Dear Summer, You far-flung this dreamer from the familial white sands on a beach where I took my first steps as a toddler, to awe under a vast starry sky in a shared hammock in the city and to primal earthiness before bonfires in the country. In the span from summer’s wettest fruits to fall’s gleaming berries…my travels this past season have been way deeper and quenched my thirst for very “afar.”
The truth is, that my personal Sex & The City story this summer was mostly about this New York City girl’s ecstatic, private rituals in my new art studio. You’ll have to believe me it was much more Emily-Dickinson ecstasy affirming than Carrie’s global romps. From the closest points to further afield, and always communing with the power and beauty what nature is saying,…my work, my vision and my loves took me THERE these past Spring into Summer months.
Moral? All directions point to the deepest “afar” inside.
They say the word NEWS is a shortened version of N-orth. E-ast. W-est and S-outh. While traveling afar is a sign of sophistication, we are just a hair-more evolved as a species for all our globe-trotting and connectivity. I believe our next frontier is to travel deeper within our own being, (meditate, people!) our own skin, (enjoy the flesh!) and our own home (groove with the earth!) This really where “IT’s” at. When I thought about it, my travels/thoughts expanded like tree rings or waves outward. Here’s how staying mostly in one place this season, actually led me around the world in 90 days. Come with.
Points NORTH
CARNEGIE HILL, WELL, HELLO!
Like the instant smile with the first step into the hot buzzing air on finally arriving at one’s first summer vacation spot, when I walk a few blocks north and west to Manhattan’s Carnegie Hill neighborhood, my vibration aligns immediately. The landmark buildings are old New York, the landscaping rips off couture runway color combos and the shops and restaurants are fine, fine,fine. Named for the Carnegie Mansion that now houses the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, the neighborhood mixes Spanish Harlem and Upper East Side folks and everyday life in a confluence of color, time, and design that to me is SO NY. Just a peek at the gardens will give you a taste of the visual pleasures singing here.
Moral? With this much plushness like this just around the corner…who needs a plane ticket?
CLOISTERS, COURTS, HAREMS AND SACRED SPACES.
A little further north is a branch of the Metropolitan Museum devoted to Medieval art, called The Cloisters. We called car service and packed four pals in for the trek, Sandra Zwollo of Marrakech’s Harem Resort, Maria McElroy of AromaM perfumes, Shelley Lewis of Sacred Space NY, and little medieval me. What I loved most about The Cloisters are it’s two square inner courtyards, both magical, sacred spaces, one filled with flowers and fountain and the other, medicinal and culinary herbs, and even espaliered pear trees.
Captivated I was by the Lady’s Mantle, not only the plant which channels water distinctly to its Lady Parts, but also the very idea of Ladylike enclosures existing in all of Time. I thought about Marrakech’s riads with center courtyards, Sandra’s Harem retreats for women, I thought of Shelley’s new sacred space meditation pod on 57th Street, between Chanel and Prada (those ladies!) and I thought of my own new studio as such a sacred space.
How much do we desire and require these actual, living, breathing, pollinating, herbal oases in all our LIVES?
We ascend to the inner realms.
Maria consults her honing device.
The unicorn rests in its pen. This tapestry is actually there at The Cloisters.
Here we have the Lady and legendary creatures in more enclosed lush garden spaces. Throughout history, mythical creatures were known for guarding priceless treasures, such as griffins, while unicorns symbolizing purity and grace, also show up as treasures. These cloistered spaces is where the world puts beautiful things it wants to control, including maidens, fertility and money. Monks, nuns, herbal apothecaries, alchemy, and the womanly arts – all sequestered away.
Moral? How has this guarded, inner Garden of Eden cultural concept formed our own ideas of where preciousness in ourselves exists and how to access it?
Sandra and Maria ponder preciousness in the walled garden…and further north, next:
BEYOND THIS WORLD! BEYOND GRISWOLD!
Got a surprise on my visit this summer to the Dressler Family picnic. On the very White Sands Beach in Old Lyme Connecticut, where the Dresslers have lived and where I’ve padded about in toddler days, it took my photographer cousin to point to the other side of the hedge where a vast Nature Conservancy Preserve stretched beyond. Griswold Point…there all the while…and I never knew it! On top of it all, my bird-nerd self was over the moon to realize that Roger Tory Peterson (The Grand Bird Nerd who invented the Peterson’s Guide books on birds)…well, Roger’s actual house is there!
For me this was akin to living next door to Kimye all your life and not even knowing it! 
I’ve loved birdwatching for forever and in fact, it’s actually a growing “sport.” Even tony Departures magazine’s summer issue had birder and esteemed writer, James Wolcott, pen an article on what pulls he and his wife back to a certain bird trail every vacation for an “initiation into a contemplative order.”
Moral? Whole universes travel beside you in ways you never can guess. Always peek behind the nearest hedges! And further too…come, leap over the ocean…
NORDIC TREKKIES, BLANKIES AND FANTASTICAL BEINGS.
Here’s the real Emily Dickenson-ish part. Back home, weekend after weekend in my new studio. First, I painted my studio walls white. Like a vast Antartica. Then I took at blue crayon and spread my arms wide to draw big arcs rolling upon each other, making clouds to hold my visions. I wanted to organize, to cluster into cloud nest eggs, each creative urge. Like playpens, my clouds would each nest a creative idea. I function best as a maestro stirring multiple pots. (clouds) (nests)
That mythic cloud of a blanket above is a catalogue cover of textile illustrator Klaus Haapenemi‘s home goods. Klaus has been discovered by Europe and Japan for a long while, and it took my creative friend, John Favreau on his business trip to Finland to bring Klaus on home to the best stores in the US. It also took a Nanook of the North type of exploration, a head-to-toe fur outfitting for a dog sled trek across the frozen steppes (I don’t know if that’s the term, but it sounds good.)
Moral? Snow drifts, blankets, and clouds are good cloisters for holding fantastical dreams.
Heads up. This may be the oddest segue ever…but blankets and wool beasties in the summer could only mean the annual trek to the Goshen Country Fair, with John via his white Mercedes convertible (cloud/clouds) to see all the animal creatures, cowboy folks, cock and hen judging, country rap music line dances, horse pulling and my favorite, alpacas.
Don’t they look really mythical?
What’s the segue? A little eastward now and a fantastical leap from three alpacas to three design-lovers at a NYC gala…
Points EAST
GALAS, MORE GRIFFINS, GRACIE MANSION and NESTING IN BROOKLYN.
Back in spring, my work with the New York School of Interior Design had me working the room for the Spring gala (see here for the before picture.) Party-dandy photographer, Rio Hamilton snapped me with Elaine Griffin, author and cast member of NBC’s newest primetime design reality show, American Dream Builders, hosted by Nate Berkus, and herewith, our man-in-the-middle, Newell Turner, editor-in-chief at Hearst design mags. While Rio’s angle, my vast circle skirt (see the before picture linked above, there are spring bunnies and flowers inside that skirt) and my mini Cinderella feet do make me look tiny next to these two BIG LION personalities, remember that good things come in small packages multiplied. (precious) (nests)
So then, were we surprised when we pitched our interior design client Scott Sanders for Elle Decor‘s Truth in Decorating and editor Orli Ben-Dor paired Scott with Elaine for a story on wee little nesting tables? No, it was the Griffin at work again. The photo shoot itself was like a game show, Orly orchestrated about 10 pairs of nesting tables in a Brooklyn studio, due West where Scott and Elaine poked, prodded and perused the lot of them. What a lesson in space-saving, multi-use and how two designers can riff off each other and have a wonderful time.
Just around the corner from my own home, new nesters appeared this summer, the crowned NYC mayor Bill and his deBlasio family clan now living in the mayor’s manse, Gracie Mansion. Along with them, astonishingly, came packs of teenage paparazzi, peering and camped outside the gates, hoping for a sight of the now-famous family. While much more concerned with the impact of the West Elm furniture the family ordered, invading Jamie Drake’s brilliance, I too found myself craning neck for a spy of the Mayoral son’s famed ‘fro.
Moral? Grand entrances and making nests are smart ideas for people, places and things.
OH MY, HMI! HAMPTONS’ HELPING HANDS.
Making a Grand Entrance is key. Winding a driveway about 3 times the size you see pictured here, surrounded by elephantine hydrangeas in full bloom, well I profess, this is the grandest Hamptons entry to a home I’ve ever seen! In June, Scott Sanders and his partner Peter Wilson hosted their 11th and final benefit for the Hentrick-Martins Institute (HMI) this summer, called Schools Out.
HMI is the nation’s oldest and largest LGBTQ youth service organization. The generous and lively crowd helped raise funds for HMI programs and services to help youths reach their full potential through community and support. Fleets of Mini Coopers brought people to the winding driveway to explore the home’s grounds, pool and spacious places to frolic. Talk about giving sacred space to creativity.
Fleets of Stars supporting included Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live host and honorary chair, Andy Cohen; the Oscar PR girl; Andrew Nodell of Life And Style Weekly, (voted ‘most-elusive-editor-EVER-especially-in-a-sea-of-similarly-attired-men,’ by moi and my colleague, publicist Lalitha Sarma); and (voted ‘most-be-still-my-beating-heart,’) Kelly Rutherford of Gossip Girl. The event was as co-chaired by HMI board member & donor and advertising director of InStyle magazine Bobby Graham, HMI donor Brendan Monaghan, HMI board member and donor, Executive Vice President and Chief Retail Creative Officer for Ralph Lauren, Alfredo Paredes, and Creative Director at Momentum Worldwide, Ward Williams.
Also among the throngs were Dr. Christopher Bartley, DJ Jonjon Battles (aka Unicorn,) Katie Lee, Joey Gonzalez and HMI Chief Operating Officer Darra Gordon. Here’s a link for a well-done video by Daniel Garofali for Huff Post‘s Gay Voices, Avenue, Hamptons, magazines and curbed.com also chronicled.
The Peter Wilson, Andy Cohen and Scott Sanders. Images by the swell Billy Farrell, himself.
The Jade Dressler, Bailey the Dog, Scott Sanders, philanthropist and interior designer. Also supporting the event was Berlin’s uber-chic sunglass company, IC Berlin. I was tickled and inspired with their specs and their catalog. The videos are beyond and a Super example of why ART sells brands, heals, humors and connects. Here’s a link to one, a kind of pre-Chanel Supermarket runway show.
Photographed in the moment by Esra Rotthoff, with no specific plan, the ad campaign photo shoot began as a twilight rooftop dinner with amazing people and friends and “it happened, just spontaneously.”
Moral? On summers (and spontaneous fun) like this one, Elle‘s Editor in Chief, Michael Boodro said it best, “…if sunny days and soft, lingering twilights seem more rare than ever, then we need to treasure them all the more when they do come along.”
MAKING OUT IN AUSTRIA, BELGIUM, GERMANY, LUXEMBOURG, SWITZERLAND, SPAIN.
From being deliciously hooked on 40! fluffy, funny and intriguing episodes of Gran Hotel, Spain’s “Downton-Abbey-on-Crack” telenovela (Vamos!) to watching David LaChappelle‘s Youtube 4-score and seven years ago speech for his spectacular Once in The Garden exhibition opening in Vienna (My ancestral home!) during the “magical” Life Ball…all of Europe’s best flickered blue in the after-hours for me this summer. Watch David LaChapelle’s talk on his exhibition here: an exploration which led us deeper. Beyond excited that this image was all over Viennese bus stops:
To top it all off, more flickering blue TV…my August was all about co-producing six episodes for Berlin-based CNN-affiliate network, n-tv‘s show Premiere Lounge, which will film in September starring our client and friend, dance-pop Billboard artist, Consuelo Vanderbilt Costin as she explores global luxury in NYC. The program will air in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg and Switzerland. Stay tuned for more on this one!
Moral? Further “afield” into this concept of Garden of Eden will always take us deeper and closer to its personal archetypical meaning.
MAIDS IN MARRAKECH MEET GEISHA GIRLS.
Marrakech met Geisha this summer. Sandra Zwollo, the creator of Harem-Escape, an all women’s retreat in Marrakech on a vast estate belonging to sculptor, Jean-François Fourtou, and I have been conversing and deeply connecting for over a year now. The latest aspect of our ongoing conversations is the planned sharing of this universal concept through our Slow Luxury e-commerce platform. (OMG! Even Net-a-Porter is on to Harem!) We are hot on re-Vamping this ancient idea of what it means to be an alluring, powerful group of women, t’is a growing phenom.
Therefore it was amazing to introduce our friend, indie-perfumer Maria McElroy of Aromam to Sandra. I’ve been so taken with Maria’s deep passion and wealth of knowledge and inspiration from geishas to Japanese ceremony, I had no doubts there would be instant communion with Sandra. When they discovered that over 15 years earlier Sandra hosted Maria’s brother for dinner one night when he traveled there, this just another amazing moment of synchronicity.
Moral? Rituals. Offerings. Veneration are Timeless. When one thinks about this approach, any given, SIMPLE moment can be seen in that way.
In fact, a SIMPLE summer plate of the juiciest fruits and berries reminded me of my meeting this summer with Diane von Furstenberg and her favorite hot pink color. “Pink” is second-in-line famous after “black” for quotables from the fashion world. Think of the span from Diana Vreeland to Victoria Secret for starters. Add to this is Diane’s smart update on “The pink formerly known as Schiaparelli pink,” now, as Diane re-names it,”I call it Berry.” (hmm, for hubby Barry Diller perhaps?)
Points WEST
That says scribble says: “To Jade.”
“Jade is the name of my god-daughter,” La DVF told me while signing my book and beaming her green eyes into mine. I almost fainted.
That is she, The Goddess, waving to us.
THE DROOL + DESIRE BUILDING: AKA THE D+D BUILDING.
Although I’ve seen her runway shows and admired her brand, before she signed my book, I had not ever wrapped with Diane von Furstenburg. However this summer, her launch of home furnishings fabrics with Kravet was a must. Getting to know the Kravets has been thoroughly delightful. They are a fourth generation, (93-years-old!) family-owned business selling fabrics to the trade in the D+D building. (One building with oodles of Design + Decor to drool over)
Very notably, Diane said she valued the very long time it took to develop her collection with Kravet, and in hindsight this was valuable “time to develop a valued relationship” with the family and the company. Important point. Diane is seen here with David Sprouls, president of the New York School of Interior Design (NYSID) and Ellen Kravet, executive vice president and co-owner of Kravet Inc., and a board member of the college.
This summer has been a bittersweet berry as I “wrap up” my sojourn working with David and NYSID, who is most inspiring as a leader, and the many other excellent and dedicated people aligned with the college. With its own 100-anniversary approaching in 2016, I saw how the history and the future of the field of interior design are vitally nourished there, from the library’s precious archives to the new certificate programs online, and to the sustainable design courses. Impressive.
Moral? The fruits of long labor eventually and always bear fruit.
And, just a little more West, one may find some actual sacred space between thoughts, between berries and cantaloups, between designers Chanel and Prada…on 57th street.
SACRED SPACE IN NYC? SACRED SPACE IN NYC.
While Elsa Schiaparelli met Miuccia Prada in a fantasy conversation at the Met’s Costume Institute exhibition several years ago, I often wondered what a conversation between the spiritual, steadfastly independent Coco Chanel and the art collector, architecture-lover, gallerist and designer Ms. Prada might engender. They might have birthed a cultural seed pod of sorts between them.
Wonder of wonders! There is now actually just such a seed pod, an amazing Point of Light, exactly meditating between Prada and Chanel on NYC’s posh 57th Street. Yes, Virginia, there is Sacred Space in New York City.
Brainchild of spiritual entrepreneur, Shelley Lewis, (above) a pristine, carefully lit and scented oblong POD sits like a Buddha. Once inside the “berry” Schiaparelli pink and hot orange of Yelo spa, one must be in the know to ask to visit the pure white of Sacred Space NY, tucked just inside.
Sacred Space NY is a lifestyle brand helping clients find their inner calm. Promoting health, healing and beauty from within. This is so true to our concept of Slow Luxury, a brand focused on the experience.
The Healing Pod is quiet, soothing. This is a respite of peace offering “the ultimate in luxe healing with one-on-one personalized meditation, yoga and massage sessions,” (which means the best practitioners and healers are aligned and available for appointments.) It’s clear our urban spaces now must be integrated with refuge from the constant influx of noise on the senses with oases like this.
Moral? It’s another kind of “Nature Conservancy” to un-digitalize and go completely wireless for more than five minutes.
Another “sacred space” in NYC is a Cave of Fromage…
THE SACRED ARTISANAL WORSHIP OF CHEESE.
I love me a good, simple French bistro. Give me a dark bar, high banquets, white cloths, classic French fare plus a Sacred Cheese cave housing over 100 cheeses to be paired with wine and freshly baked bread? Enthralled.
When Artisanal Bistro first opened in the early 2000’s, I remember going with my lawyer and feeling like I was dining in a library devoted to the sacred arts of French food. It felt unlike any other restaurant in NYC. Smart. Authoritative. Familiar. Sexy.
One day this August, one hand was writing an email to Adam Tihany, the famed hospitality designer, and my other hand was holding my mobile, suddenly buzzing with a friend texting me to inquire if I knew anyone who did restaurant publicity, and by the way it was for Artisanal, which was Adam Tihany’s first project. That, that’s what we call synchronicity.
Meetings with the award-winning chef, Terrance McKenna, the new owners, cheese experts and staff followed, so watch for more about New York’s first temple to artisanal food. Better yet, make a reservation!
Moral? Eat well and walk it off, heading more West. High Line anyone?
JUST A LIL CHELSEA PENTHOUSE.
My sister used to think Miami Beach was “My Ami Beach” and that everyone had one. It was sad when we had to tell her there was only one and it was a shared thing.
Not the Everyday to have a personal penthouse. On my first visit to my client Scott Sanders’ “personal penthouse” I literally bumped into David Byrne getting out of the elevator. He must have one too.
NY Cottages & Gardens magazine got one too as they did a spread on Scott Sanders “personal penthouse” for their September issue. Editor, Kendell Cronstrom‘s choice peeks at astonishments include views of the High Line and gems such as this Hans Vollmer chair re-finished in a soft baby blue leather. Everyone has a “My Vollmer Chair” too, right?
Moral: Good lines in a good cloth doth make style.
Points SOUTH
GOT A HAPPY GUT?
Go south young man. Buddha found enlightenment by contemplating his navel. We looked southward and marveled not just at our own navel, but also the new downtown offices at Harper Collins when we accompanied our client, Dr. Vincent Pedre to meet with the inspiring Lisa Sharkey and the smart marketing team for “Happy Gut,” his book, launching spring 2015.
While the lobby was impressive, the glass walled HC offices were ringed around an open area with cozy couch oases and a kitchen, places where creative conversations and “working together” presented an antidote to partitions. With stylish Conde Nast also relocating downtown, be prepared for designers mad-rushing southern spots with more ground-breaking ways to interpret working creatively.
For More Southern Glittering Palaces, here’s the Lord Baltimore Hotel we placed on the cover story of Interiors & Sources magazine, with editor Erika Templeton for Scott Sanders and his client, owner and art world notable, Mera Rubell. And the new book on the project, just south, here, is now out from Pointed Leaf Press.
And here is the precious glittering cover featuring the original Baccarat chandelier on the coffered ceiling.
Moral 1? Ain’t nothing like a gold coffered ceiling to make us FEEL sacred space above, in our breath, and solid in the ground beneath our feet.
Moral 2? A sun-kissed playground also has the same effect.
THE SUN ALWAYS RISES WHERE YOU ARE.
A solar-radiant project came our way this summer from long-time client, Tracy Stern and her new T & Co.ice tea collection. We produced a slide show video with music to give the tale of three cities which inspired the Tea-Mistress: New York, Paris and Palm Beach. How much fun to illustrate in short “movie” form how I feel about these spots? Here is the Tracy Stern T & Co. Ice Tea Video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOso4bQpjGM
In case you can’t get to NY, Paris or Palm Beach, absorbing a piece of sun glint anywhere is a primal lure, giving Vitamin D, vital energy and probably much more than we can ever guess. I once read the line, ” You cannot imagine the energy and forces behind the sun.” A bit New-Agey, but damn, how intriguing!
This picture below is the sunset doing a Stonehenge thing, peeking through the trees and the lush purple Joe Pye weed. Joe Pye gets its name from the Indian name for it “Jopi.”
Medicinal, yes. Ice tea, no. For ice tea, get thee to the Sumacs.
Contemplating navels and points further south led to this drama…
THE AUSTRALIA ALSO SLOWLY RISES.
Got an “out-of-the-blue” call from the land down-under this summer. An editor there asked a writer to research our consultancy business, Slow Luxury, and its impact on the luxury industry for an article in Luxury magazine – a quarterly publication inserted into The Australian Financial Review newspaper. The article entitled, “Patient and Particular in Provenance,” ran September 12 and its quite insightful, click here to read it.
In describing Slow Luxury, I was quoted, “It’s really about all the things that Slow Food is similarly about – taking care of community, making sure people’s families are taken care of, so that it’s a 360-degree consideration in making a product.” My Slow Luxury partner, Fiona Fraser and I are so thrilled to add to the global conversation to shift how humans create their world. Especially originating in the Land of Dreamtime. Such a coffered ceiling.
Dreamtime Sisters by Colleen Wallace Nungari
In terms of sacred shared space, like planets, Dreamtime or even summers, our consciousness is slowly rising to understand and embody that deeper, expanded Place. Such a rock.
(Yes, in homage to Ayer’s Rock, actually Sade’s Lover’s Rock is playing so synchronistically right now!)
“You are in the wilderness, I am in the music.”
And, segue, is everyone noticing how instant synchronicities are everywhere these days? A song, a person, a scene in a movie…it happens instantly. Are we slowing down to observe more or is the universe just speeding up?
Wait! That’s a moral. We are slowing down and the universe is speeding up.
Speaking of Slow Luxury, the location of an episode we produced and styled this September for n-tv’s Premiere Lounge, was the exquisite furnishings showroom, Demiurge New York, which added the next layer to this whole “Artisanal” or “Maker’s Movement” happening globally. My urge to go deeper with the word “demiurge” led to Wikipedia. It’s an English word from a Latinized form of the Greek δημιουργός, dēmiourgos, literally “public worker,”originally a common noun meaning “craftsman” or “artisan”, gradually it came to mean “producer” and eventually “creator.” I simply love this word to describe all my indescribable urges!
See below here this magnificent image of Demiurge New York’s creator, owner, designer Rachel Schorr and her very fluffy, beautiful Pomeranian who is always by her side. This is a segue, now, so pay attention.
My all time favorite movie about a land “down under” is The Gods Must Be Crazy, where a coke bottle falls unbroken from an airplane unto the desert where it changes a tribe’s life. I was sitting with Rachel at her desk, doggie sleeping “down under,” when the brush I was holding fell clattering to the ground. The sleeping peacefully Pom-dog leaped straight up into the air, fur flying, and made a mad dash for my hand, while 3 workers ran in saying,” Oh! he hates when things drop! Especially in the afternoon!”
All was fine, no bites, dog pacified, movie recalled, synchronicity again.
Moral? UFO’s, ideas, and things clattering from “beyond” wake us up.
The n-tv Premiere Lounge segment we were filming illustrates a “fantastic chair” designed by Rachel which lives a double life, in the summer, it’s woven jute seat is sturdy and cool and for the winter, custom fur covers completely change the look. This is very Slow Luxury, double duty extends the life of the chair, while being original with seeds to becoming a family heirloom.
For more fur and feathers flying, keep moving, move more and head even more south! This fancy dancer is all a flutter to some Brazilian salsa tunes…
DRINKING FROM THE WORLD CUP OF BRAZIL.
A summer neighborhood Connecticut party with a Brazilian band and dancer is just what any Northerner needs to liven up the scene. Bringing the South to Northerners is instructive. Yes, this is in a parking lot and the party is to raise funds for a local arts group. Summer is for line dances with Bluebloods led by a bird with Blue feathers.
We actually brought Brazil’s hemisphere home when we won a Merit Award in the Codaworx Awards, an international competition for design projects that demonstrate the most successful integration of commissioned art into an interior or architectural space. Our Green Provocateur blog linked here tells the whole story.
Awarded during the World Cup 2014, the green and art worlds had their own finalist in Brazil with our team’s first goal as a Top 100 Finalist and then as a Merit Award in the Landscape category in the CODAAwards. The awards, presented by a jury of art and design notables, “honor the individuals and the teams whose collective imaginations create the public and private spaces that inspire…”
We introduced Manu Rengade, the owner of Fazenda Catucaba resort, a 450-hectare coffee farm in a coastal mountain range, bordering a Unesco natural reserve to artist Pasha Radetski, who did a residency on the land and built “Portal do Sul,” an installation of 10 gates aka “goalposts” for the sun. Portal do Sul’s recognition in the CODAawards finalist selection was covered in an article by the international trend platform, PSFK.com. The project has also appeared in Vogue, Architectural Digest, Madame Figaro, Forbes, Departures magazines and many more.
Moral? The sun is also rising on landscape art everywhere. Along with land preservation, thankfully, land veneration is on the rise.
WHERE THE BON POINT IS.
As fall’s breezes wind through Manhattan, to bring this Around The World in 90 days on home, we loved the back to school window of the “always wonderful” Carnegie Hill Bonpoint shop, the French children’s clothing store. (yes, note the dogs and falling items theme here too.)
And below, a recently resurfaced photo of my sister and I modeling for our family’s children’s wear shop, named in very 1970’s hip vernacular, “The Youth Center.” (yes, note navel-gazing reference) (bon point)
As I wrote on Facebook: “Egads, it’s true I was caught modeling in a poly-leisure suit in 1972 pre- Labor Day weekend. #ThrowbackThursday to when my sister and I were free models for our family’s clothing store. I think I look like a 30-year old swinging bachelor, not sure that was the intent of the art-director (my father, proprietor) #WhyImadefashionmycareer”
That’s 360 degrees people! I leave you with Humans of New York site in which one human photographs random beautiful humans and experiences on the streets of New York City. Truly this will inspire any of us to see the magical in every moment. (moment) (photo) (circle) (cloud) (breath) (cloister) (studio) (Netflix screen) (soul) (cell) (planet) (universe) (ok, I’m done with my Henry Miller riffing…)
ISN’T IT MARVELOUS? RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE? SAY YES.
Lived, written by and most photos by Jade Dressler, happy to credit those photos filched online.
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One Moment Please
Turn, turn, turn. Fall is here and we are almost…here. News on new projects, epiphanies, causes, rulers, hungers, travels and superstars coming soon, soon,soon.
Must…shake…sand…out…of…shoes…first.
illustration by Jade Dressler
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Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed
Tags: Fall 2014, jade dressler
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.
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Filed under: ART, FASHION, NEW YORK, STYLE | 1 Comment
Tags: #KelpiesBeauty, 26, Andy Scott, Audrey Hepburn, Barney's Valentijin de Hingh, Bianca Jagger, Bill Cunningham, Brett Freund, Brothers Sisters Sons Daughters, bruce weber, Cara Ober, Charles Perrault, Christiane Northrup, Co*lab, cosmosis, Cynthia Allen, David Humphrey, DIFFA, Dining by Design, Freyja, Freyja's gown, gala, Gensler & Herman, Georgia O'Keefe, Hassan Hajjaj, Helena Christensen, hood, horse, I Ching, I Girasoli, Iona Crawford, jack-in-the-pulpits, jade dressler, Jools Holland, Kelpies, Kirsty Mitchell, Kuba Dabrowski, L'Wren Scott, little red riding hood, Lord Baltimore Hotel, Marques Tolliver, Megan Maloy, Mera Rubell, Mick Jagger, Modenus, Nick Caves, NPR, NYSID, odin, old man winter, peter lindbergh, Polar Vortex, pyschopomp pan, robert verdi, runes, Sara Sarna, Saxon Henry, Scott Sanders, Slow Luxury, Sundance Channel, Tamara Stephenson, Veronika Miller, Vogue, white horse, William Wethersby, Winter 2014, year of the horse
Cold. (ouch) Nose to Grindstone. (ouch) +
#thisparty #thatparty #thislaunch #thatexhibition #thisgala #thatmediacampaign =
This Mama is tired of That Winter. This Kitten Wants to Dance.
Relentless. “Polar Vortex Death Storms.” says The Weather Channel, “Ample, pointless sunshine.” say New York Times City Room Blog-gers, Andy Newman and Annie Correal, of days below 20 degrees. And the next day: “Here’s the advisory: Pull down your ear flaps.”
In search of new epiphanies, I try a remedy I rarely do: Sheer Shopping.
Y’all know I also rarely do simple one subject posts. The combo of hell freezing over and an unexpected trip to the most exhilarating shopping in NYC I have perhaps ever seen has tripped my synapses, and thus this Love Sonnet to Rei Kawakubo’s Dover Street Market, just opened this Winter. This curative cave of curious sits in the unlikely neighborhood “creeping west of the Ace Hotel” as described by Maria McElroy, one of it’s denizens, indie-perfumer and my hostess.
I bustled over from a lunch in the Flatiron, bundled up in my classic cold weather gear for 2014, gold leather pants, sherpa ski boots, layers of down and massive fur hat. Classically, just as the brain said “where the h is this place?” I spotted another gold-leather-panted, model-legged girl bound up the stairs across the street.
Oh. There it is.
Spotted. Photographers, touring wads of SCAD design students, studied worldly shoppers, escorted celebs, serious stylish sales people and Cleveland gay couples on a pilgrimage all float in the off-kilter, off-the-grid, precious offering spaces. Six floors, more or less, are punctuated by a clear elevator tube looking like a luge or those clear pneumatic tubes they used to have at suburban drive-thru banks or hospitals for transport of bio-objects. Which of course, today has been transported by teleporting.
Epiphany #2: To see and be scene is way better than not to be.
O! This paper picnic dress, this fabric meteor, this Dorothy of Oz Saloon seemingly tornado dropped dressing room and the neat lady-like, little black dresses with pearl colors.
Epiphany #3: Our deepest, most creative spirit perpetually longs for that it which it has never seen.
Alice, (aka Maria of Aroma_M ) in her Mary Tyler Moore, circa 70’s apricot sweater skirt set, touched the pink paper floral froth in wonderment. Many garments combined high-tech fabrics with tons of ruffles or 1910’ish demurity. Like a teleported Madame Blavatsky. It’s a character I want to be but never saw a designer make party dresses for. Designer is imagining me. That there is an Epiphany.
Epiphany #4: My perpetual goal is to step out of time in the right dress for a Time-Traveler.
Everyone is so damn hot on “Ascension” that they miss the joys of careening down the back staircase, the innards and behind-the-scenes of Life. Maria and went to the top first, and used the rabbit-hole stairwell like a palate cleanser. Rei and Junya would be proud.
Epiphany #5: Today’s Fortune: Aim high and seek the road less traveled.
This kind of crazy quilt has been my brain and decor since age 5. I’m like a laboratory rat, only sedated by the organized mix of bright color stimuli. To see this as the structural columns in this anthill ran medicine through my very bones.
Epiphany #6: Heaven can often be soothed by Chaos.
Can you see how these pillars lead to a kind of good design vertigo? We are not hungry ghosts looking for designers to acquire like keeping up with the Joneses or banker bonuses, we are humans exploring, feeling shape and volume to toss up our conventions of body, booty and brain boundaries. To be. Or not to be.
Epiphany #7: The White Board is the design to break Boredom.
A useless (?) devoid of context or use (?), silver appendage (?) juts out from a wall with a repeated image. This snarky thing is captivating to our minds, so attuned to instant images and messages via our attachments to our “communication devices.”
“Not this, not that,” is the famous yogic RT pondered right this minute by millions of meditators. Should we think anything different when pondering clothing and identities?
Epiphany #8: The Absurdity of Imagery and Architecture. Just Do It.
Bugs? Gripes? How to impress one’s golfing buddies? Where the f is Spring?
Epiphany #9: It’s all in our heads.
I am sweating this girl band.
How a navy sweat band with heavy gold Caligula plaque and I fell in love.
Epiphany #10: Veneration is worthy when a simple thing says so many things.
H-E-L-L-O! And just $1500. buys these black suede Azzedine Alaia puppies and one never need own any other pair of black sandals.
Epiphany #11: Seduction and Salvation can be bought+worn together.
This cowrie shell neckwear appears suddenly in a creche of ancient garb set among the avant-garde shoppes like a window into a soul.
Epiphany #12: Hmmm, maybe my double Desire for Alaia and womb-y memories of cowries can indeed be satisfied.
A men’s jacket sleeve.
Epiphany #13: The topography of dichotomy can be played with.
Commes des Garcons? Oui, Luigi. Girls can play that dichotomy game too, boys. Are we check, Mate? Portofino on a Vespa with you headed to … a deserted beach on a dreary day. The wind sweeps the sand across the beach. He finds an old photograph of a seaside town cradled on a hillside. While exploring the quaint passageways of the town, the director encounters a beautiful woman and follows her to a seaside clothing shop where the woman works. In the shop, she gives him a look of recognition. They do not speak, but seem drawn to each other. As the director leaves, she gestures to him but he does not respond….Beyond the Clouds.
whoops. teleported…
Epiphany #14: The fabric of our lives is actually more of a soup.
The fake, random architectural artifact. Either reminds that you are participating in the grand pre-fab soup bowl of history determined by the Pratt student devotee of Comme des Garçons who lovingly does the display in this shoppe or…
all this visual tantalizing equals RT’s “hmm, I’ll buy that” by your sudden transformation into a fashion sheep following the flocks seduced by these frocks.
Epiphany #15: Buy, buy, black sheep, Have you any wool? Yes, sir, yes, sir, Three bags full; One for the master, And one for the dame, And one for the little boy who lives down the lane.
Between obsessives layering in dressing rooms proclaiming “Yes, I will take this and this and that” and multiple bags full observed in the hands of the besotted…yes. This pre-fab intentioned art stimulus does equal sales.
The un-perfect perfect. The closet every New Yorker wants. (except Jay-Z, Beyonce, The Man Repeller and Ivanka Trump)
Epiphany #15: Species evolution is marked by changes to the roof of the mouth which in turn relates to the roof of the brain. Olfactory response to edible offerings, choices and taste determine the evolution of morphic resonance. Or…a clean, exquisite offering on a pallet is as enticing as a taste or mantra isolated on my palette. Changed.
This here fabric froth frenzied me. I felt like a spring lamb devouring fireworks in a field with every clover crunch. Like a petticoat turned up in the LA Lakers locker room. Like a…
Epiphany #16: I am a sucker for incongruity.
Nothing like a thick, ruddy turmeric cargo coat for men, slapped with a shiny ultra-violet blue 10′ hangtag. It’s not even pretentious, this Junya Watanabe just wants boys to have some fun.
Epiphany #17: I just want to take a boy-man client through Dover Street Market and style him to the ends of the Universe.
Like a rhinestone cowgirl. This is so basic to me.
Christian Astuevielle is the creative director of Comme des Garcons fragrance, and the gentleman creator of these warrior necklaces. As per Vogue ‘constructed from layers of industrial materials (metal chains), pop exclamation points (vividly colored plastic links), and glamorous detritus (broken-down costume jewels)’
“Most of all,” he says, “it’s to make women happy and exceptional.”
Epiphany #18: Christian, gracias, I am so getting warmer.
YSL dancing shoes.
Epiphany #19: Need we say more?
…and perhaps the most telling of the finer points of The Dover Street Market is a random pile of clothing about to be purchased I saw laying on a sales wrap desk. This is not cheap and fast fashion. This is an Epiphany of Cloth.
Epiphany #20: The Dover Street Market is Slow, Delicious Luxury.
160 Lexington @30th Street, NYC
all photographs by Jade Dressler,
with exception of LV runway and big mural in DSMNY.
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Filed under: FASHION, NEW YORK, STYLE | 2 Comments
Tags: Christian Astuevielle, Dover Street Market, Dover Street Market NY, Junya Watanabe, Maria McElroy, NYC, Rei Kawakubo
“People have laughed at me over the years, but the same people are now hanging pictures from sashes and bows, and using chintzes like there’s no tomorrow.”
Mario Buatta, Interior Designer, circa 1980’s
“All this digital is driving me crazy more into my sensual selfie!”
Jade Dressler, circa launching and laughing into 2014
I hear you Sir Futurist and The Very Floral Mario Buatta!
Like an overdone room dressed in fancy chintz, peppered with TMI of our digital life, we all carry the echoes of taunts and too many voices in our heads. For a long time I carried a taunt from grade school confirming that I “thought too much.” While my “too many” thoughts were like psychedelic happy flowers soaring through my mind in treasured times sitting under a very old tree, Thoreau-ly enthralled, or happily creating in on-my-own-Emily bedroom, I faithfully stood by their unwashed and sometimes unwelcome multitudes…and they have served me well.
Go ahead laugh and be amused by my pink furry hats, often prophetic vetements, or ecstatic drawings… rest assured that’s why I put them on and spend hours scratching away with ball-point pens, to make both of us smile!
As I continue to meet the majestic people I have long admired, such as Mario above, in his flowery youth and below, proffering wisdom and funnies in our tete-a-tete…
I love to discover that most do indeed “think too much,” harboring deep thoughts that sometimes are before their time. In this, the Winter, the Season of Deep Thoughts, all hail! We honor those people with 10,000 fascinating thought things under their flowery, sometimes chintzy bonnets.
“Ravishing Personalities are the most Riveting Things in the World.”
Diana Vreeland, circa “timeless”
Deep Thinkers mix it up with big doses of Funny and Imperfection…(Exhibit A: Mario’s book-signing fake hand that he slaps down on his signature after signing.) It’s because they see it all as a game. Life, love, birth and death are on continuous loop and the wise ones see it all through a bigger lens of compassion and grace.
When the chill is on, it’s high time for deep dives into the slow luxury and appreciation of ravishing personalities, glorious books, witty conversations and the simplicity of holding hands, molding baked goods, good souls and New Year resolutions deeply thought.
got some deep thoughts? The good news is Happiness arises from that grasshopper! Dive in, from free nature winks…
…to very costly Couture…
Here are our top ten resolutions for 2014, ten favorite ecstatic and deeply pondered people, places and things in our world at the moment, a tradition since 2012. We promise to leave you well-shaken and stirred.
Deep Thought ONE
Resolve to Give Ode to The Geo & The Old
The Incongruities of Time and Ancient Matter. Peering out from the window in a friend’s antique shop, Scott & Bowne, in Kent, Connecticut during Thanksgiving, this happy Inuit family in the famous 1930’s Edward S. Curtis photo exactly mirrored the parka-clad Kentians doing early holiday shopping. Could this happy family have had deep inner imaginings, windows into the future, that their image would be seen by so many, and they might look out at passing customers? Are we captivated by their image because they so timelessly seem to smile right from the Earth itself? Methinks so.
In another little shoppe, I purchased this little piece of earth beauty, a blue celestite from Madagascar. It’s sitting on a well-etched, inch thick glass tabletop in my kitchen, which led it’s first fifty years in a bank. I love every etch of it.
Around the same time I discovered two other African treasures. South African and Smithsonian-exhibited photographer, (akin to Diane Arbus on hyper-speed) and former geologist, Roger Ballen and the cult-pop-group inspired by his art and sensibility, Die Antwoord. While the geode fits perfectly in my hand and is said to bring the angelic realm down to earth, I equally appreciate the beauty and bravery of Roger and Die Antwoord’s dark psycho images and incongruities. They evoke and power wash one’s ideas of humanity. Absurdly.
The deep inner meaning, what’s underneath or inside of the Earth and ourselves. Go there.
Here is a Roger Ballen interview, his explorations in mines and art are sourced where dreams come from, heights of heaven or deep in the heart of Earth.
Notice all the hands in this post? From Mario’s plastic hand, to the ancients and our own, we like what hands do as the wings of the heart. When our fast-track paws choose to un-connect to our mobile phones we suddenly recall what our life in Slow Luxury speed feels like.
(OK, yes, we Pawed and Pinterested about it…)
Like wise, wagging fingers of elders, old sweet crabapple trees twist tales in Winter, here. Delightfully, with their apt name, Malus Coronaria, they deliver a domed crown of sweet, pale pink and fragrant blossoms in Spring. Message!
TWO
Resolve to Open Your Dior to Creativity
Do you have a secret garden? A place that allows you to drink deeply from your soul? For me, it’s techno music, Central Park, the elegance of Paris. These tonics calm me. All of Dior’s campaigns this year, focused on Versailles and gardens, reminded me to smell the roses in my own deep thoughts. From the new book on Mark Shaw‘s photographs of the house in the 1950’s and 60’s to the Fall campaigns imaged by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, satisfying dips into beauty. I resolve to evoke all this luxury for 2014.
THREE
Resolve to Acquire Golden Solar Jewels
You’ve heard the news that some of your bizarre aches and pains are due to more solar flare activities in the heaven above? I resolve to honor these warm wings of gold and light, an infusion gladly signed up for in Chill time. Find out about solar flares on your favorite New-Age ascension ranter’s site and peep Bobae Moon‘s acupuncture jewels here. If you want to order a ring, ring Bobae directly at: bulbar {at} hotmail {dot} com. Want to squarely situate your golden wealth?
Then you must follow the incessantly globetrotting, surfing and recently hobbling about, amaze-man, Jason Campbell, EIC of The JC Report and stylist to “Vanity Fair’s Best Dressed-listers, celebrities and global elite such as like Wendi Murdoch, Ivanka Trump and Kathy Freston.” Jason held court recently in several rooms of the stately, art-filled home of Simone Levinson to launch his own collection of square-this gold finger things, Igneri. It was lovely to catch up as our paths have not recently crossed.
Here he is surrounded by UES beauties and a golden harp.
As for his hobbling about on crutches, I wasn’t sure if his bold, black shoes were exactly orthopedic or due to his surfing injury. He tisk-tisk admonished me…”Jade…Rick Owens.”
Peace Jason! I was also eyeing a double infinity-loop ring with multi-tiny black or chocolate diamonds from another jeweler exhibiting there. Yes, anonymous. This may be either due to busy holidays or intrigue. Either way, you get to contact The Jason here and get it figured out.
FOUR
Resolve to Explore Your INNER REALMS
Are there Interior designers in the inner realms too?
Sleep is the intoxicant of the Deep Thinkers. The feathery bulbs and mossy mini-world here appeared like a dream in the Campion Platt-designed haven partnered with Sleep|Studio at the yearly and magnificent Holiday House designer show house. Platt’s room was one of my most favorite in this mouth-open, mega mansion, with rooms designed by the best and proceeds benefitting charity. Please forgive if I make a fuss over two designers, especially, one of my oldest friends, Randy Kemper of Ingrao, (we were high school chums) and one of my newest, Alexa Hampton, (a deep-thoughts chum). Thank you, and plug, plug, here is Alexa’s latest book for you to buy:
Brock Forsblom of Ingrao and Alexa chose Ingrao’s sensuous and very smart parlor to languor in. This same parlor inspired designs by the New York School of Interior Design students for a little competition, which Alexa and Thom Filicia graciously judged for a benefit evening. In attendance were design stars such as Darrin Varden, Geoffrey Bradfield, Drew McGukin, Campion Platt, Patrick Hamilton, and many more. Design supporters Jim Druckman, Ruth Lynford and Betsey Ruprecht were floating room to room.
The deep thoughts I shared with Iris Dankner, founder of Holiday House, proved her to be a genuine jewel whose own triumph over cancer birthed the showhouse and the idea for the benefit evening, given her admiration for the college.
Here are Jim Druckman, Alexa Hampton, Iris Dankner and David Sprouls, president of New York School of Interior Design, in the tea room, fashioned by one of my favorite playful and super smart designers, Guillaume Gentet.
It was Jim Druckman’s NY Design Center‘s book-signing event with 1stdibs for Mario Buatta and Ellie Cullman a few weeks earlier, where I ran into my “twin.” “We are turquoise twins, we are turquoise!,” he kept repeating, luring me in to take a photo. Hark! my twin is none other than designer, Victor de Souza, tres amusa!
Given he lures in and dresses other muses I regularly pant over, namely Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Daphne Guinness, Mary J.Blige and other originals, Michele Harper and Jean Shafiroff …I was truly honored. I guess he beguiles like this. Dear Twin Victor: You have sparked my inner realm of desire to be dressed by you for the red carpet. (hope, hope and hint, hint!) I can be very nerdy about things like this, I do hope that is o.k. with my twin.
And why the shiny, exuberant white pine leaf next Jade? Because during all this focus on interiors, let’s not forget that exteriorly the grand white pine trees of Central Park are also grand decorators, brushing the ground with their deeply smart leaves. I love their shape, witness this lone dancer. Not to mention that they can be anciently over 400 years old, are rot and water resistant, look lovely en masse as a color scheme for an interior…and…
…because the Indians utilized it for food…and that is the next topic.
Deep Thought FIVE
Yes, Resolve to EAT, PRAY, LOVE.
(plus SMILE, HUG, have a COCKTAIL PARTY)
With a Nature God named Pan, is it any wonder they are what we cook in? Is it possible the most famous satisfied smile in all the world, Mona Lisa, has a twin? Is it possible to come out of the kitchen, strew oneself with botany and make a bestseller too? If I promise to eat more raw foods, chew slowly and thank the Earth can it help towards World Peace? Or should I just have a cocktail? All these things are on my mind and feeding me. Come…
This is a plug first for Elizabeth Gilbert‘s second book, “The Signature of All Things” after her wildly popular “Eat, Pray Love.” Though I have yet to dive into it, from the title to the premise of a woman botanist is right up my alley. The “Law of Signatures” forms the basis of all the smart wisdom I’ve gleaned from Nature, my Native American and modern herbalist teachers so this pop culture wayshower authoress once again steers us. What you see, is what heals.
This image from the NY Times book review captures that whole #woman, #gazing #earth #sad #I’m a 19th century botanist #I’m menstruating thing, doesn’t it? For more drama, buy it here. For more health, look deeply at what you eat and cultivate your intuition. World Peace is next.
Que? Leonardo painted two of one of the most famous paintings in the world? The ‘two-painting theory’ is the passion behind my friend Rafael Feldman‘s documentary film, based on decades of research and scientific testing of the Isleworth Mona Lisa, discovered in 1913.
Rafael’s wife, pop singer, philanthropist and entrepreneur Consuelo Vanderbilt Costin imported some Manhattan friends for the opening somewhere out east of civilization for the Gold Coast International Film Festival. Rafael and Consuelo here on the red carpet before the film. We actually found an organic restaurant for refreshments deep in the wilderness of suburbia. Thrilling!
The same group plus tons of others cavorted several weeks later at the home of The Magnetizing Mr.and Mrs. Mona Lisa 2, high above somewhere in Manhattan. I pretended to be Bill Cunningham and nerdily snapped photos of what I have come to call “The New Upper East Siders.” Tied to art, fashion and interior designers, history, media, fashion, film producers, music composers, singers, lawyers, candlestick and money-makers…the hugs of These Folks…magnetize and trump all that.
Stephanie Micci, a redheaded beauty I met in Paris (of course!) and whose style is Superb, since she is a Designer.(I love her Pinterest!) Here she rocks the loose collegiate sweat shirt with a sexy, tight, glimmer evening skirt…a look some will recall has graced my body in past years. Hugs here with Consuelo, whom Stephanie and I met together one frosty evening last year.
Above hugs via rollicky on a big couch: Robert Christensen, The Photographer, Heather Payne, The Designer and me, The Jade Dressler (as some like to call me)…
So Swell, The Entertainers: Cole Rumbough, The Jazz Singer at Le Cirque and Consuelo…
Above you will find “The Spiritual Entrepreneur,” Shelley Lewis, in my favorite Susan Grant blouse and in hugs with The Turkish Titan, The Really Sweet, Real Estate Man, Mahir.
These three muses on the couch below, are Randy Schatz, The President of Avenue magazine, Nicole Noonan, The Entrepreneurial Lawyer and Sandy Madera, The Tourneau Exec.
Those of good hair and deep genes, funnies, furries should hug together in Winter.
While outside trees dropped their good hair fuzzy seeds on the ground, the New York School of Interior Design hosted stars of the culinary world and restauranteurs to chat and chew on the design of restaurants. I loved my conversation with Michael Anthony, chef/partner, Gramercy Tavern, his pure passion and excitement over his new book and tour were clear evidence of his success. A being grounded in seasonal and earthy deep connections does make for the Law of Signature Success.
Equally ravishing personalities that night? Adam Farmerie, hospitality designer and co-founder AvroKO; Brian Guze, regional design director, Starbucks; and Tony May, celebrated restauranteur and owner of SD26. Rivet your hands to Michael’s book here.
Eat. Pray. Love. That sometimes elusive Love Guru vibe. In the midst of my dailies I often desire to live as I imagine a Guru pads about, trekking the turf of the Earth. Eternally smiling and peaceful with it all. When you feel it, you know this is how you were meant to be. For me it’s to sit in a French bistro and eat at the bar with a glass of wine or wake up at 5am, when the world is silently dreaming and brew my espresso. Either end of the day, the senses are fully awake…face is being fed…and the most delicious thoughts get brewed.
Deep Thought SIX
Resolve to Also Rise with Suns & Daughters of the East
Is getting up early a resolution for 2014? Maybe some bright green tea might help! I was having my own morning coffee when Wendy Goodman covering for New York magazine’s Space of the Week sailed into my email box featuring my good friend, perfumer Maria Elroy. I was thrilled for her as I’ve covered her Dumbo studio where she serves up her Aroma M homemade perfume and Japanese tea, Matcha, given she loves Japan as much as I love Paris. Get the tea in her studio, get her perfumes, here.
Want to really be animated beyond tea? Inhale this, from one of my favorite bloggers, Susie Bubble and a soulful collection from Seoul that I now love called Lucky Chouette.
I loved Susie’s post on the Spring 2014 collection and comment on the above picture: “surreal-doesnt-quite-cut-it-when-i-look-at-the-random-pap-pic-someone-took-of-me-at-the-jardin-de-chouette-show-at-seoul-fash”
The point is that the energy of the collection is what you want to peep here and get caffeinated by. It captures for me my favorite mood of youthful innocence+ageless, campy smarts. I could dress 10 vastly different individuals in these pieces, mix it up with classics and vintage and make them stars!
SEVEN
Resolve to Live Large as in Silver Screen Large
Allow me to act a little Life Coach here. (This IS January resolution time!)
Are you dressing for the film of your Life? No matter where you go, you are the star of your movie, so better dress for it! Get inspired by Winter. It is always about the silver, whites and stone greys…witness the “Subway Queen” I spotted and drew above. Her individual style is everything I believe in: couture, classics and vintage mixed to highlight personality beauty marks, in this case the muse’s silver hair, rawish,worn brown leather bag and tan-toned feet in tan-toned shoes. Her red soles, lips and confident older woman sexuality made her Award-worthy. Want this “IT-ness” for you or your brand in 2014? See here and call me.
And another sliver screen siren called this past month.
Director Andreas von Scheele (below) called me to style a music video for David Rogue, a singer songwriter, big news and bigger still given that film industry legend, Ben Barenholtz would make a cameo! Plus Rebecca Blumhagen of HBO/Cinemax‘s “Girls’ Guide to Depravity” and actress Liz Fye would be starring in the video. Michael Souter,head of Territory Brands hovered and documented. What a thrill! More images here.
Lesson 2+…to create character begins with an intuitive color and follows with texture. For example, for Rebecca’s billiard hall babe, take-no-prisoners, seductress character, we mixed designer, Andrea Doria’s couture metal (actual metal) sequined pieces, short shorts and bra top to evoke her sharp, metal Cruella de Vil aspects…
…and we created grey leather lederhosen and clipped with vintage sugary-sweet fabric flowers to soften, seduce and personalize it. Let me get all Martha Stewart on you for a moment…yes… we madden those hosen from a pair of Plein Sud leather pants which had seen too many parties and yes! we were a crafty vixon, adding sheer-like-nylons fabric flowers to these garters. “Why Ever not?,” as Ms. Vreeland would coo.
We twinned the florals with this sweet vintage satin frock on Liz Fye, who played the assassin/wife, below. The necklace was also a studio project, we made it from vintage pearls and a kitshy red satin rose. Another so easy and crafty style project. Yes, Mario Buatta, me too. Florals! Everywhere!
EIGHT
Resolve to Honor Furry Men Things
Are men really animals? Ever deeply ponder the abundant metaphors of inanimate, furry things come to life abound during Winter Solstice and the return of the light? Ponder Frosty the Snowman; the toy soldier in Nutcracker; Osirus re-emerging; Pan re-fruiting; or men growing mustaches for Movember, the campaign to benefit prostate cancer early detection; and above, our character played by singer David Rogue in his video. This mythical human desire theme plays with ideas of conjuring a Spring re-birth of virility, power and life. Honor the furry bears.
Exhibit A: The Movember campaign we styled for our client, integrative physician, Dr. Pedre, going for a 1900’s, hipster, handsome roguish feel. Now where have you seen a doctor look like this lately? (Go see him, take your solar aches here.)
Exhibit B. Careful when plucking roses from secret gardens. Screening recently in London, La Belle et Le Bete, Cocteau’s remastered 1946 fairy tale film says “Love can turn a man into a beast. But love can also make an ugly man handsome.” Greening, flowering, molting and furring-up…the changelings of season, hair and moods are the light switches of beauty and love. Isn’t it deep to love all these roles?
Exhibit C. I loved discovering Saks Fifth Avenue’s delightful story about the abominable snowman, a large ape … a lost Russian emigre scientist named Yeti who lives on the roof and makes snow. Riveting window conceptualist and designer, Harry Cunningham made perhaps the most stupendous window display eeeeever! See here:
Why do beings of Largese and Mystery who gaze from up high captivate?
Like parents looking from above at tinier children, we imagine the unseen, the largest beyond being able to see and hear our inner deepest.
Deeply ponder Diana Vreeland. (Yes, this is a segue.) She’s been one of my Abominable Yes-mans since a young age. Her vision and her gaze knew no boundaries of pleasure and delight. It didn’t matter that she never traveled to the places she enthused about…she imagined it even larger. She fixed her gaze on …IT.
Deep Thought NINE
Resolve to gaze deep into Crystals, get your hands on Clay and smell the Earth like there is no Tomorrow.
I woke up one morning to this icicle on my window sill. The frozen concentrate was a deep reminder of why I love working with Daum, the heritage art crystal from France. Let me clarify…
Specifically, the pieces created in the fifties. Long before I knew of Daum, I bought fluid crystal glass vases and orbs in this style, not knowing that Daum was the original. This book, therefore, had me gasping at every page. ‘Cos there are crystals deep in the earth, in our bodies and in the computer you are staring at…is it any wonder that navel, crystal and vase gazing is so amazing?
As your coach, I recommend you get something green and luminous pronto to inspire.
Getting the green got me, one cold, freezing day in Plaza Flowers on Lexington, in the form of these “cash pots.” Now this could be “cache pot”…and who is “Jim Shack”? It is a mystery I leave for Spring. In the meanwhile, they also have intriguing candles for gazing into while these groovy, green pots could harbor herb seedlings or paperwhites.
Not into springing cash for the cash-pot? Free and very fir-ry inspirational is to walk into an evergreen and inhale deeply. Ya? Ya like…right?
While you inhale, and ponder where Deep Thought TEN might be lurking (it’s in your brain, silly grasshopper!)
…we will leave you with one last image, that from one of my favorite artists’ holiday email. The Nick Ervinck image and his response to my email is a burst of ravishing that perfectly preps us for Spring. I wish you all of it’s energy for all your dreams and endeavors for 2014!
Me:
“As always, I am thrilled by your work! Thank you for this image, I hope to include in my next blog. Genius, genius! Have a wonderful 2014, Nick! Jade”
Nick:
🙂
*********
Images as noted courtesy of Billy Farrell; NY Times; Holiday House images by Carrie Liu; David Rogue video images by Michael Souter’s team and Jade Dressler; Dr. Pedre image by Alvaro Montagna; books as credited and others by________(please fill in the blanks.) We like to always give credits so please let us know if there are additionals.
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Filed under: ART, FASHION, FLOWERS, HOME, NEW YORK, STYLE, TRENDS | Closed
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