dior homme

This is everyone's dream life, right? Running around New York to the background sound of Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love. Fooling around with a guy - a mix between Jean-Paul Belmondo and James Dean - in an elevator. And just generally pretending to be in a modern-day French New Wave movie, all the while "dressing normally". Or as put in one of the other David Fincher for GAP ads, this is "the uniform of rebellion and conformity".

Be that as it may, Camille Rowe ticks all the boxes in this ad. Breton stripes, a white cotton shirt, a ballerina skirt, cotton undies, the obligatory cigarette, simple black flats, the boyfriend's Dior manteau and a red lipstick. Et voilà! The perfect Parisienne wardrobe. That is, if life consisted solely out of frolicking around with Robert Pattinson in bed.

valentino acqua floreale

 "Valentina possesses the multifaceted and unconventional allure of a sophisticated modern woman who adores the spotlight, but also loves the sumptuous shadows of her ancestral palazzo and the enveloping, reassuring embrace of ancient frescoed rooms and secret gardens.

Acqua Floreale is like a leisurely stroll in the midst of nature, immersed in the sensual and exciting fragrances of a summer garden.

Limpid summer mornings and sunny Roman gardens are also evoked through the bottle design with its light nuances and transparencies." (x)

"In 1964 a client gave Valentino what he calls “the biggest gift of my life.” Jacqueline Kennedy bought six of his couture dresses, all in black and white, to wear during her year of mourning after J.F.K.’s death."
So Very Valentino, by Matt Tyrnauer

the modern muse

How dreamy is this Estée Lauder short film providing insight into Arizona Muse's life, who is the star of their current perfume campaign.

A lovelier-than-thou picnic scene with her closest friends dressed in pink and white in London, sitting on the steps of a New York apartment, being chauffeured around in a cab with nice old leather seats, rhapsodizing about childhood holidays spent at her grandparents house picking strawberries, strolling the Massachusetts pastures with her horse and cherubic son Nico in hand, spending tender moments on a white wooden porch with her family.

No, it wouldn't hurt to be the soft-spoken Arizona Grace Muse - a name she didn't like as a child. "It was a big name for a little girl." These days, however, it perfectly encapsulates her work as a modern muse. 

"To see a world in a grain of sand 

And a heaven in a wild flower, 

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, 

And eternity in an hour."

excerpt from Auguries of Innocence, by William Blake

splendor is the night

What with working full-time and trying to finish my thesis I am afraid I barely have time for this little space right now. So this is really just a post to say hi! I am alive and well. And ahm, here is a little of what I bought recently. That's it, that's the post. À bientôt.

1. Nothing annoys me more than handbag-sized wallets. Nothing! So I have been on the lookout for a small, tidy one that still fits everything & has different storage compartments. This Max Mara one fit the bill.
2. A fellow tea-drinking friend recommended the Kusmi Detox Tea, so I gave into the hype & bought one to sample. Though the price is a little overboard for tea, in my opinion.
3. So gah-gah over The Great Gatsby at the moment. Somebody needs to invite me to a Gatsby Party á la Baz Luhrmann pronto. As a result, bought Tender is the Night on a whim the other day in the vain hope of transferring the extravagance & decadence of Fitzgerald's world to real life (if only in my head). As always with Fitzgerald - the writing is stunning, the plot barely there.
4. Chloé perfume & lotion for the soul.