More Burning Questions & a Shameful Confession

My name is Anna and I sometimes watch the Real Housewives franchise.

 It started a few years back, when I was sick, lying on the couch (old, ugly and comfortable couch) looking for something utterly mindless to watch. There it was, on my screen, the pit of despair.  I’ve watched more or less steadily since. Not religiously, far from even half the episodes in a given season, not every location, but enough to be embarrassed about it. Today’s blimp is about the ‘ladies’ of Beverly Hills, and boy do I wish G was stateside to discuss it.

One, if not the, leading housewives in the BH series is one Lisa Vanderpump, a British export and a former 80s cheesy video starlet, who claims to be in her 50s , I think (I didn’t check.. checking would be taking this a step too far!). When the show first aired, some 5-6 seasons ago, she was a fabulously kept woman of a certain age, with features that while perhaps enhanced nonetheless so blessed with genetics as to appear natural.

Here, see for yourselves.

Yesterday I happened to catch half an hour of their final show, a so called ‘reunion,’ where they all sit around and talk (or rather hurl jabs) to the main man, mastermind, and Svengali of the Bravo Channel: Andy Cohen. They were all dressed up to the nines, blinged to the hilt, and wore so much war paint that its collected weight would have cracked an industrial scale. 

Most sported some visible evidence of plastic work – slightly too smooth a brow, a teeny bit plumper lip.. It was Lisa, however, who seems to have undergone the most radical and saddening change. Where once was more or less natural beauty now something rather frightening was happening.  And I’m not talking about her gross trout pout (yuk) or the botox. These two you take for granted with the 'ladies' of the Real Housewives. It was her eyebrows - arched high up into her forehead , almost at the hairline – a telltale sign of a major facelift:

Yank them up anymore and she will look like Joan Rivers' sister. 

Ergh, sad. 

демисезонное пальто or: The Demi-Season Coat

When I was a kid, in Moscow, the capital  of scarcity and central economy, my mother and grandmother would have lengthy, often anxious discussions about an item not always easy to come by - демисезонное пальто - or a coat fit for when the seasons change, for fall and spring.  I would imagine that both of them would approve for that particular sartorial mission of the kind of coats that Scandal's Olivia Pope tends to wear, in white or pale gray.

In Israel, where winter is for all intents and purposes a fall there was no need for sturdier outerwear  (although I have heard stories of the old German-born ladies arriving at concert halls in balmy Tel Aviv wearing their furs) and it wasn’t until I decided to decamp to Boston that I have come to appreciate the variations in warmth, length, and purpose that radically changeable weather dictates. So now I have many a coat for many a day – yet somehow I always feel a coat short.

My current obsession has to do with lifestyle as much as it does with climate. Since joining the ranks of the picking-up-moms (quite a change from my old life when teachers would never recognize me and school principles would glance disapprovingly as I occasionally appeared on premises) I have realized that my working wool coats are too much for my new role: too long, too black, too everything.  One, black and military inspired that I’ve worn in Amsterdam on that lovely trip with A & A three years ago, is too cumbersome to drive and hop in and out of a car with. The other – well, it is no longer in great shape but wearing a Diane Von Furstenberg coat that ma-in-law got for me when I was pregnant with Yoyo seems a terrible waste.

Here’s what I need in a perfect demi-season, mom-no-longer-as-much-on- a-run coat:

Length: thigh high (otherwise known as a car coat length, appropriately enough)

Necessary Features: Hood

Warmth: medium. For the 40s and low 50s

Color: not black

I’ve found what I’m looking for at Zara, but sadly it is out of stock. Nonetheless check it out:

Oh well, there is always Ebay!

After THAT I need a drink!

Ever since the husband and I discovered Pisco Sours at Café Atlantico in DC many moons and fewer children ago I’ve been seriously addicted to cocktails with egg whites. And thanks to a vintage British TV series I think I’ve just found myself a new summer obsession: The White Lady.

Here’s the recipe, both in a modern iteration and in its original, 1910 forms (a traditionalist, in this as in other things, I am gravitating towards the latter):

White Lady recipe 2 oz gin  1 egg white 1 oz light cream 1 tsp superfine sugar In a shaker half-filled with ice cubes, combine all of the ingredients. Shake well. Strain into a cocktail glass. 19% (38 proof) Serve in: Cocktail Glass

White Lady 1910 recipe 2 jiggers gin 1 jigger Cointreau  1 jigger lemon juice 1/2 egg white Shake vigourously with plenty of ice. 27% (54 proof) Serve in: Cocktail Glass

A French cocktail blogger is also smitten, and suggests the following, which I am tempted to quote in French, for that inimitable flair:

Ma petite touche personnelle: En refaisant les essais à la boutique pour la mise en avant, j’ai aussi essayé d’ajouter au cocktail deux gouttes d’Angostura Bitters Orange. Ce n’est pas forcément un ingrédient qu’on a chez soi, et il n’est pas indispensable, mais si vous l’avez, essayez. Le bitter apporte une pointe d’amertume et de caractère très appréciable!

Cocktail party sometime this summer anyone?

Odds on Betrayal

Cameron Diaz, in an interview with OK Mag for her new movie The Other Woman (trailer ) made a bold statement:  ““Everybody has been cheated on, everyone will be cheated on. I can’t fix that, I don’t know how, I don’t have any judgment on anybody, I don’t know how to fix the problem.” (Hat Tip "Independent")

Sure, Diaz managed to date the grossest man on earth, ARod (remember this? ), and she’s an actress in LalaLand, but her words rang a bell for me. A few years back I had a drink in a swanky bar in the Tel Aviv port with a guy I used to be friends with in grad school. When we met he was married to a woman and they were the best, most solid academic success story ever, at least in their own eyes. By the time the drink occurred they were divorced, and the guy, lets call him Y, was living with a boyfriend. Granted, the former couple kept their successful academic careers, so at least something remained constant. Anyways. We’re done having the one drink, conversation lags as it does when people have known each other too long and t  too much dirty water has passed under the bridge,  I get up to go back home, explaining that I left husband and kids and need to return. Frankly the husband and kids were an excuse, but for Y they were a red flag. Almost yelling (he did finish my drink as well as his, so hey, maybe it went to his head) Y started admonishing me for my poor sense of social priority. “Men,” he said in his best professorial tone, “will always cheat. And if you dream that your husband will be faithful to you, you are deluded or dumb. There will be a work trip, a situation, and he will cheat. The best you can do is cheat on him as well.” I can’t vouch that rendition is verbatim, but the gist is true.  I left. We have not met since.
But now an authority on life such as Cameron Diaz concurs.

So ladies – what do you think? Everybody cheats some time? All the time? And maybe I shouldn’t even be bothered?

De Nimes

Surely there are worse ways for a city to be immortalized rather than partaking of a name of an item of clothing that is ubiquitous to the point of absolute necessity.  Although applied originally to the type of cloth, the word denim has come to be primarily associated with pants. That said, who can forget Britney & Justin in that atrocious head to toe denim?

For the sake of all that is precious to you, please stay away from the Canadian Tuxedo!

Warning heeded, lets venture bravely into the world or denim. NK asked about denim shirts, and seeing as these are early days and one wants to be a responsive blogger, here goes my take. As a side note denim shirts are often referred to by another type of fabric – chambray (colored, smooth and light fabric) and more often than not they are indeed fashioned out of a much lighter weight cloth. 

What makes a perfect denim shirt?

-          Slim fit

-          De-saturated hue

-          ABSOLUTELY no embroidery. Any embellishment on a denim shirt sends it straight into the world of Dallas (in its original iteration)- as illustrated handily by Barneys:

The two things that can vary therefore are button plackets and collar styles. Lets break it down and discuss:

Collars:

Since I cut my hair I’ve been avoiding traditional spread collars -

 - for fear of excessive – for me – gender bending. The aim is to look boyish but not masculine. Even with longer hair, however, I think there is something too American about the traditional collar and personally prefer alternatives. A peter pan collar, when rendered in other fabric can work for that 60s inspired, Twiggy look, but hard to pull off in denim. My preference and recommendation, you ask? A small mandarin collar – for an otherwise almost colar-less look. Somehow, the combination of denim and mandarin just works.

Button plackets:

Now that the collar debate has been settled, the button placket is easy. There are two options: Henley length and full length. Given the collar, I tend to lean towards the half length, resulting in a pull on, slightly blouse-ier cut. I suppose that the contradiction of a workman-like cloth with a dressier cut appeals to me.

And so, a post that originated with a rumination on JCrew ends with the same retailer. Yes, I still think that the best basic denim shirt is to be found there: 

COLLARLESS POPOVER IN INDIGO OXFORD

Pair it with colored jeans (NEVER blue) and your favorite chunky faux cocktail ring and you got yourself a hot little look that you will be able to work anywhere and any time (depending on heel height, bien sur!)

And it is on sale!

P. S. A timely illustration on how denim still can look tacky courtesy of Elle Mag:

Its not the length that matters?

On to matters that only some will be able to identify with. My nose obsession, that has grown alongside the offending body part from childhood on, is no secret. And despite the onset of the middle of one’s lifespan (give or take) it has not abated, even if financial considerations and offspring have shifted the priorities somewhat. Anyways, while the husband was spending his days on degustation dinners with clients in sunny Prague (yes, in comparison with Boston, Prague was sunnier AND warmer. Riddle me that Kafka) I was sitting on my stylish but uncomfortable couch flipping channels in search of something half way decent to watch with my night cap of port. Two horrible movies were on – Mr and Mrs Smith on one channel; Lara Croft the Tomb Raider on another. Lo and behold, two movies with the same (terrible) actress yet – and here is the rub – that same actress looks remarkably different in both.

Behold the evidence:

Movie 1:

Movie 2:

And, just to assist you in the analysis, a recent shot of Saint Jolie of Many Children from the last Oscars:

What is happening in her face is not botox (or not just, I have no clue, although it is rather mask like), and not age (or not just)– but the NOSE! Not that it is unsightly in either, but there is a marked difference. Thick on the sides in the early movie, perfectly sculpted and slim in the later one.

So I ask you, ladies: is it the width that counts? Was I wrong, all these years, to assume that the source of offence lies in the length?

If the answer is yes, then add this to my list of wishful improvements. 

Whence JCrew?

A strange thing happened recently. I no longer crave anything at J Crew. Not a single thing. Yes, this might not be as much of a mystery as the disappearance of the Malaysian flight (and no, I’m not making light of a catastrophe), but it is odd. Odd, since for a stretch of about 6 years in the 2000s there was always, with every seasonal change and every new catalog, something I felt I could not live without – a striped sweater jacket (that I still troll after on Ebay); the chicest cardigan; a perfect denim shirt; a ballet flat with a hint of wedge… the list, a sad testament to my shopping greed, goes on.  But last week, as I stood in a store wishing not for a single item, and not for the first time, it dawned on me: J Crew is no longer lust worthy.

Given that this meteoric rise and subsequent decline and fall is a phenomenon worth pondering – Gibbon has nothing on me! – I considered the issue at hand at some length. I went to the JCrew website to continue my research – everything that the brand is known for was in place, Jenna Lyons’ creative hand was visible in the careful mix of high and low as the obviously fake jewelry was juxtaposed with obvious luxury. All was as it should be – but maybe that is just the problem? In the most academic of manners I propose to you the following hypothesis: has the JCrew style become a stale style staple?

We all know what to expect from Lyons and, by extension, JCrew. We love it, sure, but we also have grown accustomed to it, and so have other retailers. Jealous of the brand’s successful overhaul of its image and incredible reach other mass market retailers have encroached on the semaphores of the JCrew styling – which, after all is what the brand did best – copying them. Walk into the Gap these days and you will see a strikingly similar retail landscape at a slightly lower price point.

Oh well, sic transit gloria commerciana (all translations into Latin are mine, and hence wonky).

So whence to, you might ask? Not sure yet. And who knows, Lyons and Mickey Drexler might be able to change things up, updating their brand without erasing its distinguishing attributes. Or maybe it is time for a new creative vision. Either way, when I walk into JCrew these days I see what I saw once at Gap – a mass retail store that no longer has the sparkle to lure me in for anything other than the basics (and only on sale).