Posts filed under 'Beauty'
A day in June may very well be the absolute ideal for most who live in the northern hemisphere. Where I live a day in June can also be one of the hottest of the year, but I like heat, and June makes up for the heat with the deepest blue skies of the year. The roses go drunk with the wine of late spring, the days offer up their most sunny hours, and the nights begin to wink with fireflies.
But rare? In every four years there are 120 June days. In every four years there are only 113 days. In every four years there is only one of yesterday.
James Russell Lowell is wrong, but must be forgiven for putting it so well.
AND what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays;
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might,
An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, groping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
The flush of life may well be seen
Thrilling back over hills and valleys;
The cowslip startles in meadows green,
The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
And there’s never a leaf nor a blade too mean
To be some happy creature’s palace;
The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o’errun
With the deluge of summer it receives;
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings;
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?
Now is the high-tide of the year,
And whatever of life hath ebbed away
Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer,
Into every bare inlet and creek and bay;
Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it,
We are happy now because God wills it;
No matter how barren the past may have been,
‘Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green;
We sit in the warm shade and feel right well
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell;
We may shut our eyes but we cannot help knowing
That skies are clear and grass is growing;
The breeze comes whispering in our ear,
That dandelions are blossoming near,
That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing,
That the river is bluer than the sky,
That the robin is plastering his house hard by;
And if the breeze kept the good news back,
For our couriers we should not lack;
We could guess it all by yon heifer’s lowing,
And hark! How clear bold chanticleer,
Warmed with the new wine of the year,
Tells all in his lusty crowing!
Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how;
Everything is happy now,
Everything is upward striving;
‘Tis as easy now for the heart to be true
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,
‘Tis for the natural way of living:
Who knows whither the clouds have fled?
In the unscarred heaven they leave not wake,
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed,
The heart forgets its sorrow and ache;
The soul partakes the season’s youth,
And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe
Lie deep ‘neath a silence pure and smooth,
Like burnt-out craters healed with snow.
Because yesterday was OK but I am waiting for the day he speaks of, when the cuckoo and the lily and the sun all croon to me the same melody.
March 1st, 2008
Without Coco Chanel and what she did to women’s clothing in the early 1900s, we might be wearing anything. Corseting and restricting had gotten steadily worse for women until she stepped in and said,”Take it off!”
Celia Walden had the chance to visit the apartment Coco Chanel kept in the building that houses Chanel. It was closed when she died and never opened until Ms Walden wheedled her way in and wrote this story. Make sure to look at the photo album.
I wonder if I can declare this as my pied a terre in Paris? So what if it has no bedroom, who wants to sleep in Parigi?
February 27th, 2008
Not only with the full skirt, but with other even more tempting fashions this spring and summer, there are pockets! You need pockets. We have always needed pockets, but for too many years we have been denied them in most usable forms. Then a year ago they showed up in ball gowns and now they are back for real. After all, without a pocket, where will you hide that note no one should see when you hear voices nearing?
This is by Donna Karan who made a lot of full-skirted clothes, and might just have done the best with the look. Slim top, belt and full skirt, that’s all it takes. I’d eschew the transparent top, for work have a small sleeve and although I like this hat, it really isn’t big enough to be useful, so pump it up.
Blugirl did this terrific look. A short sleeved T, a belt and a skirt in the same color and what was an evening outfit goes daytime. I’m going to wear a high-heeled sandal with mine, with a sensibly wide heel to avoid looking a fool on the stone streets of Italy.
This is by Narciso Rodriguez, for the lucky one who can wear the short skirt. Look at those great shoes. Bronze and tie-up, both comfortable and smart. This dress would even look cute with a Keds sneaker for dropping into the cleaners and the market.
The top and skirt look I was able to copy at J Crew. The little floaty dress was well represented at Banana Republic, in spirit at least. 
February 24th, 2008
I started thinking the other day about fashion and clothes. I have a lot of fun when the runway shows are on and I love to talk about them and post pictures from them and surmise what will have the legs to reach the market that is us, more or less. It suddenly hit me that the “us” of whom I speak is no longer me. That “us” was a working professional with a need to look on top of things and as attractive as possible. The expense could be justified by that image thing and I had just enough of a social life, too, to make it a pleasure to think out pretty clothes and spoil myself a little. And I was a lot younger. It stymies me to realize that some of the nicest looks are denied to women my age. Just when we need to disguise our bottoms we are told that full skirts make us look like mutton dressed as lamb. Someone made fun of me for wearing a stitched down pleated skirt three years ago. It didn’t stop me wearing one, because they make too much sense and certainly don’t have to be worn schoolgirlishly, but it did make me start paying attention to that issue a bit more.
One thing and another, it all adds up to the idea that runway clothes can only be fun, like going to Chick Flicks. You go for fun, and you have no expectation that you will advance humanity or your understanding of it a bit. I like to see what can be pulled from the pool of insane creativity and used in a sane wardrobe. But it looks to me as if no one does that any more.
There are a few people who have websites in which they show what they design, adapt and sew to wear. There are others that shoot photos of street style in cities around the world. There are a few who report on wardrobe building, trends, fad avoidance, bargains… and I enjoy all of these ventures. One I love that is rarely updated is written/drawn by a fashionista rabbit who shows herself wearing her choice of runway fashion. I asked for permission to link to her, but didn’t get it, so you’ll just have to hunt if interested.
The real ground floor to this subject, however, is this: if you can’t buy it you can’t have it. That means that it isn’t runway fashion that is ruling us, but prèt a porter fashion. Many of us won’t spend the money for even that, and unless we are very creative we will have to settle for the bits that filter down a year or two later into what the British call high street fashion, or the kind of fashion you find in Main Street shops and department stores.
So I have been pulling together what it takes to see what there is in prèt a porter. By ten last night my eyes were swimming with images of what’s in the boutiques this spring for 2008. I wanted to get up and start cutting and sewing, but then I remembered I am really not very good at that and besides I can’t fit myself, only someone else. Another thing was the awful feeling that I might be a bit too old to get away with it. I need to go somewhere where there a lot of chic ladies of a certain age and see just how straitlaced I must be. I know I can wear big hats and big sunglasses, but it doesn’t seem enough.
The other discouraging thing is what women themselves tell me about what they really wear. There seems to be some idea that comfort can only be achieved in clothes designed for active sport. IT IS NOT TRUE. Comfort can be achieved with clothes that have form, with underwear in full complement, and with shoes that are made of leather and are not padded. Trust me on this.
Still, I hear from women that they “live in” yoga pants, sweats, running suits and balloon shoes. I despair. I despair of a population willing to all look that much alike. I despair of any group of over six people willing to wear baggy and odd-colored sets of things. That’s what basketball players wear, but they get paid a lot to do it. My own daughter tells me that no one wears anything but jeans at her techie workplace. She loves gorgeous clothes, but I know if they don’t go with jeans, she will never wear them, no matter how sincere her passion.
As to sex and romance, well, I won’t go there because I am told I don’t know what modern young men want, and that would be true. If they would tell me, I might believe them, but they always tell me they are looking for the right mind and soul. It was my belief that in “When Harry Met Sally” he ran away frightened after their first romantic interlude, it was not because he felt proprietorship and coupledom so scary, but because she wore those little white socks in bed. That is scary, that she could leap directly to bedsocks in one night. I suspect it would take me a lifetime.
So I am hoping that there are at least some of you who still have your latent princess within and still think that comfort is nice but beauty is equal. As I rip into the marketplace, once a week I will show you a look one can actually buy, now, this year, in 2008.
February 23rd, 2008
I vacated my house two weekends in a row. I become so cooped up through winter and believe me, gray and drippy and cold are not tempting me out, that I start to get tunnel vision. So I’m getting a new look around lately.
This past weekend I went to Civitacastellana. That’s in northern Lazio, somewhere on the shin of the boot, almost at the foot. To get there I drive south to Terni in southern Umbria, then streak off southwest toward Viterbo and eventually south toward Rome. Civitacastellana used to be one day from Rome and so it was a stop off point for travelers north. It perches on a plateau with a rather dramatic gorge that runs through it now, but used to separate it for safety’s sake.
I probably wouldn’t even know it if a friend didn’t live there. Similarly, nearby Otricoli, to which I also went and where another friend now lives.
It’s just different. The terrain, the people, what they eat, the way the light looks, the architecture. It’s all just different. I’m jammed into the Apennines that run along the eastern side of Italy. They’re stuck into the western ones. It’s something like the difference between New Hampshire and West Virginia, only not so far apart.
My refrigerator wasn’t working as I left, so I dragged along a sack of things that wouldn’t be any good if it didn’t switch on while I was away. (It did and I was very happy.) Alison and I decided to make supper of that sack for our friend in Otricoli and her visiting art school student daughter. I played with Alison’s very cute cat. I watched satellite television a bit. I slept late.
The sun shone both days. Sunday we drove to see the house near Otricoli and ended up making lunch together. Alison grilled sausages in the fireplace, Lisa grilled bruschetta in the wood stove and I whipped up some vegetables that were lying around. It was very good and lots of fun to cook so effortlessly with friends, which really doesn’t happen here.
I left a bit early because I am not so crazy about driving after real dark descends. It meant driving through sunset, twilight and evening.
When I turned eastward, all the eastern Apennines were rosy with light coming from the sun sinking into the Mediterranean. Mile after mile the mountains, rocky and gray or whitely snowy, lay bathed in pink and looking like an illustration in a book of fairy tales. I was almost reluctant to turn north toward home, but as I did I saw that the western Apennines were deeply violet from the same sunset and for at least half an hour of the northward travel they slid by on my left like a thousand postcards.
All that pleasure and beauty affected the way I thought over the next couple of days. A bit of change is good for me. There is beauty all over this country if you just open your eyes and go out to meet it. It’s probably true where you are, too.
Cavollini di Bruxelles alla Lisa (Brussels Sprouts for Lisa)
1 Kilo (2.2 pounds) Brussels Sprouts, trimmed and washed
3 tablespoons (cucchiai) good extra virgin olive oil
1 big handful of roughly chopped walnuts
salt to taste
about 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
Heat a large pot of salted water and when it is vigorously boiling, toss in the brussels sprouts and cook briefly to set the color. They should still be crunchy. Drain them.
Heat the oil in a wide frying pan and toast/fry the walnut pieces for a few minutes, then add the drained brussels sprouts and sauté, stirring/tossing to dry them a bit. Some of the outer leaves may brown and that’s OK. Taste for salt and correct it. When ready to serve, add the balsamic vinegar and stir to coat the sprouts and nuts with a glaze then scrape all into a serving dish. Pretty good!
February 20th, 2008
I bought some elegant elongated servers the other day for desserts or antipasto. There were huge stickers on the backs and no matter what I did I couldn’t budge them. It wasn’t as easy as the following says, but by alternating approaches they are about to be usable.
February 13th, 2008
The other day I was discussing the many traditional Carnevale and Lenten sweets that people make around me. I think they are supposed to quit making them once Lent starts, but they don’t. You almost can’t walk into a home this time of year without the perfume of hot oil and sugar winding around you and wrapping you up for the fat farm.
Everybody is making them and posting about them except me. I am cajoled and teased and blackmailed into tasting them constantly and I can’t bear to have them at home as well. I’m asking around for someone who is willing to be followed and photographed so I can publish it for you, but if you look around the blogging world for Cenci, Castagnole, Fiochi, Chiaccherare, and the hundreds of other words used to describe the hundreds of versions up and down the boot, you will definitely find them.
I remembered then that I loved a seasonal sweet traditional to my culture. The mighty Hot Cross Bun! I was immediately told that it is not the season until Good Friday. Uh! Something that good eaten only three days of the year? Not in my world! I decided that if I didn’t put the frosting crosses on until Good Friday I could have them right away and even take them to my hosts this weekend for an easy breakfast.
I looked at loads of recipes on line and in old cookbooks. The cookbook recipes were way too simplified for me. They wouldn’t produce what I remembered from decades ago. Delia of British fame has a good looking recipe, but my scale is broken so I needed a US recipe that doesn’t need weighing.
The recipe I used in the end was from Bella Online where they also have the nursery rhyme and the story behind this old fashioned sweet roll. If you agree that mine are prettier than theirs, it’s because I added an egg yolk wash before raising the formed buns. I think mine are a bit too big, too. I would make 16 of them from this recipe instead of 12.
The above is how they look in the very welcome sunshine that is pouring over my counters today. I have already eaten two and given one to Olga. We are agreed that these are the best we’ve ever had– mind you she’s never had them before.
February 7th, 2008
I was reading style.com, the online part of Vogue, and I read that the absolute best way to get rid of dull, winter skin was to use a supersonic skin brush by Sonicare, the toothbrush makers.
“Hmmm,” said I to me, “I have been wondering what to do with those brushes that just don’t brush teeth very well anymore. They are expensive, hard to get here and they look like they’d be good for something. Maybe this is it?” The something I had thought they might be good for was, I admit, cleaning minerals off metal or polishing silver.
But I figured, having just changed brushes again, why not try it? So I did. I unscrewed the new toothbrush and screwed in the worn and too soft one and used it with mild soap to clean my face.
Let me say here that the brush they sell is round and much wider and must do a better job, but it also costs $199!
I think it works. I think I look brighter and areas that were troubled with one lack-of-sun thing or another are responding. So if you have a Sonicare toothbrush, try it! Do NOT press hard, very lightly is the only way it works supersonically. Don’t mix it up with the one for your teeth because soap tastes bad. It will make your nose tickle almost to an unbearable level.
Read this tip anywhere else!
February 6th, 2008
Yes, I can say that in French, but since I write in English from Italy why bring another language into it?
Two different things have been happening here. I have been moaning in public about the quitting smoking thing, so I will only mention in passing that I was worshiped for that by an old friend this morning, who then began gushing advice which included “Avoid people who smoke and stay home for a while.” This after complaining he hadn’t seen me in over two weeks and while he was smoking a cigarette.
The other thing is accidental and mad. A month ago I would have said my hair was going white all over. We’ve all heard those stories, right? But they can’t be true, because hair that is colored today may fall out and be replaced by white hair, but without chemicals that hair will not turn white itself. Still, probably because my hair is very short and gets cut very often, it seemed almost to go white in the blink of an eye. I’ve had a white streak over my right eye since 23, and I suspected that it had gotten larger than that strip I allowed no one to color ever, but I did not know for sure. I could see that something was changing fast, faster than the four weeks between cuts. So I decided to let it happen and within a month it was over.
And no one can believe it’s my hair. Including me some days. I have a snowy halo around my face and a crown of taupey pink and white mixed. It looks like the most talented colorist has done something rare and expensive. I admit to nothing.
At my age neither of my parents was very gray, let alone white. This is a special treat reserved just for me.
February 1st, 2008
I have this wrap, from some years ago when a client bought it for a gift. Mine is softer velvet, so it is not only easier to wear, but not nearly as pretty, So, then, this is not news.
This, however, is news and is pretty and does represent what Galante did this year.
Fabrics were manipulated, embellished, altered and exaggerated to create something we’ve not quite seen before. Like this:
Or this: 
which may seem bizarre until you think of it as a topper over slim trousers and a tight turtleneck, or over a slim black columnar dress if you’ve a need for that instead. I’d wear it that way, would you?
See the rest of the UK Telegraph coverage.
January 24th, 2008
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