Lux Lotus

The Color Therapy of Crowds

This holiday season, I had the sheer and serendipitous delight of receiving three pink gifts. Sacrerose! That may be the greatest sum of all the things of that shade that I have owned at any one time in my life (excepting hangers). J'adore my prezzies and enjoy musing on the message... What can pink signify? The San Francisco Chronicle notes the possibilities.

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Lux.Links

• Terry Castle on Claude Cahun [london review of books]
• "Adonis: The Avatar of Avant-Garde Arabic Poetry" [boloji]
• Cut Copy "So Cosmic" Mix [discobelle]
• "The industry calls them 'mooks,' or magazine-books (杂志书), and traces their origin to Japan..." [fascinating quote on publishing, continues via wayne yang; see also: eight diagrams]
• uncommonly fashionable people of berlin [face hunter]
• On Men's Style [reads like a lawyer]
• On Francesca Woodman [the fifth day of may]
• All you need for a New Year's party: a good poem and a good recipe.
  

Luxloves: Perfect Pairings

The multi-talented Gerald DeCock, who cuts my hair brilliantly and specializes in the sort of sexy, disheveled romanticism that is my life philosophy in general, is now online, thanks to my fave downtown designer, Liberation Iannillo, exquisite purveyor of "website rehab" (see also: his Trigger Magazine, complete with anti-beige manifesto). J'adore!

In the meantime, back to "the last ten days of summer...", redux. As my stylish friend and superstar colleague Juliane Wanckel says, tschüssie! (P.S. Read her genius year-end film highlights for Frieze). See ya in '08.

Of blogs and books and heated looks

Last December, I was all about gift guides and wish lists. This year it seems much simpler, perhaps because I am too tired to shop. Or to want anything, really, except a little time off and a cup of the perfect hot cocoa (which I had today! --The Aztec blend at Vosges on Madison & 83rd). I'm winding up my projects for the year and yet 2008 seems already in full swing. 2007 feels like it has a little life in it yet, so I might go chase that for a while. I'll return after the New Year with new tales to be told, as always, but before I go:

Oxford University Press blog asked me to name some recently read favorite books, and so I did.

In case you're looking for last minute gifts of the entertaining variety... my 2007 literary projects included innovative publicity campaigns for authors Gayle Brandeis (Self Storage), Jeffrey Frank (Trudy Hopedale), Dallas Hudgens (Season of Gene), Anne Landsman (The Rowing Lesson), Min Jin Lee (Free Food for Millionaires), and Jean Thompson (Throw Like a Girl).    

I can't recommend those books highly enough.

And if you're looking for a good cause this holiday season, look no further than Girls Write Now, a terrific local nonprofit literacy organization that I donated lots of time and money to this year.

Happiest of holidays to you, doves, and I hope you get everything you wish for in coming days and every day. XO.

Who knows? Who knows? Who knows?*

This restless kick I've been on has been brilliant. I've been saying "no" more than ever and all the time (like men do! Instead of "sorry," etc.), which is something I should have gotten better at ages ago. But better today than tomorrow. Tonight I skipped a party and moved my furniture around instead. More appealingly positioned: leather pouf, antique gateleg table, various paintings. Still to hang: new curtains (in "oyster" damask), rewired chandelier. And you should see the stack of pieces that need to go to L & O to get framed! Current look I'm pursuing: Charleston meets "Private Splendor" plus Whistler's Au Sixieme/the setting of La Boheme (Noted with a nod: "If you're tired of La Bohème, you're tired of love"). On a jewel box scale. This weekend, I think I'll clear my schedule and do my taxes, on which I've been procrastinating and... enough. I might even go to a hot yoga class (although it sounds like no fun at all). I'll set plenty of time aside for spontaneity like I love to do. Maison de Lux remains very dolce vita as always. Have a perfect weekend, doves! XX.

P.S. If you do 1 thing: watch Stephen Lance's film, Yolk, online.

*Too catchy for words: South African indie rockers, Dirty Skirts, "Is This It"

Windowlicker

This week's Windowlicker guest editor is Anne Landsman, author of the new novel, The Rowing Lesson (and one of my PR clients), which The New York Times Book Review praised this past weekend as "intensely exhilarating" and for its "visceral appeal." Anne says:

The second piece is the Chihauhau lamp, also from Blue Tree. It's the Carlos Night Lamp ($160.00) It's made of cast porcelain with a soft 7.5 w light and it comes with a snap-on medical cone. The designer is Kathleen Walsh. I have a dog with allergies who spends most of her life in a "medical cone" (or, as the vet  describes it, an "Elizabethan collar") so that she doesn't chew herself to bits. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the elegant suffering of this porcelain chihauhau.

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

The Flaneur (Full Circle)

After a productive moring, and on my way to lunch, I stopped into Joe on Waverly Place for a quick coffee and it was nice to be surrounded for a moment by so much original, quality art curated by my pal Jen Bekman. Then it was off for a lovely vegetarian repast with acclaimed poet Alice Fulton and her partner, Hank DeLeo (note to self: pick up her Feeling as a Foreign Language: The Good Strangeness of Poetry). I dated a vegetarian for a few years and it's an amusing sidenote that I can recall and recommend all the macrobiotic restaurants in Paris as a result. From there I stopped by my friend Tunji Dada's shop to say hello. He told me about a new capsule collection of his iconic trenchcoats that he might do as a limited edition with a noted painter, which is just his style.  As I wound my way across and downtown and on my way home, I stopped into KD Dance in Nolita for the best impulse buy of the season: full-length legwarmers! I put them on before I left the store. A few blocks later, I ran into Paddy Johnson, one of my favorite people (and art critics), who was on her way home, from where else... jen bekman!

Viktor & Rolf On Men, Style

Many thanks to Bryan for passing along page 64 of Details' December issue, featuring Viktor & Rolf's 10 Rules of Style, over lunch at Barrio Chino today. I am especially partial to #3:

"The right suit should be comfortable but tailored. It shouldn't resist your movements, but it should enhance your figure and give you the silhouette you wish for when you're undressed."

I agree wholeheartedly with that world view, and it reminds me of an IM conversation I had with my pal Amy a few months ago, prompted by my reference to more than one article of clothing I own that has prompted admirers of both genders to say they'd like to "unwrap" me "like a present." I was talking about an outfit for a date and how I would summon up the look of  "just running through a field but in a sexy way." She asked me how I "became such a fashionista" and I'll summarize my response for your amusement:

"I am just a visual person... About six months ago, I was wearing some weird get-up, and I suddenly thought to myself, 'There's a world of difference between dressing for men and dressing for women. I'll do it commes des garcons for a while.' It made me even more fashion-y, but also more subtle... an infamous story about the secret to my appeal: I purposely dress like I could get undressed in five seconds... No buttons, no zippers, no pants, etc."

I've relaxed the rules since then but it's still amusing to recall because the other day I came across some "Action Not Glamour" shoelaces that I adored but, with the exception of a pair of boots I seldom wear because the heels are agony, don't own any shoes with laces.

The semantics of clothing as a visual language have long fascinated me, as no reference goes uncoded, from uniforms to couture. I am especially reminded of attending the PEN/Faulkner Gala a few years ago and chatting over dinner with famed linguist Deborah Tannen, who pointed out that men and women's choices for formal wear are jarring in terms of what is permissible and what is scrutinized. We're always saying something. What's your take on what you wear?

{image: Viktor & Rolf Fall '05 coverage at style.com}

Windowlicker

This week's Windowlicker guest editor is Anne Landsman, author of the new novel, The Rowing Lesson (and one of my PR clients), which The New York Times Book Review praised this past weekend as "intensely exhilarating" and for its "visceral appeal." Anne says:

The first piece is the Oya Necklace (literally "neck lace"). For sale at Blue Tree on Madison Avenue, between 91st and 92nd. The price is $345. If I were to be garlanded "Fairy Princess of the World," I would choose an Oya necklace for the coronation ceremony.  The vintage hand-crocheted flowers (Oyas) hail from Anatolia and are part of a centuries-old tradition. Anatolian women bordered their scarves in oyas, using the garlands of tiny crocheted flowers and vegetables to signal emotions, "that otherwise remain unexpressed, due to the discreteness of their character."

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

Art Crush: WNYC's "The Must Have Festival," with Host Katherine Lanpher

From my good friend, colleague and frequent partner-in-crime, Katherine:

"What’s the music you have to have – must have – to live your life? That's the question at the center of WNYC's Must Have Festival.

To help you get thinking about your own answer to that question, we’re turning to artists and activists who are transforming the city and the culture we live in – asking them about the music that has transformed them.

The line-up ranges from environmental activist Majora Carter to Gerard Mortier, the incoming director of the New York City Opera, from celebrated choreographer John Jasperse to Stew, the performance artist who is opening a show in Broadway early next year.

We kick off the week on Monday with Majora, the irrepressible Queen of Green who won a genius grant for her work in the South Bronx. Be prepared for an hour that ranges from Bach to Kina’s “Girl in the Gutter’’ and a life that encompasses her grandfather’s history as a slave and the city’s future as a green space for all people, rich and poor.

All Must Have shows start at 7 p.m. on the Evening Music program at WNYC, 93.9 FM and wnyc.org.

AND make sure you tune in Tuesday night when we’ll do a live show with Alex Ross, a music critic at the New Yorker whose book “The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century’’ was just named as one of the 10 best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review and has been described as the biggest cultural boost classical music could receive. If you don't understand the connection between a 15th century lamentation and Bob Dylan - tune in! 

Hope you get a chance to listen in either real time or on-demand. The stories that unfold with the musical choices are riveting – you’ll be hard pressed not to make some additions to your own music library - and that's the idea."