La Coquette

Vuitton 2, F09

Vuitton 2, F09
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Chanel, F09

Chanel, F09
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Chanel F09

(Don't forget you can trouver moi on twitter and Chicagomag.com)

I'm from Florida and my first job was selling Lilly Pulitzer dresses at a little beachside shop in my hometown. When Karl Lagerfeld does pink and green, c'est une autre histoire!

A Saturday in Paris

Sandwiched between a Friday of five shows and what will be an equally busy Sunday, I had Saturday to relax and meet with friends. 

I started the day with a run at the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, walking through the thronged Belleville market on the way.  By 2:30 I was at the Jeremy Scott show where models bounced down the runway to “Hey Mickey.”  Scott was all in kid mode this season: there was a cape of white Mickey Mouse gloves, jackets with shiny Skittle colored buttons, and dresses covered in colorful elastic circles that called to mind balloons.  The show was at the Faculté de Médecine in Saint Germain, so after I headed to Café Flore with my friend Lauren.  Both the designer and the pr rep were there, “like the cast and crew hitting a diner after a show,” said Lauren.  Then I went to Café Charlot in the northern Marais where I ordered a glass of Brouilly and waited for my friend Carole to get out of Ann Demeulemeester.  She brought along Garance and Scott.  I talked a lot with Scott about his memories of Chicago and how romantic it was for him to visit the city and have his first cultural experiences there when he was in high school (he was born in Indianapolis).

Next Carole and I moved inside for dinner and by the time I left I realized I’d been at the café for over four hours.  I was going to go meet Cassi and Susan for a drink at Chez Janou but was spent and needed to get ready for today which is very busy: Andrew Gn, Akris, Costume National, Dries Van Noten, Christian Lacroix, Givenchy. 

I think I will wear my leather jacket and my ivory Ralph Lauren silk skirt with knife pleats.  The skirt is a risk because today is rainy.  Hope I don’t get splotched. 

Oooh, I’m on twitter now. 

You can read about the first day of shows here on Chicago mag.  And please check back on Chicago mag on Monday for much, much more!

Lanvin, F09

Lanvin, F09
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Nina Ricci shoes, F09

Nina Ricci shoes, F09
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... and more later

I had imagined something a bit more substantial after two months of not blogging.  But maybe it’s better to be terse.  I’ve always had a fear of looking somehow like Norma Desmond.  Oh dear, she was ad libbing into a void.  So sad. 

As far as my news, I have a stomach flu that had me throwing up three times last night.  Why is there not more poetry written about the relief of vomiting?*  All that writhing, hours of pain, your words gone, your world altered – and then suddenly you’re okay. 

The mission of this post, is of course to tell you that you can find me blogging about the New York fashion shows at Chicago mag this week, should you want to follow along. 

Right this moment I am attempting solid food (apple and cracker – I feel like a baby) and heading to Bryant Park for the second half of the day’s events. 

*Disgusting, I know.  But I bet Billy Collins could do a great job with it. 

The art of the present

 

Today is my last day in the office before heading to New York for a few days to visit my sister (she's studying fashion design at Parsons and ready to collapse from final projects and studio nights until 5 am, the poor thing!).  Then I’m going to my aunt and uncle’s home in Virginia for Christmas en famille.  I’m no gift expert you know, I’ve bought hardly one thing for anyone yet, but I believe most online shopping is guaranteed to arrive if you order by December 20, so as we stare down the last 48 hours, here is an excuse to look at some pretty things online.  (And who knows maybe someone will be helped by this.) 

My friend Amy gave me a feather headband from Love Lulu Mae for my birthday.  This summer I wore it to my cousin Jeanne’s going away party, a picnic on the Seine, and also with an Alexander McQueen dress to Petite's wedding reception.  It’s totally exquisite, and designed in Chicago I might add!

This has been written about in a lot of places but I think a voucher for artwork from 20x200 is an excellent gift idea. And Claire just turned me on to these dignified and adorable animal prints.

Departement Feminin has free shipping through the 20th!  Aren’t these Zanotti shoes the pink of perfection? 

This perfume guide book is as good as everyone said, and is on my Christmas wish list.  Flipping through it in a store recently, I was struck by something they wrote about a favorite perfume of mine, Quelques Fleurs by Houbigant, that it was “easy” more or less (it was very much like the Merlot rant in Sideways). I’m not going to stop wearing Quelques Fleurs, au contraire, but their pluck got me excited in the way a fun and bitchy older friend might excite a ninth grader who is new in school. 

The new Boucheron perfume, B, is a woody floral enclosed in one of the prettiest bottles I’ve ever seen (with a cabochon emerald green stone on top).  It smells perfectly lovely if you like sandalwood, which I do, and this perfume makes little use of synthetics which is nice.  (Full disclosure: Boucheron offered to send me a bottle to sample, and I declined as I don’t generally write about “stuff you can buy” here, but when I smelled the sample strip in Vanity Fair I liked it, and I love the bottle.  So I changed my mind.)

At Walgreens on Michigan Avenue in Chicago they are selling commemorative Obama buttons.  I don’t know if this is a nationwide thing or not, but what a great stocking stuffer!  Your kids will someday be clearing out your garage, possibly when you move to a retirement home and they’ll be wondering why you have so much crap you never threw away, until they see this wonderful, perfect, plastic thing, which will make them smile.

Finally, it’s hard to single out a book from all the wonderful ones I’ve read this year, but I’ll go ahead and tell you about the juicy, impossible to put down story that I just finished: Katie Rophie’s Uncommon Arrangements, a biographical examination of some unconventional romantic lives, mostly among the Bloomsbury set.

Chitown, back again

In the Fall issue of Chicago Fashion, I have an article on Audrey Fosse (she founded HomeMade Pizza Company with her husband) where we peek at her lovely wardrobe (for online viewing be sure to click on the photo gallery), and another on Tim Long of the Chicago History Museum, and his Chic Chicago exhibit, and also a story in which I track one incredibly luxurious cashmere cape from a baby goat farm in Mongolia to a boutique in Chicago...  Plus a few small items on trends and such. Care for a clutch made out of recycled yoga mats?  A cutting edge cuff?  Wanna know how to wear drapey pants? Or how the Ballets Russes inspires designers of today?  You’re in luck. 

On a related note, I’m in Chicago right now, working on the Spring 2009 issue. I find that Chicagoans are generally a placid and optimistic bunch, but between a Monday morning bankruptcy announcement (I work at the Tribune Tower, home of the Chicago Tribune) and a Tuesday morning Blagojevich arrest, it’s a little dizzy around here.  Monday night I was watching the local news while on a treadmill at the Tribune gym and there was this great kicker before they went to commercial, something like “Is it doomsday for the Tribune corporation?” So many eyes on Chicago right now. 

Otherwise, it’s snow, snow, snow, ack – seems much wetter and colder than in previous years and it’s really beating me down, but tonight I’m going to the Art Institute, and I was just invited to join my editor friend at a Steppenwolf show this weekend starring John Mahoney and Tom Irwin. I haven’t seen My So Called Life in ages, and I’m wondering how my inner teen will react to seeing Angela Chase’s father in person! 

[image: Chicago magazine]

She was like a garden or a parade

Eliza Frye has a wicked and delightful graphic story in Narrative, giving her leading lady a Madame X-like profile, and with it a somewhat Madame X-like story. (No, Madame X was not murdered, but her affairs did get her into trouble.) This reminded me how I’d always wanted to read this. Did you know that, aside from her tumultuous love life, Virginie Gautreau was known for having excellent avant-garde taste? She powdered her skin lavender!