Weekend Reading List

Don't ask me why, but I was (bizarrely) flipping this month's Bazaar, and stopped at this charming story by Jean Paul Goude. Playing the Brooklyn blonde (a caricature of a caricature?) is the French bombshell Laetitia Casta. In the lion cage, Ms Casta is Tira in I'm No Angel, disarming her prey by wearing baby blue Dior. She's Ruby Carter in Ms West's gravity-defying millinery from Belle of the Nineties and those floor-dragging furs and feathers are pure 1934 Hollywood.

I've followed Goude's work since I saw the Egoiste commercial on TV when I was a child, long before I even knew what Chanel was. Remember the Egoiste ad?


Still thinking of a holiday, I've decided to read (finally) Paul Theroux's The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia, something I've been wanting to read, but never got round too. A good companion book is the lovely Steve McCurry book The Unguarded Moment, which roughly covers the same area. It's like taking my own train journey... Mr Theroux's words, with the lush, lush McCurry photographs flipping by.

"You can't get hung up on what you think your 'real' destination is. The journey is just as important." - Steve McCurry