loooooove it.

this is amazing, so so inspiring.

a rare find.

I discovered the Black Pheonix Alchemy Lab today. (I know, i know-Americans probably know all about it) It is so genius. I'm not really a person that can resist perfume names like Queen Mab and Absinthe.How about Casanova or Dragon's Blood? My personal favourite-Unseelie.

They have a massive range with gorgeous lines like Mad Hatter (Where you can find Drink Me, Jabberwocky and The Queen of Hearts) Theres Wanderlust with Machu Piccu, Tintagel and The Hamptons.. you will find in the Bewitching Brews line-Yggdrasil, Brimstone and Wilde.

Get the sense that I am really liking the names?

Apart from the evocative imagery of the names (My english teacher would have a field day) the perfumes live up to ( and exceed) all expectations.

this is for the person who wants to smell like Black Ice, Voodoo or Lorelai. and that's all us fashion fanatics right?

Dream team

So cool it hurts. The Paris Vogue team.

given my current obsession with all things Miu Miu and Prada news of a Prada collaboration with LG to design a phone is getting me VERY excited. It will apparently have no keys, just a touch screen and will probably all get sold out before it even reaches Australia. Oh and that other problem? I i definately won't be able to afford it.

I leave you with some Prada. (mmm yummy)

avant-gardist.

I really love the avant-gard. LOVE LOVE LOVE it. Give me freaky Gareth Pugh and conceptual Rei Kawakubo any day. This extends to books, architecture and music as well. So i was very inspired when i learnt about John Cage and his musical piece 4'33. I really love how Cage brings anarchism, desires and mythology into his music.

4'33 is a composition that lasts 4 minutes and 33 seconds, without a single sound being played. While this might seem abit silly at first (i mean 4 minutes of silence?) the deeper concept is that the human and environmental-people shuffling, breathing, floors creaking etc are a part of, and indeed IS the music. So in that way, the blank canvas isn't blank at all but it is a composition that is always changing.John Cage leaves the physical/audible aspects of his piece to chance or chaos-he control is in the concept. Thus audiences have to look at and think about music in an entirely different way.

That's a great example of what i love about the avant-garde. The constant challenging of how I percieve the world and my interactions with it. I think it's as close to the ethereal as Socrates or Plato would describe.

Life of Pi Movie

I'm not sure how many people have read the book "Life of Pi" but it is a Booker Mann prize winner by Yann Martel. I think that it is quite esoteric, but very extoradinary-it's quite deep and requires a few readings to try to understand the many layers of meaning. It's a brilliant work of literature.

So, (onto the real topic) i was abit concerned about the upcoming movie adaption, it's not a typical Hollywood blockbuster and like The Virgin Suicides or A Beautiful Mind it needs to be very carefully adapted. But i'm so happy to learn that Jean-Pierre Jeunet will be the director.

The Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro team have produced some of my absolute favourite french movies. Amélie, Delicatessan, La Cite des Enfants Perdus and A Very Long Engagement.

in my temple of worship..

i don't particularly admire young celebrities (apart from a few- margherita missoni, julia roitfeld, audrey tatou). Rather, i look at older stronger women as inspiration-they this amazing energy, a sense of being really self possessed and innately stylish.

(a short and very incomplete gallery of my favourite people)

Diana Vreeland (famous, fabulous editor)

Nan Kempner (socialite)


Carine Roitfeld ( is love..)

Lady Amanda Harlech (Karl's blue blooded muse)


Anna Mouglalis (french actress, another one of Karl's muses)

Tilda Swinton (to me, she's Katherine Hepbun reincarnate)



Sophia Coppola (oh come on! you know her! Marie Antoinette for goodness sakes...)



and pretty much all the Voguettes. (Emanuelle Alt, Camilla Nickerson, Grace Coddington Lucinda Chambers..even Plum Sykes sometimes)

I think this picture sums up what I mean; Marie-Amelia Sauve (Paris Vogue) with Nathalie Marek(?) are collaborators and muses to Nicholas Ghesquiere-strong, powerful women who wear the clothes rather than let the clothes wear them.

cuteness..

stumbled onto artist/illustrator Eveline Tarunadjaja 's flikir account- she's utterly delightful!!

you can buy postcards of her illustrations too:

garden of eden..

Vogue China is creating some beautiful editorials-

(Rose Huntington-Whitely)

Yes, I'm a noveau hippie...

I read an amazing book today and it really got me thinking about the state of affairs in the world. I mean really, we're heading down a very dark path.

I'm not trying to be a fatalist here, i'm actually quite the optimist in person but if one took a realistic look at everything going on at the moment it presents a pretty bleak image of the future. There is so, so much happening that should be stopped-from the biggies like global warming,the global energy crisis and the depleating fish stocks to atrocities and repression like Aceh, East Timor and Tibet and..well i could go on an on really.

I think that it's really shocking that many of these issues are not more prominent in the media, if if they are, it is presented in an out of context or one sided way. As humans we really can't afford to be oblivious to the many social and environmental issues around. These will only grow to become even worse problems in the future.

So, getting back to the book I read- it was called "Half Gone-Oil,Gas,Hot air and the Global Energy Crisis" and dealt with a pretty serious subject. I was expecting a pretty dry and statistics filled book but the author Jeremy Legget was absolutely hilarious! Legget is incredibly informative and presents clear data (yes, with lots of statistics..) that is very well cited with about 40 pages of references! This is the book to read if you want to learn all about our depleting energy resources and the havoc the use of these fossil fuels is having on our environment (not the least of all Global Warming).

The author has a great sense of humor and i dont think i nodded off at all reading this book- and that is reading mind numbing info like "$13 to $34...500 mllion barrels..."

The various players in the stage is ingeniously dubbed "the Empire of Oil" and the industrial revolution="the Great Addiction" while the carbon era is "the Great Cook-Up" and America? it is "Number One Nation State" (of course)

as funny as it is though, this book is FACT and doesn't rely on bashing or one sided rants (i.e Michael Moore) to sell his book, the 40 pages of citations should be evidence enough of it's credibility. I hope to read more from this author in the future-he's right up there with Noam Chomsky..Jared Diamond- basically the greatest thinkers of the modern world.

my miu miu glasses!!

!!!!!!!!

same as the ones in the f/w miu miu campaign

skeletal city

photographer-Chris Dorland

i want candy

this is from an old Vogue UK ed by Nick Knight

Looking at the stockings...

all i can say is- I WANT!!IWANT!!

My Hero!

My life in fashion: Julia Restoin Roitfeld
Carolyn Asome
Clothes aren't just what you wear - they are a new pop art


Julia Restoin Roitfeld, 26, the daughter of the editor of French Vogue, Carine Roitfeld, was born in Paris and studied design management at Parsons Paris before transferring to the New York branch two years ago. She set up her own design company this summer and is currently working as a freelance graphic designer for Baron and Baron. She was chosen to be the face of Tom Ford’s first perfume, Black Orchid, which is launched on Friday.

My mother is a more daring dresser but I’ve started to catch up. That said, it’s relative and I’ve always been a bit rebellious. As an eight-year-old, I’d wear black PVC trousers to school, something that was unheard of for students my age who dressed in that bon chic, bon genre grey way, all navy, white or black . . . and there was me with the shiny trousers.

I was 10 or 11, when some of girls at school told me they knew who my mother was. I then began to realise the sort of fashion/design background I came from. She must have been working at French Glamour at the time and sometimes took me on her shoots; great for meeting creative people from all over the world at such a young age. Mario Testino, for example, has worked with my mother from the beginning.

I knew she had a great eye but I didn’t always follow her advice: at one point I went through a stage of wearing purple stripes in my hair and red Doc Martens, the opposite of her style. She understood — she was very tolerant. She would tell me when something looked really ugly, however, and it would really p*** me off because I knew it was true, but I wanted to do things my own way. I’ve never resented what she does or been embarrassed. She was always successful with my guy friends and teachers; I was known for having the cool mum and she’d turn up to all my parent evenings and even a field trip once, so although she was this sort of icon, to me she was still a protective mother.

I’m really impressed by the power of the fashion industry. Some people think that clothes are just things that you wear to cover yourself but I’m blown away because clothes to me are a sort of new pop art. Clothes can be either art or design but need a real purpose. That said, I don’t shop that much. I might buy a bit of Marc by Marc Jacobs because he makes great day to evening dresses, or I go for some vintage at Resurrection in NoLita. When I’m in Paris, though, aside from the odd trip to Miu Miu or Prada, I’d prefer to go to a sex shop in Pigalle for a miniskirt. And of course I also get to raid my mother’s wardrobe because she is incredibly generous.

Celebrity culture is much bigger in New York — and in the States generally — than it is in France. I’m not inspired by many actresses or celebs in France at the moment. I’m a big fan of Brigitte Bardot, who represents my perfect woman, not so much for her clothes but for her attitude. Great style is all about dressing for your body shape or personality. For example, I’ve got an ass and boobs so I dress to celebrate that with a cinched waist or short skirt and some cleavage. It was hugely flattering to be asked to represent Tom Ford’s first perfume. I was so surprised because it came out of the blue. To do this for a perfume is a big deal but more so because it is Tom Ford, and it’s even bigger because it’s his first.

It’s liberating living in New York. I can dress pretty much how I want to and people are less judgmental than they are in France. In Paris, women have this very classic touch that perhaps some New Yorkers envy, but it is very, very conservative. People have such fun with their clothes here and they are open to new ideas.

The talk of rivalry between myself and Anna Wintour’s daughter, Bee Schaffer, is just silly. I’m about ten years older than her for a start, and we have a completely different circle of friends. Why would you expect us to hang out together? Then there’s this whole fashion dynasty thing that gets reported on a lot in gossip columns about so-and-so snubbing each other. I’ve known Margherita Missoni for a long time and we have the same international group of friends and go to the same places. Is that so strange?

Black Orchid will be available from Harrods, Harvey Nichols and Selfridges, London. From £52 for a 50ml bottle.

Sunday morning-Velvet Underground

Reed, Cale)

Sunday morning
Brings the dawn in
It's just a restless feeling by my side
Early dawning
Sunday morning
It's just the wasted years so close behind
Watch out the world's behind you
There's always someone around you who will call
It's nothing at all


Sunday morning
And I'm falling
I've got a feeling I don't want to know
Early dawning
Sunday morning
It's all the streets you crossed, not so long ago
Watch out the world's behind you
There's always someone around you who will call
It's nothing at all


Sunday morning
Sunday morning