Pre-fall madness

Is it just me or are this season's Pre-Fall presentations full of wild exuberance and uncommonly bold gestures?
I haven't been following the shows day-by-day so now I'm wading through all the presentations at random and I'm almost breathless from the ride.  I'll post some of my favourites over the next few days.  
First up, Louis Vuitton.  Yes please. 

I'll take one of everything - including that marvellous pair of doors.

Photos: Style.com

Small deeds of derring-do

This morning I decided to paint the disaster that is our guest room/office/hall closet/storage room.  It may have been foolhardy, since that room on any given day looks as though a tornado went through it twice. The painting is supposed to somehow rescue it from abandonment and magically turn it into a beautiful and practical, tidy multitasker. Anyway, I embarked on this perilous but thrilling adventure nonetheless (after procrastinating a while at a local thrift shop where I bought a yellow wool skirt after trying on a gazillion other things, including a marvellous red sequined floor-length number that maybe I should go back and get tomorrow, because really, what I need is one more impossible dress to hang somewhere).

Also, I came home to discover that I had no paint roller, and decided to use a paint brush instead.  Another moment of temporary insanity. But it looks ... AMAZING (so far).  The paint I bought ages ago for this room is a pale, pale green, very "dirty" and lovely and since it's being brushed on, it looks lovely and chalky, like limestone or some Gustavian extravaganza.

Now the real derring-do here is that I decided to test out the "paint the trim the same colour as the walls" theory.  Which I've been meaning to try out in real life for a while.  I'm not usually the type of person to regret things once they're done, but after painting about a foot of moulding around the door, I was horrified.  It was just wrong, terribly wrong.  It's like driving on the wrong side of the road.  I'm going to leave it for now, just to see.

The room is now more than half done, which is quite an accomplishment considering the fact that a) I was using a paintbrush and b) the room is full of stuff that I can't move out of there, only shift around.

When E. gets home he will undoubtedtly think me a fool, but I can feel the beauty about to emerge there somewhere.... tomorrow will tell.

Claire Basler

I've had this issue of Elle Decor UK forever but these images keep popping up in my head all the time.
This is painter Claire Basler's studio and I want to be invited for dinner.  It's just so magical and beautiful.

Adler's Orders

Jonathan Adler's little book "On Happy Chic - Colours" took me about 20 minutes to get through but what a 20 minutes. In that time, I was ordered to do the following things:

-Dress up as a leprechaun next Halloween
-Tie a yellow ribbon around my neck to a picnic
-Fill blue enamel bowls with cobalt M&Ms
-Buy vintage Courrèges scarves on eBay and make them into pillows
-Take a macramé class
-Leave metal flea-market finds on the roof for six months and then spray them with Krylon
-Gold-leaf the entryway
-Frame the Andy Warhol Velvet Underground album cover (the one with the banana) and hang it above the toilet

It's the decorating book for a generation with the attention span of about half a second, but I LOVED it.
And there was a whole page dedicated to Capri, my Island.

This was a well-timed, much-needed reminder that design is about making people happy after all, and it shouldn't ever get too stuffy and serious.  Thank you Dr. Adler.

Holiday Cheer

Post-holiday cheer includes:

Using up leftover wine with this absolutely fool-proof recipe.

Pour red wine into a large saucepan with brown sugar, slices of lemon, a whole clove (or 4 if you're using a whole bottle of wine) and a cinnamon stick.  Bring to a boil.  Remove from heat and cover for 5 minutes.  Then add some brandy.  Serve with a slice of lemon in a pretty teacup.
Instant good cheer, especially if you're adding a lot of brandy.

Next, Indigo's annual 30% off all hardcover books sale, where I purchased this (among other things):

Which I am sitting here reading, while enjoying the festive greenery of my much-loved boxwood topiary from Restoration Hardware (hooray for the staff discount and 20% off everything sale):

While listening to Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky

And enjoying some much-appreciated time off.

PS. Michael S. Smith's books are really very good, some of the best decorating books out there, I think.  If only he would hire me as his Paris attaché.

Best Gift Ever.

My one true love gave me the most beautiful present.  This:

Which is a fragrance I've coveted for years without buying because it is a) prohibitively expensive and b) extremely madame, chic and sophisticated, so sophisticated that I've always thought I must buy a bottle now before it's reformulated and save it for when I'm 50 and very very chic and dignified.  It is unbelievably wonderful and the nicest gift I've ever gotten.

Luca Turin on Cuir de Russie:

"Leather notes in perfumery are due chiefly to two raw materials, smoky rectified birch tar and inky isoquinolines, the first natural and the second synthetic.  They are not necessarily used together, and Cuir de Russie includes only the former.  Rectified is a polite word for "cooked", and to this day in places such as Russia and Canada where birch is abundant, the sap is cooked in large pans until it turns black and fragrant.  The results are pretty variable, but always deliciously complex: a lot of chemistry happens in a few minutes when things roast.  Sadly, the use of birch tar is now restricted by the European Union, and I was afraid of what this would do to Cuir de Russie.  The answer is not much.  This superb fragrance still smells exactly as it should: to me, just like the inside of my stepfather's 1954 Bentley Type R, in the back of which I sat alone as a child, toying with the mahogany fold-out table on the seat backs.  What is remarkable is that this rich leather effect is achieved by mixing things that have nothing to do with tanned animal skins: ylang, jasmine, iris, all of which can be perceived in the top notes.  There have been many other fragrances called Cuir de Russie, every one either too sweet or too smoky.  This one is the real deal, an undamaged monument of classical perfumery, and the purest emanation of luxury ever captured in a bottle."

From Perfumes the Guide

It's wonderful while wearing this to think about the actual relationship of Coco Chanel (and Ernest Beaux, Russian-born perfumer, creator of both No.5 and Cuir de Russie) to Russia, to Russian emigrés, to leather trunks, and it gives the fragrance another dimension.  It gives it layers and layers of story and meaning and beauty all piled up on top of this magnificent scent.  Because fragrance is never just molecules entering your nose.  It's also narrative, memory, imagination, dreams.

There's a fabulous article on Cuir de Russie written by Denyse Beaulieu for her blog "Grain de Musc" here.

Balance

I'm a huge fan of this corner of a room from MarieClaire Italy. I think here is a perfect tension between glamour and earthiness, good contrast in values and texture, mastery of scale and proportion.  Relationships exist between all the elements (for example the shape of the pendant echoes the shape of the stand for the bust etc), the hanging panels are amazing.  Very handsome.