31 July 2010

Weekend Reading List

I spent an hour Saturday afternoon in Page One with T looking at the glossy, well-organised YSL (2010) page by page. I count this as a rare pleasure: this sort of sharing of a passion with someone discerning and knowledgeable and interested. Much more nourishing than sitting down to an indifferent meal, or getting drunk. It's a lovely retrospective book (yet another one, perhaps the last one, the best one yet?) that is the catelogue, published under the aegis of the French First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, for the Petit Palais museum exhibition of Yves Saint Laurent’s works (an archive of over 300 garments) last spring. That's Ms Bruni, the former muse, modelling the 1988 'Braque' wedding dress called Doves. I will go back and buy it to read the interviews, essays, although I dare say I would not discover so many new things.And then T showed me the book of Guy Bourdin polaroids, which we agreed no one else but he would buy; And then we chatted animatedly about Matthew Goode, and Giselle and Isabelli in the new (too dreary) Muse Mag, and about Adrien Brody on the cover of this men's magazine looking like he was recovering from a serious bout of food poisoning (why would anyone run a cover like that?), for the length of the queue to the cashier (it was so nice to see Singaporeans buying books - we are such a nation of readers!) to buy the August Vogue Paris. And in the usual order of things, T had to eat a Mosburger and drink and a large ice tea, and then we went to that CD shop and T bought a DVD of Leap Year because Matthew Goode is in it.And then just as soon as the cab door shut, I tore into the Vogue Paris and before I was home, just as I rounded the Newton Circle corner, I regretted buying it. It's bad, patchy, uninspired. Is it the season? Magazines are in a bad way now, aren't they? I then I sat me down with a (blue and white Ming) bowl of cherries and leafed through the Visionaire #32 Where (2000 - already a decade old), sort of travel-themed, a stack of postcards that comes in an Hermes folder. It's a mystery why Hermes would want to be associated with this project which rather lowers. LB gave this to me one afternoon recently, for no apparent reason, in his darkened room in Orchard Towers and with Little Chris showing me his travel snaps of his grand tour of Italy: Ponte Vecchio, the Coliseum, the Trevii fountain, Michelangelo's David. Little Chris, 21, reminded me of the Victorian debutantes in E M Forster, Edith Wharton and Henry James who had seen just such views on their grand tours. He's of that age, and has that innocence.
I think the postcards were only slightly more interesting, just ever so slightly more, than the unpeopled snaps.
And then I retired early to bed, the night howling with wild winds bringing sheets of clean, cold rain that shook the windows. I drank a cup (pink and gold Wedgewood) of hot almond milk, and swaddled in my various pillows (duck down, memory foam, microfill, cotton, kapok) read an Agatha Christie I've never read before (so truly rare!) Problem at Pollensa Bay.
And then sleep claimed me.

7 comments:

  1. I thought the best image in this issue is from the main well beauty story I think about aging, with Enika and those old hands embracing her face. I agree though that the issue was patchy but that's David Sims for you. When they did this kind of jump-cut story previously with Inez and Vinoodh, it was so much more successful, right? The one that was in Cairo or something... I was flipping through that issue for things to tear out but couldn't as the story was of a whole.
    Still, the Daria image in McCartney and Enika is going in my scrapbook, which means, as you said, the rest of it is going out... My new rule is if I can find two pictures to tear out its not so bad of a waste!

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  2. Oops... I'm talking about the August Paris Vogue... forgot to mention, so sorry...

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  3. your weekend activities read like an updated agatha christie novel, sans les grisly bits of course. so envious.

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  4. Andrew: I know the spread you're talking about... i think it was in tangiers? in the david sims one, nothing was made of the location firstly, which makes me think why go all the way out to cap ferrat or wherever it was. it could have been done right in the vogue office in saint honore. secondly, all the best pictures were of daria - the rest seemed half hearted, and, a particular bugbear with me, i can't see the clothes!
    even the bijoux story with malgosia was weak and yes i loved that beauty picture! those breasts!

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  5. Anon: LOL... what an inspiring comment i shall do something grisly this week - murder the person whose car alarm keeps going off!

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  6. I'm 25 and still innocent too :p

    LB

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  7. LB: You may be 25, but hardly innocent!

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