New York Times' T Magazine has an interview today with Birkin about music (two of her old albums are being released on CD) and about style (what it was like to be an Hermès muse.)
From the NYT story: “I was on an airplane,” Birkin said, explaining the bag’s genesis, “when a plastic bag holding all my things broke and everything fell out — my date book, papers, everything. Just as I was saying how I wish Hermès would make a bag that could fit all my things, the man sitting next to me happened to work for Hermès — it was Jean-Louis Dumas, the head designer! They already had the Kelly bag, named after Grace Kelly, so he began work on the Birkin bag. I went down to the atelier, and he had made it in cardboard. And we talked about it, and I said they should make some changes, like making pockets bigger. And that’s how it was made.”
Just like that!
Happy Monday my dears. I hope you had a relaxing weekend!
As usual I spent lots of time this weekend reading (finishing the Philip Roth book and starting the new biography of Cleopatra). During my Internet newspaper rounds, I found this wonderful story in the Irish Times Magazine.
The headline says: "Wearing vintage doesn't have to make you feel like second-hand Rose." Indeed! I LOVE this rose colored pettycoat!
Happy weekend everyone! What do you have planned? I plan on watching movies on DVD while making jewelry for a show I have coming up in Silver Lake. I'm also looking forward to starting a new book, "Mr. Cartwell," by Rebecca Hunt. It's been sizzling hot here in Los Angeles and I'd really love to spend a little time at the beach!
Before I sign off for the weekend, here's my link roundup...
First off: Holly Becker's book, "Decorate: 1,000 Design Ideas for Every Room in Your Home" is
on pre-sale on Amazon. I love Becker's blog, decor8, and I can't wait to get the book!
New York Times' Cathy Horyn, one of my favorite fashion writers, reviews
the Chronicle reissue of Diana Vreeland's 1980 book, "Allure."
Here's a very insightful report:
What your profile picture really says about you.
Ian Frazier's take on people who write in the margins of their books.
and...
A peek at the stuff inside Emma Watson's Mulberry bag.
Have a great weekend!
(Photo, above, from here.)
Philip Roth's "The Humbling," about an actor who can no longer act. So he runs off to the country where me meets a much younger (and very sexy) woman. Good ol' Roth.
The New Yorker's profile of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. I have a friend who fell completely in love with him after seeing the Social Network. If you, too, are craving more details about Zuckerberg's life, you'll find plenty in the New Yorker piece.
During stop lights I've been scanning "On Solitude" by Michel De Montaigne. It's a lovely, slim letterpress edition from Penguin's Great Idea series. Very easy to carry around. And amazingly insightful.
At Starbucks: flipping through the new Anthropologie catalogue.
Also rereading underlined paragraphs in Michael Cunningham's book,
"The Hours."
"She looks older, Louis thinks in astonishment. It's finally happening. What a remarkable thing, these genetic trip wires, the way a body can sail along essentially unaltered, decade after decade, and then in a few years capitulate to age."
wow.
Just picked up:
The Chronicle Books reissue of Diana Vreeland's "Allure." Goodie!
What are you reading at the moment?
"Some remarks, like radioactive elements, have a lingering half-life that allows them to poison one generation after another. One that still contaminates our body-obsessed popular culture is the Duchess of Windsor's notorious admonition that no woman can ever be 'too rich or too thin.'
"As the age of anorexia has succeeded the age of anxiety — or perhaps simply compounded it — we've learned just how wrong the duchess really was...."
(Please read the rest of my review of de Rossi's book -- a meditation on the pressures of Hollywood and working out one's identity in the glare of celebrity -- in the LA Times today!)
(Photo by Lori Shepler.)
Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy has become" the publishing phenomenon of the young century, with international sales exceeding 45 million," according to a very cool story in today's Los Angeles Times by my former colleague Scott Timberg.
He writes that Larsson's books have managed, in the 25 months since the first novel's U.S. publication, to go through almost 200 printings here. And next month, publisher Knopf will release its Millennium Trilogy Deluxe Boxed Set: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.
Sara Nelson, books director of O: The Oprah Magazine, told Timberg that the heroine's ambiguity is part of her appeal. "She's not terribly well defined," Nelson says, pointing to her complicated sexuality. "Is she lovable? Yes, but she's not necessarily likable. Lisbeth is a hybrid, but the books are hybrids too — a chronicle of the media business, a comment on society.... It's not a standard police procedural."
UPDATE: Here's the link to the NYT's review of the Hornet's Nest movie.
(Illustration by Helena Lloyd.)
New York Times' T Magazine has an interview today with Birkin about music (two of her old albums are being released on CD) and about style (what it was like to be an Hermès muse.)
