Turn Back Time

Lollipops turn into cigarettes.

Soda becomes vodka.

Kisses turn into sex.

Remember when getting high meant swinging on the playground?

When protection meant wearing a helmet?

When the worst things you could get from boys were cooties?

Dad’s shoulders were the highest place on earth and mum was your hero?

War was only a card game, and your worst enemies were your siblings.

Race issues were about who ran the fastest.

The only drug you knew was cough medicine.

The most pain you felt was when you skinned your knees,

and goodbyes only meant until tomorrow?

And we couldn’t wait to grow up.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This Thanksgiving, we give thanks...

for the love and health of family and friends,

delicious food,

and of course, football.

As Erma Bombeck once said,

“Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare.

They are consumed in twelve minutes.

Half-times take twelve minutes.

This is not coincidence.”

Happy Thanksgiving!

Picture via Angeline Melin

Making Up for Bad Health Habit

Bad Habit: Poor Posture
Misaligned posture can lead to back, knee, hip and neck issues as well as collapsed arches and a host of other problems. If you’ve had poor posture most of your life, you probably think there’s nothing you can do to improve it. Not true! You can make changes instantly, transform yourself and don't have to wait to see results.

This easy exercise to turn back years of bad posture habits: “Stand with your heels almost touching a wall. Roll your shoulder blades back and drop them down until they touch the wall. Slightly lower your chin and pull the base of your head against the wall, lengthening the back of your neck. Hold this position for 15 seconds, breathe, rest and repeat. If you cannot touch the wall, then your goal is to work up to it slowly.”

Jessica Stam NYC pied-à-terre

Stam was brought up on a farm in rural Ontario, Canada. She lived in a Victorian house, had a cow named Bessie and a collie named Lassie, and was the only girl amid six strapping brothers. That's before a modeling scout discovered her in 2002, when she was 15, sipping hot chocolate at a doughnut shop. Now, she mused Steven Meisel, and her face, with its huge eyes and small pointy chin, become the defining look of the aughts. She lives super stylishly and jet about life. But there's a hint of the country girl craving to be synthesized, other than a scrubbed, a fresh quality beneath her rock ’n’ roll cool...

So, she bought the bright, polished one-bed two-bath; drawn to its location, a few blocks from New York City’s Union Square, and the fact that it “wasn’t cookie-cutter.” In a converted factory building, it had prewar proportions (high ceilings, huge windows), but it also had the spa steam shower and designer kitchen!

She removed some of the wallpaper in favor of muted gray paint. She kept bits of the satin and Lucite, but added more tailored elements— a plump little ’40s chair was reupholstered in black-and-white tweed from the same factory that produced Chanel’s fabrics; the pink satin headboard in gray leather; chrome and crystal lamps replaced ornate white ceramic.

Although she says she’s not at all into “granny,” it’s hard not to notice that her favorite new sheets are edged in cotton embroidery and that there’s a shabby rustic wooden chair tucked in a corner; a thrift-store painting of a bird (that she asked not be photographed because it didn’t quite go) in the guest bathroom; and many, many photos of her family, who still live in Ontario. Well, when your past includes snowmobiles, a tree house built by Dad, and 500 acres, but you just walked nine runways in Paris, which is now your favorite city, it’s rare to find yourself at home.

Miss Dior Eau de Toilette

Discover a dazzling spring floral interpretation of the classic Miss Dior Chérie, created by Dior Master Perfumer, Francois Demachy! This fresh and elegant floral-chypre successor aims at younger women who enjoy freedom and independence.

It opens with a lilting fruity note for a fresh and joyful first impression. Transparent notes of freesia and lily of the valley start this spring, feminine composition which lines up accords of jasmine, orange blossom and tuberose. This floral bouquet evokes the sense of a garden full of flowers. Top notes are enriched with pleasant and almost fruity accents which lead us into a heart with charming popcorns, followed with pralines and vanilla. An elegant, signature base note of chypre effect and a dose of elegance with patchouli accords completes the captivating essence.

The fragrance is available as 50 and 100 ml EDT, shaped just like Miss Dior Cherie EDP edition from 2005. Liquid of the new EDT version is gentle pink. Tim Walker`s advertising campaign features a spring garden with roses in bloom.

for True Music Lovers...

an excellent gift guide for the holiday season:

A. Pink Martini

Sympathique, Pink Martini's wildly popular debut album, was released in 1997. It has gone on to sell over 750,000 copies worldwide and has taken the band around the world on tours to the Cannes Film Festival, Lebanon, Turkey and Taiwan among other far-flung destinations. Songs from Sympathique appear on numerous music compilations including Starbucks/Hear Music, Buddha Bar, Hotel Costes, West Elm, Faonnable, Putumayo, Nordstrom, Williams-Sonoma and in various films such as In the Cut, Nurse Betty and Josie & the Pussycats, and have been used on television shows such as The Sopranos and The West Wing, among others.

B. Paolo Conte

Italian singer-songwriter Paolo Conte is famous for his gravelly voice – often compared to singer-poets such as Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen - his elegant and seductive rhythms, melodies and lyrics that sometimes veer towards hot jazz or bar-room tangos. It is a music of memories - half true, half dreams, poetic fragments of colors, images and fantasies.

C. Melody Gardot

My One and Only Thrill is the spellbinding Gardot's album, eloquently confirms her as a supreme songwriting talent possessed of a truly sublime voice. Gardot's effortless blend of soft-edged, late-night jazz and quiet, introspective blues is on exquisite display throughout. The album's title track is a 4am-in-the-morning confessional masquerading as a bittersweet ballad that lingers long in the imagination.

D. The Courteeners

A northern band with a lead singer who has an outspoken opinion? Rattling snare drums, staccato guitars and tales of urban youth in meltdown? No wait…come back!

Oh, So Coco!

One of the most popular models in recent memory, Coco Rocha is truly a model media darling.

Rocha was born in Toronto, Ontario, and moved to Richmond, British Columbia at a very young age. Her family is in the airline industry. Her mother, Juanita, is a flight attendant and her father, Trevor Haines, is a ticket manager. She has one sister named Lindsay and one brother named Greg Morandin. She is of Irish, Russian, and Welsh descent.

Discovered at an Irish dance competition at the age of 14, it took Vancouver-born Coco Rocha a year before she even agreed to model and danced her way to the top.

Since her debut, Rocha has been the face of a variety of advertising campaigns including Americana Manhasset, Balenciaga, Chanel, D&G, Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, Lanvin, The Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, Yves Saint Laurent and Rimmel. Vogue Paris declared her one of the top 30 models of the 2000s.

Rocha is one of the few models who has spoken out against the prevalence of eating disorders in the modeling industry. She has acknowledged the pressure she faced as a fledgling model and recalls becoming obsessed with food after a trip to Singapore where she gained ten pounds. In an email to the Associated Press, she gives an insight into the fashion world, saying: "I'll never forget the piece of advice I got from people in the industry when they saw my new body ... They said, 'You need to lose more weight. The look this year is anorexia. We don't want you to be anorexic but that's what we want you to look like."

Rocha married interior designer James Conran on June 9, 2010.

Behind the Seams of a Birkin

Hermès Birkin handbags are hand-built by experienced craftsmen, one of the primary factors contributing to the high price of all Hermès handbags. The production of each bag may take up to 48 work hours, translating into weeks. They are distributed worldwide to Hermès boutiques on intentionally unpredictable schedules and in even fewer reliable quantities, creating a sense of scarcity and exclusivity around the product.

The exterior of the bag can be made of a variety of leathers. One of the most expensive variations of the bag is made of saltwater crocodile skin. The price of these bags depends on the size of the scales. Bags with smaller scales cost much more than those with larger scales.

Typically, a Birkin bag's lining is made of goat skin and its color will match the bag's exterior color. The bags can also be special-ordered with custom leathers and colors, but order privileges are granted only to certain established Hermès clients, and again, on an unpredictable basis.

Orders are reportedly submitted to Paris twice a year, with "special-order" bags coming back anywhere from a year to two years later. Occasionally, special orders may never arrive, as Hermès is notorious for discontinuing certain leathers or colors without notice, frequently making the arrival and "pick-up" of a special order Birkin a cause for some fun fanfare both for the client, and occasionally even for boutique staff.

The metallic hardware on a Birkin bag (the lock, keys, buckle hardware and feet studs) are typically plated with gold or other precious metals, such as palladium, which, unlike silver, will not tarnish. The metal lock may be covered with leather as an option when custom ordering. Certain notable Hermès clients have paved buckle hardware with diamonds, notoriously resulting in one black crocodile skin Birkin which notably sold for close to $65,000 at auction in 2005.

Birkin lock keys are enclosed in a type of leather lanyard known as a "clochette" which is typically, but not necessarily, carried by looping it through one of a Birkin's handles. The Birkin bag may be locked by closing the bag's top flaps over all buckle loops, wrapping the buckle straps, and closing the lock on the front hardware. Locks and keys are number-coded.

Meet Me at the Corner

I remember the corner.

The corner of your color.

The corner of your smile.

The corner where we kissed.

The street corners turning into the corners of the corridor.

Into the corners of the room where we lay.

The corners of your mouth, of your eyes.

The corners of words we didn't finish.

The corner of your name.

On the corner where we parted.

I remember the corner.

The Twitter Effect:

Hate this computer generated world.

Goodbye handwritten letters, hello text messages.

Goodbye face to face conversations, hello phone calls.

Goodbye real emotions, hello emoticons.

Roberto Cavalli's Macrame

Cavalli's show, marking a startling 40 years in business for him, did a mighty efficient job of creating a spectacle out of the bare necessities as Roberto saw them: a tiny jacket in croc or snake, a suede bib, a pair of pants laced to the legs, a sheer chiffon bias-cut gown, some webby crochet, a few buckets of beads and sequins, a concealing/revealing torrent of fringe, a palette bleached by indolent days spent lounging in the sun. And seldom has so much been done with so little.

It was all in the workmanship. Using the artisanal workshops of his native Florence, Cavalli has been producing spectacular skins for decades, but he pulled out the stops for his 40th, with the whipstitching, lacing, and patchworking reaching new heights. Croc and python jackets were left unhemmed, the integrity of the skin preserved. Cavalli also rose to international fame on the back of his prints, which turned jet-set dolls into tawny-maned tigresses. Here, he steered clear of the big cats in favor of snake, rendered so accurately that it looked like the real thing in second-skin pants. Layered over everything were sequins, beads, and crystals, painstakingly applied by hand in Cavalli's workshops.

The backdrop—a jungle of huge flowers, fronds, and phallic peppers—suggested a hothouse island setting from a late-night B movie. When Cavalli's models stalked out at the finale, they could have been the cast of such a production. Who wouldn't be up for Ultravixens of Glamazonia? If the show struck just one chord and held it, it was still an appropriate testament to a singular vision that has weathered bouquets and brickbats for decades. In that setting, surrounded by beauty, you could imagine he was in his own private Eden.

Dive! Dive!

Here’s one for my fellow tea enthusiasts. It’s the submarine shaped tea infuser. It’s made of dishwasher safe silicone and looks cute as a button. You can find it a Giftlab for £7.95

Live Well and Spend Less?

Too many people spend money they haven't earned,

to buy things they don't want,

to impress people they don't like.

Appreciate what you've got, even the really small things.

For me, those small things are often domestic…

Everyday happiness, as opposed to one-off great bursts of pure ecstasy, is intricately tied in with everyday events: the jaunty-looking teapot that pours without dribbling, the children's bathtime, blossom in spring, an especially good book.

These things aren't sexy, or glamorous, or envy-making, but they are the fabric of all our days. Concentrating on them, and on all the small joys they provide, can be intensely fulfilling. Moaning because you can’t afford a $500 pair of shoes is not.

-India Knights, The Thrift Book

Frappuchino Fashion Patrol

Drink in all the glamor and fashion with Frappuchino drink!

Picture via Starbucks Frappuchino