A little something-something is arriving this Thursday, according to the UPS online tracking, so there’ll be a fashion post on Friday if UPS is accurate. In the interim, I thought I’d take you back to Paris today to a tourist attraction, the Père Lachaise Cemetery.
Over 100 acres, it is the largest cemetery within the city of Paris. And if it weren’t for all the tombstones, you’d get the impression that you’re just walking through yet another park.
People from around the world come here to pay homage to their favorites like Colette, Gertrude Stein, Marcel Proust, Frederic Chopin, and Molière. Once I saw the list of all the famous writers, artists, musicians and leaders here, I thought what a fabulous dinner party it would be with this cemetery’s residents. If it were indeed possible to host such a dinner with these departed, I’d ask for Amedeo Modigliani to sit to my left and Jim Morrison to my right.
Morrison and The Doors were a bit before my time, but anyone who loves the history of rock music as much as I do would surely want to be in his presence just once, even if only in a dream…
It’s a good few hours of walking if you have the patience to navigate all the grave sites at this cemetery. And if you should need a quick hit of sugar to refill the energy reserve as I often do (well, that’s my excuse anyway), I recommend a little something-something in a green bag from Ladurée 
…
Tags: Colette, Jim Morrison, Ladurée, Père-Lachaise cemetery, The Doors
So last summer’s sale was about the creepy crawlies, Prada style, and I was all over it like a cheap suit:
And a few weeks ago I completed my trifecta with this recent online find, a swirly beige watersnake platform peeptoe slingback (I dare you to say that three times fast) with a sweet little bow, no less…
Gorgeous shoes to show off a pedicure and many hours of leg (barre) exercises, but…Houston, we’ve got a problem. Can beige be a difficult neutral in your wardrobe? Apparently, it is for me. And you know me, the first thing I do after bringing home a new pair of shoes is to match them to a bag.
Next to the Chanel beige claire, the bag is a warmer shade of beige against the now anemic looking shoes:
But heck, the skin on the bag is so delicious, how about another gratuitous shot ? It almost looks like, on my monitor, the lining of the shoes matches the bag more than the shoes themselves. But in person, the lining of my shoes is blush pink. Strange how colors relate to each other once you have them side-by-side. But I digress…
So…if the first bag is too warm in tone, how about going pale on pale with my dark white mini flap?
Uhhh…white and beige are like sisters from another mother, and father. Not really working.
So if I can’t match beige to another beige exactly, what about beige and a beige step-sister, taupe? And to make my brain hurt a little more, how about mixing two textures on top of the colors, like the snake against the ostrich?
Aye, me duele la cabeza. So in today’s Couture Counsel episode, I’m asking how you wear the beiges that surely lurk somewhere in your closet? Would you go for any of the above options? What happens if there’s not an exact match…do you suffice for “close enough” or just contrast it with another color all together to save yourself the headache?
I could, for example, just wear the shoes with the gorgeous dark matte gold bag that’s so stunning no one would care what shoes I had on…
or pair them with a dark brown bag to match the deep chocolate specks in the snake’s patterns? But do you see the first photo with the tan-colored leather trims around the bow? Well, wouldn’t a dark brown bag look weird with tan, even if they are technically in the same family? Oy, my OCD keeps getting better! I think I need to take two aspirins and wait for your opinions.
Tags: beige, Chanel, Couture Counsel, peeptoe, platform, Prada, slingbacks, watersnake
I’ve probably seen more of the country of Belgium than many Belgians, and it’s starting to become a challenge to find new surprises there. But on this particular trip I stumbled across Japan in Belgium at Hasselt’s Japanese Garden, designed and constructed with the collaboration of Hasselt’s Japanese sister city, Itami.
The design is based on the traditional Japanese tea garden, complete with a tea house…
but there were always signs that I was not exactly in Japan…
even if it seemed like I was…
It’s a lovely place to spend an afternoon, and the clear highlight for everyone there was the koi fish:
Is it wrong I feel like having some sushi right now ?
Tags: Belgium, Hasselt, Hasselt Japanese Garden, Itami, Japanese tea house, koi fish, tea garden
If you know me, you’d agree that I’m better at making reservations than dinner itself, but I’m always up for an adventure in the kitchen. So while visiting my friends–who happen to love dim sum–in Europe last month, I tested our friendship by venturing into their kitchen and then making them eat the hagow I dared to make after watching a how-to video on youtube:
Written waivers aside, we chowed down on the steamed shrimp dumplings which were neither pretty nor particularly tasty–but nothing a bit of soy sauce and Belgian beer can’t fix! When friends tell you your cooking is awesome, and you know it so isn’t, they become family. And btw, maybe watching an instructional youtube video in a language you don’t understand (Mandarin) is not such a great idea. I’m sure the flavor was lost in the translation!
Days later, while passing through Paris, still with a taste for real dim sum in my mouth, I checked out a restaurant heavily recommended on tripadvisor:
Definitely prettier than what I could make, but taste-wise? I’m going to say whoever that was in the kitchen was not Chinese. But once again, nothing a little soy sauce and champagne can’t fix. I won’t mention the restaurant’s name because I don’t think you should eat there.
Here are a few pics from the streets of Chinatown in Paris:
Weeks later, I thought I’d check out the dim sum in London’s Chinatown,
this time without relying on (ill) advice from tripadvisor and hit the jackpot at the Chuen Cheng Ku Restaurant, which actually has trolley service.
Now, that’s some good stuff. In fact, so good I went back for a second visit on the day of the Royal wedding. People on the street told me the Chinese restaurants would be open for sure even on bank holidays, and since the food was so delicious the first time, it was an easy choice after a long day of navigating the crowds in London.
So that’s my tale of three dim sums. Moral of the story is, let’s leave the cooking to professionals!
Tags: Chinatown, Chuen Cheng Ku Restaurant, dim sum, London, Paris
A few years ago I took an intensive silversmithing workshop in NYC with my sister and cousin, who both share the same Vietnamese first name, Kieu. But to be precise, my cousin’s name is actually Kieu-Diem, and Diem is my Vietnamese first name. As if that weren’t confusing enough, my cousin’s twin sister’s name is the reverse of her name, so it’s Diem-Kieu. You can imagine how it is when we’re all together in the same room and someone calls out our names–you’d get all 4 sets of eyes looking back at you.
But my cousin Kieu shares more than a name with us. She loves jewelry making and large tools (don’t ask me why I collect hammers and want to buy a loom) possibly even more than I do, and has created a wonderful business at Bead Q! with her husband Andy around this passion. This weekend we finally got our schedules in sync and I met up with her during one of her classes at the CREATE Mixed Media Retreat in Costa Mesa.
Now, it’s been quite a few years since that class in NYC, and that was the last time Kieu saw me wielding a torch while on some kind of painkiller. It wasn’t pretty, but we all survived bootcamp and she went home with enough knowledge to become a teacher, and I went home with jewelry I know I made myself but without much recollection of how I did it in the first place. But she promised me her “cold connections” class is easy-breezy fun…translation: I won’t be able to harm myself or other students or burn down the venue.
Anyway, in 4 hours she showed us how to take a piece of copper, imagine jewelry designs around it, and fuse parts of an old watch into the designs with rivets.
The above was my starter kit. Is it any wonder I chose the copper with the gator-embossed design? I cut the copper into two strips,
rounded out the corners and filed the edges down:
Then I stacked the parts of a watch to see how the end design might look for what will become my bracelet:
Once I was set with my design, I used the hole puncher–the small but powerful tool seen to the right of the following picture–then made some rivets with cut copper tubes:
Next, I soaked the strips in the “pickle” juice for about ten minutes. Then with a small butane torch we skimmed the surface with the flame to get all the funky hues to come out:
I’m happy to report I did not scorch anyone’s hair or my own eyebrows while doing so. Finally, I attached the watch parts to the copper strips with more rivets (did I already say I’m all about making rivets now!) and gently bent them to fit the curve of my arm:
I added some hoop rings to the rivets and will attach leather strings to those rings. I prefer to use leather strings to clasps since I think they will stay on my small arm better. So this is what my cuff will look like once it’s all connected:
Can’t wait to meet up with Kieu in Ohio for her next class. She already promised me she will take me to the Amish auctions up there. Maybe I’ll find a loom…
Tags: Amish, Bead Q!, Costa Mesa, CREATE mixed media retreat
