Dog Collar as Statement Jewelry

Another dog handbag from my Workingman Press page-a-day calendar. (Thanks yet again, Christopher!)

Dream Factory

Today is National Chocolate Day!

If you visit thenibble.com, there are all sorts of fascinating articles about what makes a truffle a truffle, the dynamics of couverture, the mysteries of ganache...

“E” for Effort

Hostess With the Mostess

In case you had planned on dressing up for National Cupcake Day.

This delicious little trifle is available on etsy.com 
Click here to see another Hostess Cupcake costume (complete with a dreamy little hat).
Or wake up your jaded palette with passing fancy -- the bacon peanut butter chocolate cupcake. Bon appetit!

Penn Was Mighty

With the advent of rain, it’s officially sweater weather, and for a couple of weeks I’ve been thinking about the recent death of Irving Penn, the stark beauty of his subjects -- the angles of whippet-thin fashion models; the illuminated beauty of harshly voluptuous nudes; the exoticism of other lives -- Peruvian children, Hell’s Angels, New Guinea mud men; and an affinity for the inherent beauty of objects, from cigarette butts in pools of ash to tweeds with turtlenecks.

The New York Times obituary

The Wall Street Journal obituary

The Jezebel slide show

The New Yorker slide show

Raiders of the Lost Archive

Between 2004 and 2007, a couple who own an antique store in Mexico allegedly acquired more than 1,200 objects thought to have belonged to Frida Kahlo, which are the subject of a new Princeton Architectural Press book, Finding Frida Khalo: Diaries, Letters, Recipes, Notes, Sketches, Stuffed Birds, and Other Newly Discovered Keepsakes.


Some Kahlo scholars believe that these objects are fake. As New York-based Latin American art dealer Mary-Anne Martin suggests, she believes that the publishers “have been the victims of a gigantic hoax.” 
On the other hand, Christopher Knight, art critic at the Los Angeles Times, seems to think the objects may be valid, although perhaps not overly valuable. His term: ephemera. He has said he has seen the items first-hand in Mexico on three occasions; Martin and other detractors have only seen facsimiles in news story photos and the book. And the Finding Frida Kahlo authors, Barbara Levine and Stephen Jaycox make no claims to be Kahlo experts.
Last week both Knight and Martin were guests of KCRW’s Ruth Seymour on The Politics of Culture. If you like Punch-and-Judy shows, this may be the podcast for you.
Above: Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird.

Truth or Dare

Nineteenth-century Parisians such as Marcel Proust and his contemporaries played a question-and-answer game that they believed would offer insight into an individual’s nature. This game inspired Vanity Fair’s long-running back-page Q-and-A, the Proust Questionnaire. VF editor Graydon Carter has collected the most noteworthy responses for  Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire: 101 Luminaries Ponder Love, Death, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life. Included: Bette Midler, Salmon Rushdie, Donna Karan, Gore Vidal, Sandra Bernhard, Keith Richards, Emma Thompson... 

My results were frighteningly similar to Joan Rivers.

Name Your Poison

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art recently acquired a painting by a nearly-forgotten 17th-century French painter and Aubusson tapestry designer, Isaac Moillon, with funds gained from recently deaccessioned artwork sold at auction.
The 1653 painting, Sophonisbe Drinking Poison, is a narrative depiction of a queen who drinks poison rather than allow herself to being paraded through the streets by Roman conquerers. According to the LACMA site, Moillon descended from a family of painters, of whom his sister, Louise, was the most well-known. (Two of Louise Moillon’s still lifes -- Still Life with Bowl of Curacao Oranges, 1634 and Still Life with Cherries, Strawberries and Gooseberries, 1630 -- are part of the Norton Simon Museum collection.)
Sophonisbe Drinking Poison has a number of distinctions. Its beauty lives up to the epic heroism of its tale, conveying Sophonisbe in the extreme foreground, off-center, as a tragic, alabaster figure with disproportionately-long arms and a delicate hand, holding a cup into which her handmaid is pouring the poison; the queen’s face is turned aside, an aria of tragic I-will-bear-this sacrifice. The work was created in Mannerist style when the rest of the art world had gone Baroque. It’s also a rarity -- LACMA is the only American museum to have any of Isaac Moillon’s work.
For more info on Isaac Moillon, visit LACMA’s site here.
Sophonisbe Drinking Poison, 1653; Isaac Moillon (France, Paris, 1614-1673); oil on canvas: 56" x 56 3/4". Purchased with funds provided by the European Paintings Deaccession Fund.

Sometimes You Feel Like A Fluff

It’s National Fluffernutter Day.

[Bread + Fluff + Skippy* = Fluffernutter]
The debate in Massachusetts: Fluffernutter for official state sandwich? 
*Skippy just seems like the happier choice; Jif just sounds like it’s in a hurry.

Pretty in Pink

In the Season Two premiere of  The Rachel Zoe Project, which aired on Bravo at the end of August, much of the episode’s drama revolved around a hot pink taffeta Chanel gown that Rachel Zoe had asked Karl Lagerfeld to alter on behalf of client Cameron Diaz. After much sturm und drang, the dress arrived, it looked fantastic, and Diaz wore it to the Golden Globes.
Above: left, the original gown on the Chanel runway; center, Cameron Diaz on the red carpet at the Golden Globe Awards; right, a similarly-inspired dress by Max and Cleo, available at MyShape.com.
Right photo by Lindsay at MyShape.com.

I Dream of Genie Slippers

The latest advance in multi-tasking:

Who Likes Short Shorts?

Back story: For the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival in 2007, Gilles Jacob, the festival’s president, invited 35 directors to each create a three-minute short film inspired by the motion picture theatre experience.
The resulting anthology, To Each His Own Cinema (Chacun son cinéma), is available on DVD, and it features 33 films by luminaries including Jane Campion, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Gus Van Sant, Wong Kar-Wai, and the ever-scandalous Roman Polanski. 
Three films were delivered too late for the DVD release: a second short by Walter Salles, Absurda by David Lynch and World Cinema by Joel and Ethan Coen. 
Fast forward and thank heaven for YouTube, where you can see World Cinema. It stars Josh Brolin as a guy puzzling over which film to see at a theatre. Ceylan’s Climates by Nuri Bilge? The Rules of the Game by Jean Renoir? 
There's a funny line regarding a rabbit, which works if you’ve seen The Rules of the Game. I won’t tell you which movie Josh chose. To find out, click here.