & Garden)

and a cocktail cabinet, too

(found via decor8)

the dreams that mr. jezebel dreams

to which I say:
"Hello Radiohead. Jezebel here. Empty bookshelves?! A tragedy."

neo-luddites, unite!

I love you Miranda July.

www.noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com

isn't it romantic

My friends, the lovebirds have returned to my window sill, making me feel all Snow White-like.


(Snow White images from animationarchive.org)

turn of the screw

In the April issue of Vogue:
The Lake & Stars [a new Manhattan-based lingerie line] is aptly named, the duo says, after the Victorian expression for woman with a black belt in the bedroom arts (as in "She gave me the lakes and the stars...).



Having just purchased Parallel Lives on my weekly $1 cart book binge, I feel as though I owe some time to the Victorians and their deliciously poetic smuttiness.

message from the mount

This photograph is an absolutely mad serving of my yearning for desert spaces and horses of Arabia with a soupcon of Paris surrealism.

(photo by Andrea Galvani)

oui, oui mick-ee mick-ee

postcard by Nathalie Lete, purchased from John Derian