One good thing about the weather getting colder – Tallba Swedish Pine Soap. Keep the box.
Category Archives: Beauty
Perfectly Contained
Gorgeous, indulgent, and necessary additions to your medicine cabinet, the bath salts and home tonics by French perfumers Mad et Len are just as beautiful outside as in. In other words, they look delicious and smell rich. Available in-store at ABC Home. And no where else.
Bazaar Fellow
As all who know me can attest, one of my greatest pleasures in life is “making things pretty.” No other artist has had a career in “making pretty” that I both admire and envy more than Art Deco diety Erté.
To decorator junkies Erté (né Roman Petrovich Tyrtov) needs no introduction. The Russian born French artist, who went by the French pronunciation of his initials R.T, created some of the most recognizable theatrical and fashion imagery of the early 20th century and continues to influence fashion until this day.
Erté designed his first costume at at the age of five and moved to Paris as a young man to pursue fashion illustration. He soon got a twenty-two year appointment to Harper’s Bazaar and went on to create some of the most spectacular stage sets and costumes for Paris’ Folies-Bergère, the Paris Opera, and New York’s Zeigfield Follies.
Erté was a true early century renaissance man, excelling in all things visual, from drawing to sculpture, to costuming, to environmental design. During his fashion career alone, Erté produced over 250 covers for Bazaar, innumerable drawings for the magazine’s pages, and fashion designs for some of the world’s most glamorous women. Personally, I would give my left leg to have his complete Alphabet Suite of A-Z rendered in his trademark style.
Erté died in 1990 at the age of ninety-seven, ending an era of brilliance in theatrical design. Find books on Erté HERE.
Underrated Female No.1 – Türkan Soray
Don’t get me wrong, I love Audrey Hepburn and Jackie O as much as the next girl, but there’s wealth of oft overlooked super-cool female icons to draw creative inspiration from if you bother to dig a little deeper. As they come to mind I am going to post them here here. Get the whole story
Six Scents
I am determined to figure out why these six scents have been selling out for over thirty years. I for one, am a lover of obscenely expensive fragrances that have a drugstore, old lady perfume quality. So I think I just might like these…
New Hope
The most appropriately titled skin care product in history. The only thing you need this year. Buy this now.
Oh My Yosh
I’ve had this internal battle about whether or not to write this post since we started this blog. Because it’s virtually impossible to find a fragrance that you love, let alone a scent that no one you know has ever worn I’ve kept my favorite perfume house a secret since I first discovered it. However, in the interest of olfactory democracy, here it is.
Hats
Why don’t women wear hats anymore? (Disclaimer: I do not consider females with fedoras in Us Weekly women in hats.)
Bru-Ja-Ja
The explosion of eastern and fringe religions in the U.S. can be attributed to a myriad of causes – from the public flogging the Catholic Church has received lately, to the widespread violence of religious fundamentalists in the Middle East. This big-religion weariness has not only created an unprecedented interest in the Eastern traditions, but also in the cruder (and once taboo) syncretic religions of Santeria, Voodoo, and Palo Mayumbe. According to many accounts, more and more Anglos are turning to these African-based religious traditions for the simpler, non-political, and more organic spiritual experiences they offer.
As a Cuban American, I am most familiar with Santeria – a tradition that emerged in the 1600′s when African slaves arrived in the New World and were immediately baptized en masse by the Catholic bishops. Their religion suppressed in this strange new land, they clung to their beliefs by attributing the virtues of each of their holy deities to a Catholic Saint. Now they could worship freely under the guise of Catholicism.
