Lux Lotus

Today + Tomorrow

Today I did a strategic publicity consultation for Figment, a forthcoming community for young adults inspired by a New Yorker article on cell phone novels [image source]. I also received a note from an author who wanted to know if anything can be done a year after a book's publication. I said, among other things, "I certainly wouldn't say that it's impossible–– I did an entire campaign based on the premise that a good book is always a good book. The challenges are different is all. It's your work, and your career, and if you feel the audience is still out there, trust your intuition." Tomorrow (Saturday) I'm discussing PR at the Center for Independent Publishing at 11am as part of a daylong writers' conference. My full schedule is always at LaurenCerand.com. You can also download my talk, "Innovative Publicity Now" if you'd like.

Windowlicker

If I had an extra room, I'd give it a study vibe...

 

[Bresson rocker, $1,300 at Anthropologie]

 

[Tajik brown wool rug, $460 at Overstock]

['40s-inspired Beacon floor lamp, $250 at CB2]

["Paris" by Gregory Krum print, $200 at 20x200 (20% off storewide 24-hour sale)]

[Small case, $259 at Wisteria]

 

[Ikat screen, $175 at Ten Thousand Villages]

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

Bros

Last night my little brother and I went to dinner. Here we are in the photobooth at the Smith. This series perfectly captures us. One of the many things I love about my brother is his zen calm in the face of everything. He is a lifelong athlete (football, wrestling, lacrosse), used to high stakes that would break lesser people in seconds. He does not freak out just because he is in a photobooth. He remains cool, ready for the challenge at hand. He came to win.

Windowlicker

Speaking of Louise Bourgeois (and I'm thinking it might be time for me to take a day trip up to DIA: Beacon and appreciate her work there again), this photograph makes her the poster child (with 98 candles on her cake!) for classic style in my mind...

[Pendleton "City Coat," on sale for $102.99]

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

On Attention

People often criticize new media, and digital culture, for shortening attention spans. While I am open to discussion, I am skeptical of that stance. I believe people become attached to the familiar, and many things we assume are natural are industrial constructs (see: the canals of commerce); for instance, the novel as a storytelling vehicle was more or less created by the desire of publishers to resell content that had first appeared as newspaper serials during a period when industrial development made print media cheap and accessible. And yet, every time I speak someone laments that the novel is being eroded by technology, like some divine hand made it. Nope, people did. We'll make something new. Same thing with film. There's no reason visual content should conform to a 30, 60, or 120 minute standard just because that's how we sell and consume ads. Lately, I've been watching more and more stuff online, looking at new ways to tell stories. I love the elegant architecture of what can be said straightaway:

The Lux Lotus Interview: Tips on Style From Vintage Collector, Sally Cohen

    

Diana Vreeland had the Costume Institute, Sally Cohen has a spacious house in a suburb redolent of The Ice Storm.  I'm in awe of the sublime finds I saw in her collection, and check her new Etsy shop daily for inventory (purpose: to fund her first-ever dream trip to Paris this fall!). While's she's deciding what to wear on la Rive Gauche, I thought we'd chat with a true stylist extraordinaire and see if we might come away with a few secrets...

LC for LUX LOTUS: You say that you love the hunt, "the pursuit of those elusive treasures among the estate sales and church basements of the great Northeast." What do you look for when you're on the prowl? Specific designers? Materials?

SALLY COHEN: I look for fabrics, mostly. When you're faced with literally hundreds of choices, it helps to have honed your eyes to the good stuff –– the gabardines, Bakelites, lucites, linens, wools and silks, which have a different sheen altogether than the seemingly oil-based products of the last thirty or forty years. Then, when you find a good fabric, you pray to the design gods for the right color (I'm always debating what's more important, how silly is that?) and then that it's intact, and that it's well-made, whatever it is. Chances are good that, if it's made previous to 1975, it's made well. My heart still jumps when I find it. I've learned to live with the disappointment of seeing something out of the corner of my eye and thinking, "No! Could it be? Is it?" and being mistaken. Other materials? I am in the growling midst of a Lucite fetish, and cork, and anything golden.

LC for LUX LOTUS: What aspects of a piece make it timeless?

SALLY COHEN: Timeless? Hmm. Well, it seems to me that the clothes I love, primarily 20's(bien sur)-60's, were made less with the idea of showing off the body and more with the idea of showing off the idea, if you know what I mean. Women used to conform their bodies to the clothes, rather than the other way around, and so something can be, on its own, quite lovely on the hanger and peculiar on the unpinned body. Not that I'm advocating the conformity and absurdity-nay, downright misogyny- of the whalebones and stilettos-those poor women! But I do love something that gives me entree into the mind of whoever designed it, if it's the giant color-blocking of the great Finns a la Marimekko or the cascading, fantastical reams of silk of a Balenciaga. They are so evocative! Of everything! If something makes you gasp, it's timeless.

LC for LUX LOTUS: What's something to look for this season/year?

SALLY COHEN: I can't help you there, I am so out of the fashion loop... I sort of despise fashion, I think it's like the snake that eats itself, but not in a good way –– fashion is designed, I feel, to dispose of itself. It's too competitive. Ever hear of a 1661? The woman, or man, who looks 16 from the back and 61 from the front? Well, that's fashion. Any sort of 'trend' or exterior voice telling you how you should look, what you should be communicating, has, by its very nature, an agenda, and that's just lying. Or selling.

LC for LUX LOTUS: Any recommendations for the budding icon on a budget?

SALLY COHEN: Advice for the budding budget? You don't need any money to look fabulous. Just wear the hell out of whatever you've got on, and you'll look like a million. Go to the thrift stores! Go to the library, read about Dior and The New Look and the Great Feud between Schiaparelli and Chanel! Who was Suzy Parker? Babe Paley? Dovima, and The Shrimp? Courreges and Charles James? Paul Poiret and the astonishing House of Worth? Roger Vivier? There's so much to learn about style and glamour, and what it says about us... Get smart about what fits you well and what doesn't, and please, for god's sake, look at yourself objectively. Enough with the asscrack and overabundance of cleavage already. Sometimes, as Chanel said, "Elegance is refusal."

LC for LUX LOTUS: Captain Ahab had his great white whale in Moby Dick, the conquest that obsessed him. What's yours?

SALLY COHEN: My Moby Dick is Pucci, mi amour Emilio. I can remember, like first kisses, every piece of his I've ever found. He's the dreamiest. 'Course I love a good Bonnie Cashin, and I never turn down a little Gucci. And let's not forget the second stringers –– Henry Waters made Shoes of Consequence, and Alfred Shaheen was, indisputably, The Master Printer of Hawaii, as it says right on his labels. And then there's Vera..

LC for LUX LOTUS: What inspires your style - beyond fashion?

SALLY COHEN: What inspires my what? Style? Humor, grace, Canadian Geese, perspective. Calder, Richter, Miro, Currin, Barney, Sargent, Bourgeois, Koons... Italian sunglasses. Humor. Good coffee. Katherine Hepburn and Rudy Vallee. Art deco jewels. Gershwin, Porter, Hoagy Carmichael. The smell of books, the smell of Fracas and Dior's Addict. Color, I love color, and, through it, a pleasing proportion. Humor, equanimity, spelling. Candy. Harmony. Chaos, too, for that matter. Everyone else in the world. You.

Visit Sally at Miss Sally's House of Truth & Beauty on Etsy.

Windowlicker

I do lead a glamorous, deeply satisfying life. And it's hard work! Sometimes at the end of a day like today, I wish there were someone to speak to me in soothing tones, make me a cup of tea, unclench my hand from my BlackBerry, and deftly slip a pretty bracelet on my weary wrist before tucking me under the covers...

[Roberto Coin rose gold bracelet, $5,300 at Saks Fifth Avenue]

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

Sunday Styles

Got new glasses today - Moscot's "Mangito."

Further Springtime Evenings

My balcony door was weather-scarred and it was clear no one had ever loved it much anyway, and so I decided a coat of paint would be the thing: Farrow & Ball's "Green Smoke." I also ordered a narrower, longer table from Overstock so that I can enjoy meals out there. The cafe table there now is a squeeze and I gotta breathe! Look books/inspiration: Shop Class as Soul Craft, My French Life, The Bloomsbury Look. I also finished An Education this morning in bed and found Lynn Barber's descriptions of her husband's life as a painter touching and vital.  Best part of the day? Turning on some Django to brush on primer coat #2 at midnight, and now wrapping this up so that I can make a bowl of Mexican hot cocoa before bed. Pictured, above: Charleston.

The Day in Pictures

This morning I woke up in Larchmont at my friend Sally's house and we went to a church rummage sale. I bought some blue glasses, for all the bohemian reasons, which I later left behind in Sally's car, because I'm so bohemian. I didn't buy the outfit pictured, but when I saw this ratty fur coat and black wool dress, I realized my only sartorial aspiration has ever been, and possibly will ever be, to look like a Prohibition-era gunrunner's moll, in the manner of Billy Bathgate or The Wild Party.

Then we went to a place called Walter's for hot dogs and milkshakes. We sat outside at a picnic table and discussed boys and traveling, the two best subjects in the world.

We spent the rest of the afternoon going through Sally's vast archive and picking some stuff to style and photograph for her new shop. A wonderful thing that happened when I later exited Grand Central: I ran into my sister on the street and gave her one of those little tennis bracelets she loves that I found this morning.