“When you say of a thing that ‘nothing hangs on it,’ it sounds like blasphemy. There’s never any knowing which of our actions, which of our idlenesses won’t have things hanging on it for ever.”
- Miss Abbott in E. M. Forster’s Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905)
The American Museum of Natural History here in New York City is one of my favorite places on the planet: I hope that someday they’ll allow me to move into one of the building’s splendid turrets. I was at the museum only this morning, doing some research for my upcoming book, The Wondrous Journals of Dr. Wendell Wellington Wiggins; the title character happens to be an eccentric paleozoologist on a mission to discover the secrets of the ancient animal world.
I modeled Dr. Wiggins partly on the great Theodore Roosevelt, who was not only America’s 26th president, but also a pioneer of the conservation movement and a lover of nature. In fact, the original charter creating the Museum was signed in Roosevelt’s family home in 1869. A formidable statue of Roosevelt lords over the Museum’s front steps, and four of his quotes are chiseled into the marble walls of the Museum’s grand entrance foyer, detailing his thoughts on nature, youth, manhood, and government:
I love these quotes; who could possibly argue against the beauty and wisdom of the following excerpts?
“The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased; and not impaired in value.” (From Nature)
“Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life.” (From Manhood)
“Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.” (From Youth)
“A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy.” (From The State)
Incidentally, my husband and I were married by a descendant of Theodore Roosevelt, and he had the same magnificent grin as his famous ancestor.
In honor of Mother’s Day, a slideshow of the some of the books that my mother used to read to me when I was a little kid. Most of these shabby editions graced my childhood bookshelves - and have adorned my bookshelves in different cities and countries ever since. Our particular favorites included The Amazing Bone, The Little House, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs:
Image of Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross in The Graduate (1967) courtesy of Vanity Fair
The following information came to me courtesy of a new acquaintance named Katherine Chan, the mastermind behind the perfume blog Confessions of a Mad Perfumista. Apparently a new perfume evoking the scent of a freshly printed book is to be released this month; this astonishing product is a collaboration between German publisher Steidl and perfumer Geza Schoen. Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld has designed the packaging and named the scent ‘Paper Passion.’ It’s a seemingly bizarre concept, but anything that celebrates the beauty of books gets my vote of confidence. Read more about ‘Paper Passion’ here.
“Tact in daring is knowing exactly how too far you can go.”
Snaps to Vogue editor Anna Wintour for the stellar gold lobster Prada gown that she wore to last night’s 2012 Met Gala. The party celebrated the opening of a new Costume Institute exhibit honoring fashion designers Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada.
I’ve long adored Schiaparelli’s surrealist lobster motifs, which abounded in her clothing and accessories in the 1930s; I’ve been known to wear lobsters on my head to the damndest of places myself. Ms. Wintour’s dress was likely an homage to the famous lobster dress created by Schiaparelli and artist Salvador Dali, a garment donned by some of that era’s preeminent tastemakers, including Peggy Guggenheim and the Duchess of Windsor:
Maurice Sendak, author and illustrator of many iconic books for children, has died at 83. While he is best known for Where the Wild Things Are, my favorite Sendak title has always been a lesser known work called Outside Over There. As a young girl, I chose this book for myself from the school library and have been obsessed with it ever since. The tale is wonderfully creepy: Sendak was, after all, the “author of splendid nightmares,” as the New York Times wrote this morning. A young girl, Ida, is charged with looking after her infant sister. While Ida plays her horn and ignores the baby, goblins sneak in through a window and kidnap the child, leaving a changeling made of ice. The book documents Ida’s fantastical journey to save her little sister.
Some of my favorite images from the book:
This sweet little bouquet was a present from my friend Michael Burst, one of New York City’s most gifted and best-loved florists. Every year I mean to buy a handful of lilies of the valley from him and always forget until they’re out of season; this year, he saved me a small bundle. When I was a kid, these sweet flowers carpeted the lawn near my house. They were so bountiful that they were like weeds: we yanked up hundreds of them and put them in tumblers around the house. These days, here in New York, they run about a million dollars per stem, so this lovely bouquet is especially precious to me:
This past Fashion Week, I turned up at a presentation to check out the latest collection of an up-and-coming clothing designer. I can hardly remember the clothes, for the show was stolen by a certain renegade millinery artist, who’d accessorized the models with her creations. On top of one model’s head: a violently-assembled cone of dart-sharp porcupine quills. A topper made from ram’s horns curved around another model’s crown. I immediately cornered this young designer, a stern lady named Ashley Lloyd whose work has already been donned by Kate Moss and Lady Gaga.
Mining Ms. Lloyd’s archive is akin to visiting the depths of a strange natural history museum. She’s sort of a Frida Kahlo of the millinery world: savage yet tender, surrealist in her sensibilities, worshipful of nature in all of its glory and brutality. Alexander McQueen likely would have loved her. I recently wore one of her headpieces to a gala at the Frick Museum; it was made entirely from pigeon wings. Another one of my favorite pieces had been alluring dubbed the “War Bonnet”—it can be seen in the following slideshow (worn by the bare-breasted model):
Once again, a designer has blurred the line between fashion and conceptual art; I fully expect Ms. Lloyd’s work to be the subject of its own museum exhibit someday.
This weekend, The Wall Street Journal ran my article about how plastic is making a comeback in the fashion world. Once every few decades, the industry has a fairly major plastic moment - usually during times of societal upheaval.
The material was especially prevalant in the 1960s: with the onset of the Space Age, the fashion industry went into plastic overdrive. In Paris, Paco Rabanne crafted wild dresses from chain mail and plastic; in ‘66 he showed a collection of “12 Experimental and Unwearable Dresses in Contemporary Materials.” I had a lot of fun researching images of those designs:
While it’s hard to imagine that era’s prim housewives warming up to these outré new looks, the aesthetic did manage to go mainstream. There was an American company that advertised in Ladies’ Home Journal a kit from which you could make your own plastic ‘Paco Rabanne’ tunic, in the comfort of your own living room.
If you want to see the real deal, sashay over to New York Vintage on Manhattan’s 25th Street and ask to see the Rabannes in the archive. It’s very likely that Twiggy or Veruschka once trotted around wearing them.
“Green Fairy Elixir” candies: arguably the most grown-up sweeties in the world, and the most lethal at that. I just scored a passel of these babies in an old-fashioned candy store on the Lower East Side, and they’re a perfectly decadent treat for a warm, sunny Friday afternoon.
To learn more about unconventional uses for absinthe over the centuries, pick up a copy of my soon-to-be released book about cocktail history, Let’s Bring Back: The Cocktail Edition.
This image comes to me courtesy of my dear friend, Emily Arden Wells - designer suprema and mastermind behind the witty food blog Gastronomista. Officially, this creation is a “Rose and Pistachio Persian Delight Jelly with Rose Fairy Floss,” but to my expert eye, at first glance, it looked like “Panna Cotta ... with Wig.”
To re-create this astonishing creature on your own, click here and scroll to the bottom of the page for the recipe.
This addition to our art collection was a gift from my seven-year-old niece, who assures me that the work has been authenticated by the Warhol estate:
Details: Andy Warhol, 1967; crayon and pencil on paper. Gift from Miss N. J. Wells.
This morning I did a sitting with charismatic painter Timothy Kent at his Bushwick, Brooklyn studio. He lives right across the street from the famous White Street graffiti wall: every once in a while, it is painted entirely black and local graffiti artists cover it again with new designs. When I arrived at 11 AM, the wall was entirely blank, but by the time I emerged three hours later, it was already covered with incredible, elaborate abstract street art:
