Lux Lotus

Windowlicker

Today I am dreaming about some unfathomably cool Balenciaga sunglasses I saw the other day that smoothly herald the end for hippie-dippie oversized shades, but they are not online. Neither is any example of Goyard's exclusive print for Loveless in Tokyo. So as long as what I want remains just out of reach (blame it on Mercury Retrograde, they say...), why not flirt with a bed that would dwarf my apartment?

[King-size hand carved bed in high gloss white, $1899 at Brocade]

Windowlicker - from the French for window shopping: faire du lèche-vitrine - appears on Tuesday and Thursdays at 10am EST-ish.

Windowlicker

Earlier this evening I went to a "very New York," in the nicest way, book party on the Upper East Side. Joan Didion was there. Afterwards, Anne Landsman, who was also a guest, convinced me to cross the park and hang out at her place for a while, which was brilliant. I met her husband, who's an architect, and son, and daughter, who, in the course of showing me her wardrobe for her upcoming Bat Mitzvah, pulled out the most exquisite ballet flats I have ever seen. They are made by Bloch, the same brand as the slippers I wear to dance class. In some ways, I can imagine myself still living in New York, or a city much like it, in twenty years, with my own little entourage, and that could be sublime. In other daydreams, I am still happily solo, stepping gingerly out of a Mercedes 190SL, living out in the country near a good enough bakery and maybe a lake. I'd be content either way, to be sure, and the shoes would remain the same.

[Bloch Luxury Ballet Flat in Bianco/Nero, on sale for $119 at shopbop.com]

Windowlicker - from the French for window shopping: faire du lèche-vitrine - appears on Tuesday and Thursdays at 10am EST-ish.

Windowlicker

I just had a very amusing conversation with a specialty watch repair shop in New Jersey that has my beloved, now classified as "vintage," watch, although it's only ten years old. The man on the phone ran down the list of repairs and how particularly difficult it would be to find parts, especially for the scratched face and worn-out strap, when I interjected to protest, "Oh I don't care about the aesthetics at all. I already love it. I just want the hands to go around again." And then we had a nice laugh and, for the moment at least, all my problems were solved. I treasure things that get better with age, like watches, friendships, certain cafes, cashmere sweaters and good luggage, even if that kind of affection is out of step with the rush for the new. I don't mind at all.

[Vintage Drop Duffle, on sale in black for $693 at TAnthony.com]

Windowlicker - from the French for window shopping: faire du lèche-vitrine - appears on Tuesday and Thursdays at 10am EST-ish.

The Editor

After years of admiring my jewel box of a closet– stuffed to the gills with exquisite vintage and designer clothes I collected on various travels from Omaha to Tokyo to Martha’s Vineyard and back again– from a discreet distance as I couldn’t actually open it, I made peace with my space limitations and decided to, as Paris Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld once advised, “edit, edit, edit.” My zen is your good fortune, ladies, as I donated several bins of YSL, Valentino, Prada, Bottega Veneta, etc. to the John Street United Methodist Church Tag Sale, where it’s all going to get sold for about five bucks or less and I love that. Thursday & Friday, 10am-4pm at 44 John Street (between Nassau and Williams)...

The rest of my picks for this week's edition of The Smart Set are here.

Previously: Heavens to Betsy.

Windowlicker

I was all set to write a post on "slow food" as my preferred outlook earlier this evening and then, naturally, shoved a Bounty in my mouth as quickly as I could. Anyway, as far as I can tell I'm all for "slow everything" these days. In that vein, I'd like to start a collection of bangle bracelets... slowly. Maybe have three or four truly lovely ones in hand by the time I'm forty (I turn twenty-nine next week)?

[Ippolita Skinny Bangle, $695 each at Neiman Marcus]

Windowlicker - from the French for window shopping: faire du lèche-vitrine - appears on Tuesday and Thursdays at 10am EST-ish.

Another Chicago

While I was waiting in line in the post office on Doyers Street (fun fact: also known as "The Bloody Angle"), I thought I might kill some time by checking via Blackberry to see if Dana had posted anything to Young Manhattanite about our trip. She did. I spent the next fifteen minutes hunched over, laughing, as tears streamed down my face. After I collected myself, a man leaned across the rope separating the two of us in our various sections of the Mobius Strip-like line and said only, "This is a precious moment of happiness in the post office." And it was.

The Sirens of Chicago

Pictured: a pair of silver high heels on the street in Lakeview.

Last night I returned from spending the weekend in Chicago for the Pilcrow Lit Fest with my friend Dana. It was my first time in the city and it particularly struck me as very green and low-density. The wide streets and abundance of neon signage best viewed from a car in motion lend the whole enterprise a mid-century optimism that I like. When we weren't going to or appearing on panels at the festival, we hung out with Dana's friend Tom, who's a brilliant, searingly sarcastic graphic designer and who kindly drove us around Oak Park, which has its own Frank Lloyd Wright Historic District. Another highlight was a gloriously fun dinner in Lakeview with Jami Attenberg, Wendy McClure, Timothy Schaffert and Laural Winter, and lunch on the Gold Coast at a little French bistro that plays Blossom Dearie and "My Baby Just Cares For Me" with a friend of Dana's family who regaled us with tales of her travels in India, Bhutan and China in the '70s and '80s and Italy and Santa Fe more recently. Mostly, just kicking around a new town was really fun; I didn't do much shopping per se but managed to come across the perfect straight-leg grey jeans, an oversize toffee brown hand-tooled leather belt with floral motif from Italy, and a pair of very Jane Birkin-esque white ballet flats. And of course we hit the photo booth at zine-tastic local landmark, Quimby's. On Saturday I moderated the closing panel on independent publishing with thirteen (!) participants from Featherproof Books, Future Tense Publishing, Impetus Press, Other Voices Books, So New Media, Two Dollar Radio, Word Riot, et al. After that we attended a benefit for the New Orleans Public Library Foundation, lovingly and masterfully emceed by Pilcrow's own Amy Guth and Leah Jones, which raised $4000 for possibly the best cause ever. On the way back, Dana and I chillaxed with iced chais in the airport and impetuously decided to upgrade to first class for the short but leisurely night flight. It couldn't have been a better decision. I'm not sure when I'll have a reason to return to Chicago, but my adventures in the Midwest are hardly over, as I'll be heading out to "Star City" for the Nebraska Summer Writers Conference -- with Kurt Andersen, Sean Wilsey, Meghan Daum, Kim Addonizio and more -- in three weeks, and then to Omaha for another Downtown... Lit Fest this fall.

Related, from Flickr: Me, moderating the afore-mentioned panel, and here we are at the opening night party at Matilda's.

We're Like Two Ships

I just got home from ballet at Dance New Amsterdam and then the laughingest dinner at Pakistan Tea House (which appears, unnamed, in Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan) with my friends Lydia and Cian (whose elegant glasses are apparently standard issue from the Irish health service!), and now I have to catch some z's. Tomorrow, more to do -- work, travel -- but not enough time and so I'll return after the weekend.

Windowlicker

My sister and I had a circuitous conversation the other day when she asked me if I knew what those "preppy green jackets" are called, using "Kate from the gallery" as an example of someone who she had seen wearing one a couple of years ago. Finally, I realized the item in question was a Barbour coat, and this one, "a British country classic," is indeed lovely in almost precisely the evergreen way that my favorite line from Proust's Swann in Love always makes me smile: "Each kiss summons another." I suppose the same could be said for barn jackets.

[Barbour Active Classic Bedale Jacket, $345 at Orvis.com]

Windowlicker - from the French for window shopping: faire du lèche-vitrine - appears on Tuesday and Thursdays at 10am EST-ish.

Windowlicker

When I was a child, my (impossibly glamorous) mother was a flight attendant and my (impossibly charming) father was a consultant to the aviation industry and one of my main forms of entertainment was tracking down the little notes and things they would leave in their absence, then waiting patiently for their hopefully gift-laden return. They had different styles; my mother would hide presents around the house (a tea set, a toy stethoscope with battery-operated heartbeat) for us to find once she left, while my father liked souvenirs. For years, he would often bring me back a charm from wherever he'd been, and I've had them loose in a sack at the bottom of the traincase I use as my jewelry box ever since. I've got France (a tiny Arc de Triomphe), Orlando (Donald Duck), San Antonio (The Alamo), Dulles International Airport, Seattle, Denver, LAX, Reno, New Orleans or San Francisco (a streetcar with driver whose head bobs as the wheels turn)... and since this is the year that I'm going to do everything I've always wanted to do (e.g. take an Isadora Duncan dance class, spend some time at an ashram, et al), I'm going to get that charm bracelet.

[Travel charm bracelet,  $495 at Tiffany & Co.]

Windowlicker - from the French for window shopping: faire du lèche-vitrine - appears on Tuesday and Thursdays at 10am EST-ish.