Favorite Things

Guys, this is important.

Do you know what this is?

It’s a welcome mat.

You know what it’s made of?

FLIP-FLOPS.

A welcome mat made of flip flips. And it’s rainbow. And ruffled with ridges. And super koosh.

Is koosh spelled with a k or a c? Not that I give a rip because I’m talking about my new flip-flop welome mat. Aghhgg! This is exciting!

I know what you are thinking; Did you make that? No. I didn’t. I could have made it but it would have cost me $40 in foam rubber flip flops, which would be a pretty stupid purchase on my part considering I can buy this readymade rug at World Market for $16.99.  Folks, I’m tell you — recycled goods, lookin’ good!

Last night I was up until 2am, strung out on canned frosting and social media. Also I was watching this documentary on fashion guru Diana Vreeland which was utterly fascinating. Seriously. I’m not even that much of a fashion bug but golly, this woman was impressive. What an eye. What a gal. You have just got to watch this movie.

At the height of her career, Vreeland was an editor at Vogue, but for many years before that she was a columnist at Harper’s Bazaar. Her longest running piece was called Why Don’t You? and was just a simple list of extravagant suggestions to insert in one’s life for fun. The film mentions five of them and I thought they were so fabulous that I went scouring the internet for more.

All of these ideas are as impractical as they are extravagant, but they make me feel fancy just typing them out on the computer. Oooooo!

Why don’t you…try the lovely combination of tourmalines and pale rubies?

Why don’t you…turn your old ermine coat into a bathrobe?

Why don’t you…wear loose velvet gloves in wonderful colors – the right hand in violet velvet, the left in burgundy? These gloves at the theater emerging from a beautiful fur cap would be effective.

Why don’t you…if you are a tawny blond, wear bright yellow pajamas with carved coral bracelets?

Why don’t you…knit yourself a skullcap?

Why don’t you…sweep into the drawing-room on your first big night with an enormous red fox muff with many skins?

Why don’t you…give someone an enormous white handkerchief linen table-cloth, and in different handwriting and different colors (black, acid green, pink, scarlet and pale blue) have embroidered all the bon mots you can possibly think of?

Why don’t you…give a case of vin rose – a delicious wine for luncheon or simple dinners?

Why don’t you…give a length of exquisite brocade – enough for an evening envelope, to bind a favorite book, or make a little jacket?

Why don’t you…give Chanel’s “Glamour”? It drives men crazy.

Why don’t you…go to the theatre in a black tweed evening suit with a jacket embroidered in brilliant paillettes?

Why don’t you…wear, like the Duchess of Kent, three enormous diamond stars arranged in your hair in the front?

Why don’t you…have the most beautiful necklaces in the world made of huge pink spiky coral with big Siberian emeralds?

Why don’t you…wear Suzanene Talbot’s black crepe glove embroidered in gold like the hand that bore a falcon?

Why don’t you…order Schiaparelli’s cellophane belt with your name and telephone number on it?

I dare you to read that list and not feel fancy. I dare you.
 

I don’t know about you, but my Instagram feed is blowing up with images run through faux painting apps. This one Waterlogue is especially trendy…

I love it. I hate it. I mean, it’s swell, but it’s also majorly irritating to know that regardless of the time and money I invested in art school, I will never, ever, paint half so well as my phone. 

Hashtag: butthurt.

Photoshop has been able to do this stuff for years but the results have never been this good. Honestly. Hats off to these app developers for knowing their bidness.

My fav is this one called Glazed. Makes everything look like some funkadelic oil painting. Brush strokes run from gentle, Monet style stipples, to thick and sloppy Someone-Left-the-Toddler-Alone-with-the-Peanut-Butter style strokes. It took this badly lit photo of a football cupcake and turned it into something marvelous. Look!

Personally, I think all these apps work better on images of objects and landscapes than people, unless the person is wearing something really weird or interesting (coffee filter flower hat, anyone?).

They also work really great on cat pictures. Like, really great. I have a long-running dream to have Lolabelle’s portrait painted, and it’ll happen one day, but for now, this is enough to make me smile. And I sorta doubt Lola will know the difference.*

*shhhhh, nobody tell on me.

My favorite so far is this image of a pink church we saw in Italy last fall. The moment I saw that church in real life I thought, now this, THIS should be a painting…and now it is.

Okay, it’s not a masterpiece, but it’s a cheap thrill. Major niftiness. If you are in the app game, go and get you some Glazed. It’s free. You’re welcome.

I went to Istanbul on a school trip when I was 17 and decided right then and there – when I grew up, I would have a Turkish rug. A real Turkish rug. It was too big and expensive of a purchase to make back then, but I told myself that one day I would find a kilim to call my own. That would mean I had really made it.

Last week, after 16 years of waiting, and several months of Ebay stalking, and a few weeks in a box coming from Ankara, it happened.

Not gonna lie, I got a good deal. Probably too good. I suspect the market for rainbow colored kilims isn’t as big as it used to be. Paired with the fact that this is missing tassels on one end (not that I mind – one end will always be under a couch) it was a bargain.

As is custom with all new rugs in our house, I unrolled it with great ceremony and Lola promptly threw up on it. Glad to see we are keeping some things traditional.

When we were in Switzerland we visited Gstaad for the Promenade Party, which is somewhere between a parade, a beauty pageant, and an Oscars after-party. For, ahem, cows.

I took a lot of pictures, but sometimes video makes for a better illustration.

Technically, actually, it’s for cows and goats.

And it’s not so much a pageant as it is an election. The super manly cowherds dress up the cows in flowers and parade them down the main street in town, and the kids follow with the kids (kid is a baby goat –see what I did there?) and everyone is wearing a number and showing off the goods. “Pick me! Pick me!” they cry, only they don’t say it in English, they say it in French or German or Swiss-German or Romage, because they all speak eleventy languages like that. And, not like our small-town parades, the locals aren’t lined up in front of post office and the Piggly-Wiggly, they line up on the stoops of the local retailers like Rolex and Ralph Lauren and Cartier. It makes Rodeo Drive look like a run-down strip mall. And not the nice one with the chicken and waffles place — look, I like that place. 

And then, at the end of the parade, instead of heading off to a barn, the animals trot up a red carpet and hang out at a huge outdoor party while the local hotel serves free food and champagne to anyone and everyone in sight. It’s swell. Ladies with Hermes handbags and fresh facelifts are given the opportunity to inspect the cows and goats before casting their vote and tossing their ballot into a silver wine bucket. Even I got to vote, and I don’t even live there!

This the cow I voted for. Tall hat Number Five. She lost to that one in the sunflower belt, Number Four.

Would you look at the udders on that one? What a tramp.

 I wrote a story about the tradition of the Des Alps cow parades a couple years ago, you can read it here, or better yet, go to the Gstaad Promenade Party website and check into details for the event next year. A pooped up red carpet is something everyone needs to see once in their life, at least once, and I don’t see the Hollywood folks taking up the lead on this one.