Archive for April, 2012

I am dying of happiness

Buzzfeed has posted these fantabulous pictures Hello Kitty Airlines, which is part of the Japanese company Eva Jets, and life feels like it’ll be nothing but Saturdays from now on. I’m high on a thousand cupcakes. Bathed in the light of a million rainbows.

True, Japan has already  broken the twee barrier  by bringing  us Hello Kitty Star Wars Storm Troopers and Hello Kitty Maternity Hospitals, but this feels like a real game changer. Just imagine the delight that would be check-in.

And lunchtime!

The notion of grown women obsessing over a cartoon kittycat with no mouth should probably offend my feminist sensibilities. But how could one possibly begrudge the world this giant flying antidepressant? (Or its manic, wackadoo website? Skip  it and you’re only hurting yourself, people.)

 

JUST what I was looking for

Considering the fact that it’s so key to the success of so many outfits, a really nice, unadorned silk cami that doesn’t cost a ton shouldn’t be too hard to find. And yet. I need a few to get me through the summer, and have been searching madly and—as is so often the case when one is out on a very specific retail mission—failing at every turn. Eventually I just let go, hoping that it would soon just come to me—like how you locate your keys the minute you stop obsessing over where you left them. And so in fact it has: this one from J. Crew costs $50—not particularly a bargain, but plenty reasonable. And comes in nude too, which is huge.

 

 

One glamorous, hard-working lippy

My friend Alison Nelson, who is both proprietress of my corner coffee joint/office-away from-home Chocolate Bar and as cute as humanly possible,  was wearing the nicest lip color when I popped in today. It was sheer and not too shiny,  in a very flattering shade of pink—which is to say, the kind of very subtle pink that makes those afraid to try pink feel emboldened to give it a whirl.  Turns out it was Fresh Sugar Passion Tinted Lip Treatment, which I’ve got the plummier version of lying around here somewhere, and which I can therefore attest is as un-goopy and hydrating and SPF-15-having a lip balm as one could ever hope to find.

Afternoon bits

The Cut notes that Bazaar Espana put 56 year-old actress Angela Molina on their cover. Oh, to be the editor of a European magazine, where print runs are tiny, nobody gets all worked up over newsstand sales numbers, and one can take the occasional interesting risk!

Styleite’s got pictures of Kate Middleton looking all fashiony in Matthew Williamson at a Disney movie premiere last night. Rather sporting of her, given that he once sniped that she was “not a fashion bunny.”

Why America Hates The Guys in Corporate, part #287:  according to The Mary Sue, CEOs of some of the biggest cinema chains in the country  are taking the idea of allowing people to text and talk on their cellphones during movies quite seriously.  Do the rest of us get to bring stun guns?

And from the Jane Dough: this rundown of poorly behaved heirs to large fortunes, which is alternately horrifying and  gossipy good fun.

Jezebel notes that a high school girl got banned from her prom because she didn’t have a date.  One scarcely knows where to begin.

Entertainment Weekly runs down movies too un-PC to be made today, and and the list includes Taxi Driver (teen prostitute), Blazing Saddles (racist sterotypes) The Jerk (see previous) and The Bad News Bears (kids drink beer). To which I say: how could you forget Pretty Baby?

Ethnic tops that cost what ethnic tops should cost

I like Isabel Marant as much as the next girl. One of my favorite bags of all time is an Isabel Marant bag, and I do not regret for a moment having spent a fortune on it. But it’s criminal what she gets for some of those little cotton ethnic tops of hers. I knew there had to be a better option out there.

So I contacted the first person I always do when I’m looking for anything bright, ethnic, and authentic: My dear friend Elise Loehnnen, who moved to LA last year run Beso (and its very shoppable blog), and who I miss desperately. She sent me a link to to La Mariposa Imports, which led to the discovery of  this rather winning hand-embroidered blouse.

And this one too, which falls just short of perfect due to a higher-than-ideal neckline, but is still pretty damn charming. It’s got that contrast-y thing going with the stripes and the pattern, which I seem never to tire of.

Then I found Great Blouses, a site that specializes in all manner of Romanian folk items, and happened upon this top, which couldn’t be not be more Marant-ified if it tried.

And over at the  Romanian Handmade Products site, they’ve got short sleeved versions, which are less French girl than Dazed and Confused, but could find a very nice place in one’s summer wardrobe.

A tiny notebook—for all your old-school moments

 

For somebody who went to college back when only people whose thing was computers had computers in their dorm rooms, I’d like to think I’ve been pretty fine with the digital world coming along and changing everything.  Because obviously—putting aside the whole loss-of-privacy issue—it has changed so much for the far, far better. I love my iPad, and the wonder that is Spotify, and ordering a book and having it just appear, like magic. I have even become—somewhat to my horror—one of those people who prefers texts and emails over actually calling a person on the phone, which now seems as forward as dropping by a friend’s home unannounced.

But at the core I am, and shall remain, analog. I like writing things down on paper, for instance. Things like grocery lists, or the name of the book  that a friend has just mentioned, or somebody’s email address (unspeakably un-modern, that last one).  I also write things down because I am at that age when you just start forgetting things—sometimes quite important things. And I write all of these things down on  these absolutely itsy soft-cover notebooks, which I carry with me always, like a middle-aged version of a blankie. They’re super-lightweight and literally the size of the palm of one’s hand and come two to a pack and in a ton of different colors (I favor the yellow and vaguely Hermes-ish orange; so easy to spot in a jam-packed handbag).