We Are Not Impressed

Technology won’t impress me until I no longer need three password attempts and a “forgotten password” reminder to log in to web sites.

 

The Kind of Woman That Will Haunt You | Josephine, Angela Flanders Perfume Review

I feel that Angela Flanders’ Josephine is a perfume that expresses itself through the warm gaze of nostalgia; looking back fondly on the memory of a love from another time.  A love so potent it seeps into the architecture of the heart and peppers the landscape of the soul, and it is only long after the pain of separation that one is able to look back upon such a love to cherish its memory.

With Josephine, Ms Flanders interprets violet through a kaleidoscopic lens, expressing different characters of violet via the nuances of Josephine, which for me feels like a production of love in three acts: the nervous first meeting, the full bloom of love, and, finally, the drifting away. There is a tenderness and gentle handling of delicate petals expressed in its execution which skirts the lines between gourmand flirtations and retro allusions, projecting a celebration of violets that makes Josephine a tribute to love and its namesake.

Haeckels Pop-Up Shop at Ace Hotel in Shoreditch

Margate based fragrance and skincare brand, Haeckels, has taken up residence at Ace Hotel’s pop-up space in East London’s Shoreditch. Established in 2012 by former film-maker, Dom Bridges, Haeckels, which holds one of only two licenses in the United Kingdom to harvest seaweed from the English coast, offers a complete range of skin and hair care products, interior fragrances, and eight perfumes.

Thea Porter at the Fashion & Textile Museum

“Every designer, every artist, has to believe that he or she has come up with something new, but the truth is that we are all product of outside influences, many of them absorbed unconsciously. There is a sense in which nothing is new, except in the rearrangement of images inherited from the past, and passed through the sieve of one own’s feelings and sensibility.” Thea Porter

Even though I am constantly trying to convince myself that I want to build a wardrobe of chic, Olivia Pope style neutrals, I can never quite resist the allure of color and prints.

Sniffing Around

Yesterday afternoon I popped down to Mayfair’s Avery Row to check out the newly refurbished Avery Perfume Gallery. I found the newly redecorated space, with its baroque style draperies and Victorian curiosity cabinet touches, was more complimentary to the curated collection of fragrances stocked at Avery rather than the more minimal style previously on display there.

Don’t Stop Now: Fashion Photography Next Part 2

The London College of Fashion’s Fashion Space Gallery is currently exhibiting Don’t Stop Now: Fashion Photography Next Part 2 exploring the contrasting themes of Authenticity and Artifice.

Tung Walsh: Myla Flashing, NYC, 2012. From the series NSFW for Oyster Magazine

Kubrick and the Showgirl

“The threshold between private life and public image was the focus for Kubrick’s photo story on Rosemary Williams, a showgirl who had promising good looks, though her career has left barely a trace. Kubrick closely observed the young actress offstage, going about her daily life – out in public, with fellow performers, and all alone, applying makeup and contemplating herself like a modern Narcissa (although rather than falling in love with herself, she seems to be coolly checking whether her figure lives up to her profession’s high commercial expectations). Whether she appears gregarious and provocative or focused and introspective, Kubrick’s photographs of Williams reveal a life in which even the most intimate moments were consciously staged events.” from Drama and Shadows: Photographs 1945-1950, Rainer Crone

Life Imitating Art

 

Stockings: Agent Provocateur, Shoes: Hobbs

Recent Rhapsodies

Street art in Shoreditch

The moon over London

My latest read

Street art in Shoreditch

Liberty of London

Spoilt for choice of perfumes at Roullier White

Shoreditch street art

Street art in Shoreditch

Sarah McCartney’s novel, The Scent of Possibility

Working off that karma debt

Literally on the edge of my seat for next week’s finale of Fortitude

Beautiful blooms at That Flower Shop in Shoreditch

4160 Tuesdays favorites

Ladurés’s rose and raspberry St. Honore confection

The Jinx: The life and death of Robert Durst

“The past is not romantic for me; the future is romantic for me,” Raf Simons, Dior and I

I always love to see bobbies on horseback

Burlington Arcade macaron run to Ladurée

THE best hot chocolate in London at Said in Soho

Beautiful vegetables at The Albion

It took a tattooed boy from Birkenhead to really really open her eyes….

Paisley, the naughty stowaway

Roullier White hosted Sarah McCartney of 4160 Tuesdays where we each made our own special fragrance blends with 4160 Tuesdays Sexiest Scent on the Planet

Street art in Dalston

French and Grace rhubarb and cassis tartlets baked by moi

Liberty of London

Master of puns

Street art in Shoreditch

Amanda Lepore’s magical Easter egg hunt

Shoreditch street art