Well, Hello Profundity! Hello Spring! Yo Fertility! Goodbye Ice Cave Winter 2014. You who were blue, fierce, frigid, froze-my-fruits and droned-on way too freaking long.

Like buggy metamorph-ed Gregors, you had us on our backs squirming like useless downed drones.  We all know we have to make peace with what was before release into new pleasures.  Here then, is a last look in gratitude for The Ice Age of 2014 and the bold-faced people, places and things to ponder which made up this transition time to the Spring Beauty now here.

First, some fascinating Make-Nice-With-Ice never before seen shots from a drone movie of Ice Caves, worth seeing if you click here.

and Now, for X-Sakes…Spring! Viola Nine Cures For the Common Cold.

1      HAIL HAIRY.
Between furry hoods on everyone making city streets and Fashion Week streetscapes resemble beastial causeways between watering holes on African plains and hairy relationship drama (everyone you know had it…right?)…

All this extra hair, layers and misunderstandings everywhere became scary. This includes the plethora of forestial hipster beards on men’s faces giving hives just to imagine how itchy they were. Why did just simple acts of kindness, no, rather, acts of life, such as committing to meet a friend in the evening give us grief?  This Superhero grappling with Olde Man Winter was cute at first but with more and more snow grew wearisome and we sunk more into our caves.

For strength in some of those deep dark night dramas with Death Gods, we had to resort to calling on Ancestors and dipping into Ye Olde Mythic Symbolic Ways to make some sense of The Polar Vortex.  As a Euro-rooted, New York Jew, I called out to our desert spirit peoples, they shrugged their caftans in heaven, they were of no help.

And so, we went to The Northern Global Sectors and found Odin, the big Chief God, name related to ōðr, meaning “fury, excitation,” PLUS! “mind, poetry, war, battle, victory and death,” but also 10,000 other dominions such as “wisdom, Shamanism, magic, prophecy and the hunt.”  We Like. Does he die in a flurry of seeds aka go to pieces and his woman have to put him back together in Spring like all the other Psychopomp Pan kind of guys? Yes. We Like. Did he self-sacrifice, discover the symbolic Runes system, gain wisdom and become wise? Yes. We Like. Does he have a big white snowy beard and look like Old Man Winter? Yes. We Like.

Somehow knowing we were just living in a Myth gave hope, gave promise to pulling our God-self together again. Or at least feeling some imaginary sun on our bare arms.

2   WHAT’S UP IN THE HOODS.
Hood. Up. All this Norsian, Wintro-spection had me seeing everyone’s hood and face fur as caves. Our hoods were up this year like never before. Cold that iced our eyes and throbbed our little sprout faces pushing forward towards the gold sun wherever an inch of it shined.

This hooded cheerleader is by my friend, photographer Megan Maloy,who has a wry way of making the mundane mysterious. Now, there is a bit of cheer in that perhaps even ye pointed, arrows of Winter darkness have the seeds of breakthroughs within their genetic structure. We must cheer Spring on with art and groping-in-the-dark and move this grassy ball forward!

Note: to botanists and those wondering about “transition-wardrobes.” Some first flowers of Spring, like us, still wear their hoods too in the March winds and April gusty showers, like the jack-in-the-pulpit flowers out there on woodland paths.

Or sassy Euro gals on the street for Fashion Weeks. This year, Style Hoodlums from WWD’s Paris Fashion Week, the street style photographs of Kuba Dabrowski, were the best we have ever seen for the narrative context.

Do not say you didn’t know this was coming! Georgia O’Keefe‘s jack-in-the-pulpit.

Dealing with Death is often what’s up in the hood in Winter. And no one can talk about fashion, myths, death and rebirth or even the life-giving concept of hope this year without paying homage to the sad passing of L’Wren Scott. Isn’t it true that in our own lives or the very public lives of people, say Mick Jagger and L’Wren Scott…that there are multiple worlds and realities swirling…behind our hoods, faces and images? Archetypal stories told over and over again.

3   TAMING,WAITING, ACCUMULATING, GATHERING.

As usual when finding myself puzzled or stuck on the wheel of life, I turn to the Chinese divination, the I Ching.  Number 26,  “The Great Accumulating, The Great Taming” appeared. Perfection. A hooded little thing!

It represents mountain over heaven, or the Creative (heaven) is being Tamed by Keeping Still (mountain.) The trials of the time were all pushing us to surface how we best turn desire into design from the inside, organizing our environments, giving space for self and each other for healing. No surprise that as things settled I pulled “Peace” the same as I did three years ago, same time of year. The hexagram is related to the coming of Spring. The small departs and the large arises. That things cycle…that’s medicine that really helps!

4   HELLO GIRL-GODS AND HOODLUMS.
The last dregs of dying Wintry Gods usually flirt around with nubile, prancing Spring goddesses who know how to process their applications. Know how to gather their God-like qualities. I found the perfect consort for Odin in Freyja, which you can pronounce “Free’s-ya” and “Freeze Ya” for the purpose of this exercise or depending upon why you beg for her boons. Why should you love her?

• #1  She’s Nordic.
• #2  Has a feathered cloak (that’s both hot and cool)
• #3  Sheds red gold tears when her man (aka the sun, light) goes away
• #4  Rules love, sexuality, beauty, fertility, gold, war and death
• #5  Associated with the Goddess “Frigg” of Germanic origin. You were most likely repeating her name anyway with all this freezing weather. “Frigg! Frigg! It’s ….cold!”
• #6  And here’s Freyja turning into Spring:

In ancient times the winter constellation, known today as Orion, was at that time called “Freya’s Gown” and the sword belt in Orion was called “Freya’s Girdle.” Kinda sexy that kinda talk, Yes? Here’s Frejha dreaming in the photography of Kirsty Mitchell.

From dreaming in the hood of my down comforter, to movies to the street, the image of hooded beauties kept popping up. Why were red and rose lips arising from a dark hooded face so entrancing? Is that a boy or a girl under that hood? Is it that lifeblood is so appealing in the black and white starkness of Winter? Rosy cheeks and lips are signs of emotional life at the edges of cold fronts. Prime example is Audrey Hepburn doing the Wintry self-chastisement thing in the French Alps in Charade.

More Girl-Gods arrived this Spring with Armory Week, one of the first seasonal harbingers in NYC or just more art shows to add to the missed list due to the cold of Frigg. We did venture out once into the wilderness and were happy to meet Hassan Hajjaj, the artist of the Kesh Angels series we’d seen online of Arab girls as fashionable heroines on bikes. We were thrilled to know we shared a common friend. Of course I opened the artist’s book right to the full page picture and quote by our friend Marques Tolliver, a singer we discovered and featured for our show for Sundance Channel around this time of year 2008. Here’s his NPR interview and this magnificent song, Control or here with his violin on Jools Holland. 

The power of hoods has a mixed heritage of violence, freedom and compassion much too convoluted for a blog post. Just to think a little deeper about red hoods alone is charged enough with its sexual references. Loved this woman in Paris for Fashion Week, a modern day Little Red Riding Hood.

5   HEALING FABLES.

Could the hooded maiden be bringing life and spring to the woods, paying homage to her ancestor, Grandmother? A red cloak was the well-known symbol of a prostitute in 17th century France, when the author Charles Perrault wrote his popular version. Could the wolf be all our ravenous passions? The young girl has some appetites of her own, bravely takes a new journey in the dark woods and triumphs beyond her mother’s warnings to not stray from the path. Hoods make the proverbial woods safe.

6   HEALING TURN TABLES.

Another harbinger of Spring, every year at this time to assuage our hunger is Dining by Design for DIFFA, Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS, which engages artists and brands to lay luscious tables out at the Architectural Digest Home Design Show.

Fairy tales and gender benders were a theme at one of my favorite tables by Barney’s based on their Brothers Sisters Sons Daughters  campaign for transgender equality. Featuring a 36-minute film by Bruce Weber on Valentijn de Hingh, the transgender model whom we first met in the documentary film, Valentijin.  I was reminded of the quote “Community is Immunity” by author Christiane Northrop on the power we can build by celebrating the rare and beautiful people around us. The family portraits and video added poignant layers, I loved the video of alternating Kitsch-y images throughout culture and history, this one of a hood….because really, gender itself is that kind of hooded cloak.

The video montage of flashy and eccentric icons throughout history counterbalanced the homey simple table. I love that “Kitsch” met “Kitchen.”

For more on “Kitchenism” where everyone is welcome to the table, I was honored this Winter to work on the exhibition  “Maggie’s Centres; A Blueprint for Cancer Care.” Literally artful oases on the grounds of traditional hospitals, the centers are built by top architects such as Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid and others.  The exhibit is on until April 25 at the New York School of Interior Design.

7    HEALING FIELDS, CAVES AND KITCHENS.

Above is the Maggie’s designed by architect Snohetta in Aberdeen, Scotland, all womb and hood-like. I loved meeting with and getting to know Charles Jencks, the noted landscape designer and co-founder of Maggie’s, named for his wife’s experience with cancer and hospitals, which became the inspiration for the centers.

While Maggie Jencks’ youth was spent in China surrounded by gardens with traditional aspects, such as cosmic windows, which influenced much of her design tenets, the couple’s cellular experience of the disease itself and the Western medical approach naturally became part of Charles’ thinking as a leading architectural theorist. A chat at the exhibit’s  kitchen table set-up, sponsored by Vitra, along with Metropolis magazine, was cozy, warm and revealed Maggie’s and Charles to be  real paradigm shifters!

All this hood pondering this winter included the concept of membranes, the transitions between spaces, that which we build to form the organic webs of our experience. Membranes link between bodies, genders and ideas to transmit and heal. This building above has a structural web that actually heals the surrounding air by removing pollution. Proof again that form, theory and design can intertwine and heal for the betterment of human condition!

Our stories, our own myths, our own dreaming are the weavings that engender epiphanies. Breadcrumbs along the path.

On my path there is a building in my neighborhood which always looks delicious for its difference. In contrast to surrounding buildings, it is set back, very well lit with massive trees in front, usually filled with singing birds. It’s somewhat like a Mid-Century, Euro-apartment complex, like you are in Croatia or Russia in the middle of Manhattan.

One snow storm, the trees wore snowy down coats and in the light …appeared like a golden field of sunflowers, a hood or a cave if you will over the entrance. Everyone stopped and took pictures.

It was an uncanny echo of the mellow yellow drama of I Girasoli, I was watching on Netflix. Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni and I plowed through their epic love story through war, separation, death, endless Russian snow fields and even quirky, totally lovable scenes that really should have been edited out, such as a long segment of Russian families happily moving into a “modern” apartment complex. Said to be required footage in exchange for being the first Western movie filmed in Russia, it’s purely fascinating for its inane madness.  Pre-Tarantino, it’s sometimes surprising that the mundane can be the really rich part of all our stories and dreams.

“A woman born for love. A man born to love her. A timeless moment in a world gone mad.”  (another woman in a hood scarf)

8    GENDER BENDERS AND LOOP GURU’S

Yellow. Hoods. Covered heads. Sacred Stuff. An energy loop of hope and honoring.

It was the flash of a passing woman with a big knot of knit scarf in the front and a high hood, leaning back from the wind, which first impressed upon me this loop of breathing idea to thrive through the cold.  So here’s the girl…or was it a boy?…and…

And here’s the “energy movement/breathing loop” sketch below. All this “head” mental stuff is meant to go into the earth for balance. What can we bury (seeds) to sprout in the upwards movement of Spring.  Am I nuts? Has it been such a long, dark winter and I am losing my mind? Or am I a guru?

Don’t answer that if you are still reading.

Speaking of being loopy, this tunneled, hooded cave table was among those at Architectural Digest‘s Home Show DIFFA exhibit that symbolically lured us into community, focusing beyond AIDS into the realm of humanity that erasing differences can gift us.

This ship/rib/rope-a-dope table is by the students at FIT, The Fashion Institute of Technology.

And as for earthy gurus, this geode below…while I didn’t see it at the show, in a quick dash from Veronika Miller of Modenus’ Morning Mimosa party for her BlogTour at the show, where I ran into design guru friends such as Tamara Stephenson of Nest, Nest, Nest; Sara Sarna of Live The Life You Dream About; William Weathersby; Saxon Henry; Robert Verdi; Cynthia Allen and many others…

I saw something new: ceramics. Cool ceramic stools in bright colors. And thus, this piece is so expressive of the un-freeze and earthy ceramics having a transcendental moment.

By artist Brett Freund, it can be found on artist, new friend, Cara Ober’s blog on the art scene in Baltimore. (More on Baltimore, below.) Another chalky, bright melt the ice winter space into clay earthy at DIFFA was this table by Gensler & Herman Miller. With lights that changed the colors of the wallpaper illustrated with layered couples “beyond age, gender and race,” this loop did indeed feed the soul.

Manpals. Mandates. Mandals. More “girl-ing” of men is coming our way and patterning after nature’s colorful males can only be a good thing. Feminine prints, colors and styles were seen all over on menswear runways this year like never before. Like dandy fern loops unfurling.

Dandy is unfurling from it’s foppery roots and somehow it all looked so powerful! Perhaps a better future than artist Nick Cave‘s silver, cave-headed men in hoodies and suits, seen during The Armory Show.

Like suited submarine periscopes popping up from the deep sea.

Peeking periscope cameras and popping up Paparazzi are like the hunter/gatherers of culture.  I loved this image above from the recent Paris shows where a simple suited androgynous model was so fascinating to paparazzi.

Speaking of street style, we had a New York Moment, when blessed this month to work with the legendary street snapper guru of the New York Times, Bill Cunningham arrived on his bike, clutching the printed invite to our Spring Gala for The New York School of Interior Design. By the way, this post’s opening image, me as an Avenue magazine cover girl in a “Think Pink Spring” profundity outfit, this was my gala attire.

Here is Bill’s coverage of the gala.

Wouldn’t it be cool to know a little more about the stylish whose images are snapped on the streets of the world? A guru quote or a quip like Twitter, say five words? I’m captioning the world as I look at from my hood, aren’t you?

Cara Ober‘s art below made me think of that, a mix of Barbara Kruger-like quips with imagery rendering both together a little perception changer. Cara is based in Baltimore, a city about to have it’s next level revival with the arrival of the art-collecting, hotel birthing family, The Rubells.

Making new art history through space and community is the fifteen-year design collaboration of our client, interior designer, Scott Sanders and the venerable art collector/museum maker/hotelier Mera Rubell, in the making of multiple hotels and homes. Their latest gem is the restoration of the 1928 National Historic Register landmark, the Lord Baltimore Hotel. A vital part of the city’s shared celebratory history, yet falling into corporate hotel chain ownership and then abandonment, Mera and Scott triumphed in their re-make.

The Lord’s ribbon cutting included the amazing Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and 500 passionate Baltimoreans. Sanders, who created the Ralph Lauren interior design department, is noted for his New American Style, mixing classics and the unexpected that is playful and sophisticated. Talk about warming up the old house!

Happily we placed stories of the Lord Baltimore’s new clothes in the The New York Times and Departures magazine.

We knew snows were melting and longer days of Spring were here when our calendar noted side-by-side majors, such as  Tuesday: “overnight travel to Baltimore for 5am ribbon-cutting”  and  then on Wednesday: “produce performance in Bryant Park, NYC.”

 9    HARK THE HORSES HERALDING SPRING.

Our Slow Luxury client, designer Iona Crawford‘s launch of her Beauty and The Beasts collection in Bryant Park was next up…and an ethereal cavorting of Spring damsels in the just-awakening urban park was oh so necessary! Iona’s frocks are made of painterly silks, cashmeres and fabrics like the spectacular Madras lace below. The raised, moss-like, black velvety pattern on a sheer, linen-like cotton is at once couture and earthy. Iona’s capsule collection was inspired by the Kelpies, the massive, silver horse sculptures of Andy Scott, whose inspiration came from the urban workhorses in Scotland, tapping into the Kelpie’s story of transformation. (more on this in a bit;-) 

We did wonder about all the horse symbolism this year popping up. From the Chinese Year of the Horse to Game of Thrones, horsey-love is everywhere. Below is the David Humphrey painting entitled just that, which client, Scott Sanders, installed in the bedroom at Residence 620 for NYC’s Printing House loft…pretty perfect for cleaning up Winter…

The Celts associated the horse with war and the sun, the Romans with fertility and changing of seasons and many cultures equate horses with the life force. You can just hear the thunder of thousands of hooves from any war movie, ploughing the earth so life can spring up. (or the roar of a vacuum in Spring cleaning!)

White horses take us from snowy to virginal freshness. A White Horse everywhere symbolizes light, sun, day, vitality, illumination, resurrection and is seen as a messenger of birth. Bianca Jagger’s famed 1977 entry to her Studio 54 birthday party, red dress and naked escorts captured this, yes?

As my own birthday is around Easter time, it seems I cannot escape the seasonal return of horses in my life!  Back in 1990, twenty-four years ago, several pieces of jewelry we designed styled Helena Christensen and were photographed by Peter Lindbergh for Vogue UK.

Harking back to Helena above, on desert or salt lake, too much white snow, sand or mental anguishing can make us feel like Barbarella landed who knows where. Taking time to process and get in the groove of the season is oh, so necessary to Fight the Common Cold. The long jewelry chain, seen on Helena above, was looped bubbles of metal with pearls and it was named Cosmosis, for an osmosis of the cosmos. Another good breathing loop exercise, that. Sure to melt some icy membranes.

This year’s horsey-love came in the form of Iona Crawford’s Beauty and The Beast Collection. Here are the epic 100-foot high sculptures of the Kelpies recently erected in Scotland by her friend, Andy Scott.

Fifteen foot maquettes of The Kelpies have been traveling the world and came to Bryant Park this Spring heralding Scotland Week. Celebrating the power and history of sturdy workhorses and the theme of transformation felt spot on.

Iona’s launch happening in Bryant Park was part of a collaboration with Slow Luxury’s first Co*Lab, an online pop-up shop featuring select goodies from Iona’s collection. From intriguing stories on the artists, filmmakers, musicians and fabrics that are part of this project priced at $0, goods include those slightly more costly such as natty silk pocket squares, silk shift dresses and yes, T-shirts. There’s a little something for workhorses, transformatists or art-collecting estate owners. Click here to peruse and buy!

Back in the Park, performers in Iona Crawford silks gifted audience members with silk pocket squares filled with poetry and chocolates from The Highland Chocolatier along with the secret hash tag #KelpiesBeauty. Hannah Read and band played the song from Iona’s video.

Here are the little silk Love Notes packages looking for all the world like blossoms or butterflies. I rather love these kind of sweet, arcane acts of the seasons, I think we need them.

As I completed this post, the first April full moon appeared, the first of 4 “red moons” being called blood moons. I couldn’t help but think of this as a red hood uncovering, connecting us here clinging to this rock we call Earth, bringing a bit of heavenly love on home…to whatever stories we gave this time.

“Blood” or “Red” Moon comes from the Native Americans’ name for April’s moon, “Pink Moon” in turn inspired by the appearance of blooming moss pink or wild ground phlox, seen above, one of the first spring flowers.  April’s moon is also known as the Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and the Fish Moon. I’ll add Horse Moon, Sprouting Rabbit Moon to the list.

Meeting the rising up is perhaps meeting the moon as a drop of a bud, a pink softness, a hint from the soup of sky in which we are tiny, curiously hooded cosmonauts swimming.

Happy Spring, Y’all. See you in the Hood. Somewhere under the Moon.