CouturiersIt would have been quite impossible not to choose Valentino and his partner Giancarlo Giammetti as this week’s style icons after watching Valentino: The Last Emperor. Their career and legacy of making beautiful couturier clothes for exquisite women speaks for itself.
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ActressI went on a recent binge buying cheap vintage magazines on eBay and while flipping through a Vogue from 1972 I was struck by the spectacular bohemian elegance of Silvana Mangano, a “secret star” who “rejects fame to live on a country farm as the woman she wants to be – a wife and mother.”
I’m floored by her intriguing beauty and her lifestyle but have to admit, I’ve only seen her on screen in here late career role as the Reverend Mother Ramallo in Dune. Must add more to my netflix queue! It turns out that her family is a bit more familiar to me: her husband was the late mega-producer Dino de Laurentis (Barbarella, Flash Gordon, Conan the Barbarian, Dune, Manhunter, Blue Velvet, etc); her granddaughter is the shiny toothed food hostess Giada de Laurentiis.
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47 Bond StreetIl Buco would be worth the price of admission just for the cozy and romantic décor. We were tucked away in the much quieter cellar (upstairs is vibrant and noisy) next to racks of wine, dried wildflowers, copper and brick. It was so dark that it was next to impossible to capture many photos, but I grabbed a few from their site to give you a better idea.
Fortunately, the food rivals the atmosphere. No wonder this family run hot spot is perpetually packed and has remained a local favorite and staple for romantic meals for over a decade.
While I’m sure you can hardly go wrong with the menu, we made excellent selections by sharing the beef carpaccio, the octopus with potatoes, and the beets. We also shared a tasty wide pasta and mushroom special entree. Caramel gelato and pineapple sorbet finished the meal perfectly.
The staff is friendly and accommodating, making us feel especially taken care of. And our bus boy was excited to inform me that they are now open for lunch with great paninis. Can’t wait to try them.
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Made With Only Five IngredientsHaagen Dazs takes me back to my childhood, back when my dad used to have a goldenrod tee-shirt with a Haagen Dazs logo in brown. I still love that shirt, but I haven’t had a scoop of Haagen Dazs in years – but friends have been raving about their new ‘Five’ brand.
The idea is simple: ice cream made from only five ingredients. It’s a refreshing option today when most store bought foods are loaded with who knows what. Best of all, they’re really tasty – both the coffee and passion fruit have been huge hits and I’m looking forward to trying the mint and brown sugar.
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My friends and I have been enjoying what has been come to be called simply “the game” at Mercat and Mercat Negre for some time now. It’s not really a game though, it’s actually just a vessel/carafe that allows one to chug wine through a funnel; the goal is to pull the carafe away from you until the thin stream is at arm’s length – without spilling all over your face… so I guess it’s kind of a game.
It’s fun and we coined it the “fancy asshole” but I recently learned from the blog, Chained and Perfumed, that it’s actually called Orgy.
But it’s really, actually, really called a porron and you can buy one to get your friends pleasantly tanked in the privacy of your own home at Despana.
Forgive the vaguely porny images of myself and friends doing the orgy after the jump/below.
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at The New Museum through Feb. 7th, 2010The Urs Fischer exhibit currently taking over three floors of the New Museum is wonderfully unusual; every time the elevator doors opened, I was taken aback. The first floor is cluttered, to a collage-like effect, with large, mirrored boxes screen printed with non-scaled objects like cupcakes, meat, VHS tapes, CD cleaners, telephone booths, running shoes, high heels, photography books and (most oddly) an Ashanti cardboard cut out. I wrote down some of the books titles (Schweizer Sagen, Marius Pictor fotografo) to get an idea of why he picked these particular objects to display together, but I think that maybe the objects themselves are irrelevant and he’s more in awe that all these objects coexist in our world… but you’d have to ask him.
The second floor whisks you to an entirely different environment and mood. The walls, seemingly sterile and gray are actually wallpapered with photographs of the room itself. Whether through lighting or the tints in the photos, the walls offer amazing shades of color the longer you look at them – the perfect backdrop for a candy purple melting grand piano – and as you peruse the room, a few moments of unexpected humor. It’s rare to see so many gallery goers actually laughing out loud in an exhibit.
The third floor again, takes you to another world, this one full of gigantic metal sculptures made from tiny pieces of clay he pinched together then sent away to be replicated many, many times larger. Within these twirling, hulking, silvery shapes is a bright pink melting lamp post, a skeleton covered in dirt, muck, and lint, and the one piece I just did not “get” at all: a cake and travel bag floating above a subway seat with ceramic slugs.
In fact, what any of it all means escapes me entirely – but I felt transformed, like I was walking into an environment like none I had ever experienced before, and I found the whole thing fantastic.
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Great AccessoryI am truly obsessed with this girly striped bow tie I picked up at the increasingly impressive Japanese run thrift shop/gallery About Glamour. Two recent visits, several amazing purchases… but today we focus on the bow tie.
It’s not just for has-been pundits anymore. If you don’t believe me and my own fashion sense, I’ve compiled a collection of women (and a smattering of men) sporting the androgynous accessory.
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Fashion Through the AgesSuch a great find for those of us who delight in vintage magazines and fashion images. The L’Officiel archives are extensive (way to go, team of interns that I assume was in charge of this task), dating all the way back to the 1920’s.
Their other publications are also represented (nice to see Milla in the early nineties, Redford in his finest days). Set aside a few hours for this one.
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2008 Performance at the Wilbur TheaterThe unique comedic style of Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, and David Wain may not be exactly mainstream stand up, but it certainly makes me laugh. This is their first live show released to DVD and their easy banter (which should be easy, since they’ve been comedy partners for like twenty years) is an infectious blend of high and low brow humor. Not just anyone can just make me laugh by uttering the phrase, “M’lady farts”, but Wain says it oh so right. The only thing that didn’t go over so well with me was Showalter’s dirt beard.
Watch it instantly on netflix.
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At Your Local MallThe Queens Mall offered up this gem of a crazy thing. Little did I know that the latest trend in mall kiosk portraiture technology utilizes lasers to create creepy three dimensional freak shows. Surely what Einstein envisioned when he established the theoretic foundations of the laser.
Even better than the idea of these photos is the examples on display. Rapist brothers next to Michael Jackson, rotten kids trapped in gleeful fear, and (my favorite) an odd older man wishing someone “good luck in college”. I should have gotten more photos, but the guy working the booth was as creepy as the product he was selling and aggressive in that way that only mall kiosk salesmen can be, so I had to run away.
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