A dark day- a week later.

a view from my bedroom of the hordes of trick-or-treaters who
turn up every year for the haunted house across the street

Edward Gorey, my favorite to read on Halloween eve- not just
because he loves cats and books. Because he made things like this:

And from Lemony Snicket, on why we must face fear:

Perhaps if we saw what was ahead of us, and glimpsed the crimes,
follies and misfortunes that would befall us later on, we would all
stay in our mother's wombs, and then there would be nobody in
the world but a great number of very fat, very irritated women.

Though I hate Gawker...

I do love my friends.

By the way, please don't let Gawker know that I take umbrage with their vile tactics. They scare me.

On the blue Danube.

henry and gertrude, criminal lovers

Lorenzo Mattotti
Six Scenes from Hansel and Gretel

The portfolio of Hansel and Gretel-inspired works over at the New Yorker reminded me of one of my favorite contemporary turns on a known fairy-tale: Francois Ozon's Les Amants Criminels, where the nightmare of a truly grim tale from the Grimm Brothers is explored deeply and rather madly.

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 .

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.