D Squared Resort 2011… Let me just savor one last bite out of Resort before Spring/Summer 2011 (!!) Collections begin in NYC September 9th… Sexy + Chic, love all of this. Hello gorgeous, clean, straightforward clothes and other random pretty things and accessories to match. LOVE.
Jimmy Choo, Elie Tahari & Aperlai, Above and Bally, Below
I love these bags from Bulga designer Natalia Konovalova. Her beautiful well crafted bags have been rotating staples in my accessories closet for many years. These are from the Iris Collection 2011 set to hit stores later this year. www.lebulga.com
The band Of Montreal out of Athens, Georgia have been making music since 1996. ‘Coquet Coquette’ appears on their new album False Priest set to be released September 14th, 2010.
I saw the latest collection of Jacob & Co pieces at Sunset Tower today and fell in LOVE with the vintage feel of some of the cuff bracelets. Gorgeous, sexy and subtle. There was also a delicate mesh link cuff with tiny flower diamonds that I am obsessed with. The details are beautiful.
Tony Oursler’s Skull and Butterfly, 1999, Above
I’ve been doodling hearts all my life and can look at skulls and butterflies separately or together endlessly. Its like the art equivalent of the punk girl in a baby doll dress. I can’t explain why I’m drawn to the images, whether it’s the sense of life and death colliding in these simple graphics or maybe a feeling of childhood nostalgia mixed with adult dread. Either way there are a lot of artists that have been drawn to their special paradox as well and there is definitely something beautiful and comforting in their co-existence. It’s also a really great excuse to look at some amazing art.
Banksy, Below
Dan Baldwin, Below
Cecily Brown, Below
Jim Dine, Below
Damien Hirst, Below
Audi and Chopard along with with co-hosts and Emmy-nominated actors Jane Lynch, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet threw the first of this week’s Emmy’s shindigs at Cecconi’s last night and it was a good one! Several members of the casts of both Glee and Modern Family were present along with many other swanky and fun guests including one of our favorite True Blood ladies, Rutina Wesley. Okay so the photo below is obviously not from last night but I adore Rutina and love how happy and beautiful she looks here. Matthew Morrison was there as well. So excited to start gushing about Glee again when the new season begins!
Rutina Wesley photographed in Los Angeles October 2009, Above
This weekend was a bit of a film fest over here. Saturday after seeing the Basquiat documentary I went to a screening of the one and only Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory at the Hollywood Forever cemetery both of which made me sublimely happy on all fronts. Then yesterday someone took me to see Piranha 3D. Wow. I forgave my very sweet apologetic friend but nonetheless my palette and eyeballs are still in pain and in dire need of cleansing so I’m pretty stoked to see the new film directed by Gaspar Noe. Enter The Void opens this week on August 25th, 2010. And if someone could please explain to me the logic behind today’s announcement that a Piranha 3D Part TWO is already in the works. Anyone? Bueller? …?
Maintenance is exhausting. Being a beauty product junkie is one thing but the amount of time we spend every month on maintenance is a whole other subject. Between the waxings, the blow outs, the manis, the pedis, the color touch ups and the occasional scramble for an outfit that hasn’t been recycled a hundred times to wear to an event that will last less than two hours… it’s not surprising that for some it’s a full time job. And god help us before a first date. I’m not sure most men realize the amount of time, effort and money women invest in looking effortlessly good especially for a first date. Thank god for anything that saves us time and for beauty products that actually work and deliver. I love this line SK-II. Love the marketing campaign behind it as well, something about the idea of sake soaked hands never aging seems so graceful and enticing. I Kind of want some of my other products to run out so I can start using these full time instead of just taste testing.
Jean Michel Basquiat’s Riding With Death, 1988
Tamra Davis’ documentary on Jean Michel Basquiat is absolutely extraordinary, beautiful and heartbreaking. There is so much real genius in Basquiat’s paintings and the energy of both his life and work resonate powerfully throughout the film. Nothing breaks my heart more than an artist whose voice is silenced not just too early in life but by his own hand, through addiction, overdose. Senseless and avoidable deaths that only perpetuate the myth that an artist has to maintain a sense of sadness, pain or melancholy throughout their lives in order to hold onto a certain quality in their work. It’s true that often times real genius is unprepared for the cult of celebrity and most people are not equipped with the tools that it takes to survive and navigate a sea of hungry wolves much less when combined with ones own demons. And yes, there is a beauty that comes out of pain sometimes but it’s not required. Teeter tottering between an artists’ world and a world of “reality” is difficult and only made worse by the overwhelming sense of being tugged at in every direction, not knowing who to trust and feeling alone in a world that remains constantly overcrowded.
The scenes of ‘old’ NYC are beautiful as well. I miss the city I never really got to experience… I saw glimpses of it on my visits in the late 80’s as a teenager but by the time I moved to NYC in 1995 the Lower East Side was already starting to change. I won’t lie and say I don’t like all the great restaurants that have sprouted over the last 15 years but there is a grittiness I always loved that is harder to find. Ms. Davis captures perfectly a time when being an artist in NYC wasn’t filled with so many rules and boundaries. She’s created a quiet touching portrait of her friend and artist that underlines not only his exquisite talent and skill but also his otherworldliness that never would have allowed him to survive for long in this one. Go see this film. It’s playing through Friday at NuArt. And visit Alias Books around the corner while you’re there. The best (and seemingly only) used bookstore in LA. Great selection of used art books and fiction.
