Links from the USA

Happy Christmas Eve Eve! I arrived home yesterday afternoon and am super jet lagged and being treated to a very New England ice storm.

It’s excellent.  We’re going to see The Last Jedi tonight and I think my excitement will be such that I will stay awake.  I’ve heard lots of interesting things about it but have so far avoided any spoilers.

I have a healthy (and scented!) collection of links this week!

• Quentin Bisch on “a journey to dreams and emotions” and what it means to be a Givaudan-trained perfumer.
• Why perfume descriptions are never about smell (hint- it involves the close link between fragrance and memory)
• The Cult of Le Labo Santal 33. I think it smells like cucumber.
• Zoologist has some new releases– I think Camel sounds very appealing.

The year-end photo compendiums are coming in, here are two favorites…

• The Most 2017 Photos Ever
• The Most Hilarious Wildlife Photos of 2017

On the fashion front:

• What did happen to jeans in 2017? Honestly, whatever it was, I kind of liked it.
• An Instagram account I’ve started following, which gorgeously marries art and fashion/cosmetics.
• Finding one’s sense of style really is a personal journey. I don’t think I could truly define my style beyond ‘things that make me happy and that I like wearing’.

And the more miscellaneous:

• What did you learn this year? I loved reading the comments.
• The Ocean’s 8 trailer has me excited.
• Pantone’s Spring 2018 color trend forecast.
• Some great gift ideas for francophiles (ahem, me) via My Little Paris.
• Excited to see Swing Time on this list of the world’s coolest playgrounds. It inspired me to search for Imagination Station and discover that it was in fact a thing and not just a figment of my childhood imagination. Now that was a playground.
• This clip of the original Fantasia just blew my mind.
• Keeping the NYC Vogue scene alive.
• How to wrap a cat.

Late (Again!) Links

No preamble. Down and dirty style.

• Fortnum & Mason has a superbly beautiful (and fittingly spendy) Rare Tea Wooden Advent Calendar. All I can say is “GIVE ME THAT FUDONG WHITE PEONY KING!!”
• Remember dying of dysentery on the Oregon Trail? Well, now it’s a computer game and you can be a yoga instructor.
• As a seltzer lover, I came to the right place.
• Just some photos of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, the only celebrity couple that has ever mattered.
• Can we move my next raw materials exam to 9 pm?
• This might be my favorite HONY post ever. This man is the person I aspire to be. I’m ready to be illumined.
• I want this book.
• Sephora’s got a cool new campaign featuring its own employees.
• A quick video with Charlotte Olympia, she of the near-masterpiece footwear (plus bonus puppies!).
• Call me crazy, but I like What’s Happening Down There.
• Find someone who spits water on you the way Jon Stewart spits water on Stephen Colbert (and vice versa).
• Do you play that game where you imagine the stories of strangers you see? If so, this is the Instagram account for you.

Shopping for Denim and the Best Seventeen Article Ever

I can’t believe I found an image of this article, the greatest article ever published by Seventeen magazine, on the Google machine.
If you’re anything like me, finding a pair of accurately-fitting jeans is perhaps the most difficult quest in all of shopping- excepting those searches for items that somehow exist only in your head. And finding a pair of jeans that fits like the proverbial glove is something of a holy grail.

Until 7th grade, I think all of the jeans I owned and wore were hand-me-downs from my older cousin (Hi Megan!).  I have no idea how that worked, because we are not the same body type. When the last pair of flared/bootcut Mudd jeans was worn in past the point of no return, I had to jump into the breach. The breach being the denigrating and unrewarding process of shopping for denim.

In Defense of Trends

This is both an update and a counterpoint to one of my recent posts, in which I gave a hard pass to a multitude of recent summer trends. It may interest you to know that since that post I have somehow become the proud owner of a china red ruffled wrap skirt (J. Crew via eBay) and a blue slip dress (Equipment via watching one dress waiting to be able to afford it for five months).
To answer your question- Because I hinted that I was going to do as much in the post, no, this does not make me a hypocrite. Besides, I look very good in china red. And silk.

But my weakness well-reasoned much-considered purchases do not mean you should go out and buy a pair of jeans that only has a zipper and no buttons. Because what is that nonsense? Or, heaven forfend, one of these.

Thoughts on Seasonal Shopping (and a Wish List)

If there were a spectrum, and on one end of the spectrum were the people who are completely and utterly bemused by the obsession with and idolatry of French women, and on the other end were people reading Parisian Chic and How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are, I would be much more on one side of the spectrum than the other.
So take this post with a hefty pinch of francophilic salt. Or sel, if you will.

I think I mentioned recently that I read somewhere or other (probably Who What Wear, honestly) that les francaises (I’m too lazy to do accents, shoot me) keep a wardrobe of basics and then limit themselves to five items a season (Spring/Summer being one, Fall/Winter being another) to revitalize their options.  Obviously, a hard and fast rule is not going to adequately encompass a nation’s worth of spending habits, but I thought it was a worthwhile concept to consider.

When my family’s financial status improved and my anorexia-derived self-denial cleared up (i.e. the period following my sophomore year of college), my spending increased.  And now I have many lovely things that I really value and appreciate.  And while I still enjoy shopping (very much) and have things I want, I’m also strongly recognizing that there are ways I would rather spend my time, a heavy shopping habit is expensive, and I don’t want my belongings to increase significantly (if at all) beyond what I have.

I would talk a bit about Marie Kondo, but I think that’s a post for another day.

Friday Links 5/19

Hey my graduation is this weekend! (Except not really because I’m not going!).
Did you go to your graduation? Almost everyone I’ve talked to has been some combination of stunned or outraged to hear that I’m skipping it- which is a reaction that’s quite taken me by surprise.
Neither of my parents went to their graduations, so I think I just kind of grew up not thinking it was a big deal. My cousin Sean went to his graduation but sat with his family in the audience.  And I went to my high school one (but I was valedictorian *pats on back* so I kind of had to).  But there are so many things I’d rather do!
Namely: anything. Sitting around in a big group of people and listening to speeches just isn’t my thing and I know that makes me sound terribly unsentimental, except I’m also such a nostalgic person that I know that can’t be it.