Galliano Suspended from Dior

Dior designer John Galliano, 50, has been suspended by the couture house following allegations of a drunken racist rant in a Paris bar in the Marais. He had been drinking at La Perle, a bar along the Rue Vielle du Temple last Thursday. Mr Galliano is alleged to have drunkenly told a woman sitting at a table beside him: "Dirty Jew, you should be dead. Dirty Jewish face, you should be dead.” He called her a “whore” and “ugly”" then ranted to an Asian man sitting with her: "Fucking Asian bastard, I’m going to kill you."
Witnesses called police during the incident, said to have taken place in front of dozens of astonished revellers. Police arrived quickly (9pm) and broke up the disturbance. Mr Galliano was briefly arrested and then released pending charges for assault.
Anti-semitic remarks are punishable by up to six months in prison in France, but Mr Galliano has not yet been charged with an offence. His lawyer, Stephane Zerbib, ‘formally denied’ that his client had made racist comments.
Dior's chief executive Sidney Toledano said: "Dior affirms with the utmost conviction its policy of zero tolerance towards any anti-semitic or racist words or behaviour. Pending the results of the inquiry, Christian Dior has suspended John Galliano from his responsibilities."
Mr Galliano was facing criminal charges and would appear in court on a date to be fixed.
Mr Galliano has been chief designer at Dior since 1996.
Born in Gibraltar and brought up in South London, he is often seen enjoying himself in the bars and café of the Marais, the historic centre of the city’s Jewish community. The Dior fall collection is scheduled to be shown next Friday, March 4, at the Rodin Museum.

He Said She Said

"Only great minds can afford a simple style." - Stendhal Beige shoe, John Lobb

Mr Butler

Commanded By The Queen

I like the spareness of the invite - I've seen wedding invites of air stewards more fancy than this. I wonder if The Queen also commanded Prince William to marry Miss Middleton. It's so nice to be The Queen; Your commands appear on notices like these - imagine sending out a flurry of these commands on a regular basis: So good for the soul.

He Said She Said

"I've enjoyed wonderful health. The only time I ever got sick was when I watched Barbra Streisand in Hello, Dolly! on an airplane." - Carol Channing

Timesless Coco

Spencer or Pelisse

This would be a Jane Austen's wardrobe crisis: What will she wear this spring? A spencer, a short military style jacket (top), or pelisse, which was longer (bottom)? What would you wear?

Unpublished

Isn't it a wonder that there are unpublished images of Kate?

Keep Calm

Have a lovely, lovely week ahead you all!

Sunday Self Pic

Weekend Reading List

I wish Alan Hollinghurst would hurry up and bring out his new book The Stranger's Child. I can't wait for this to come out later this year (September). He's one of those gay writers who are real writers (please contrast and compare with mawkishly gay works of Paul Monette and I don't like Michael Cunningham either), if you know what I mean. I love Hollinghurst's books. Right now, I'm reading The Spell (1988) all over again, and loving it afresh. This paperback has followed me on quite a few trips around the world, and the pages are now tea coloured, but the language is still crisp and fresh and considered. I especially like the (anachronistic) fascination with house music and drugs, which reminds me of my own clumsy experiments so long ago. I still had my big monster Mac desktop computer then (it took up most of the rosewood 1950s desk), and I had just discovered online chatting.To counter all the (rubbish) reading I'm doing about the dreadful new round of fall shows, I've turned to The Illiad (Translated by Robert Fagles). This version comes highly recommended by Uncle C as being the definitive translation; He should know, he's an academic. If you're disenchanted by all else, pick this up. Do not go and get a tattoo or pierce your ear, or whatever people do when they get bored. I saw a fat lesbian who peirced the tip of her ear in the lift today; she wore a black stud, and ill-fitting cargo berms, and I felt like leaving the lift. I don't know what it is about lesbians who like to make themselves just as disagreeably ugly as they can. I don't see the point, do you? (The painting is my Illiad crush, Patroclus, painted by Jacques Louis David in 1780; Don't even ask me why I picked Patroclus.)
I'm never ever bored.
Last Friday, after a client meeting (I grinned and nodded for 40 minutes; My jaw ached, and I'd gone partially blind from blanking out behind my interested stare), I went to Chanel and smelled a lot of perfumes from those marvellous white ceramic blotters, and talked to Ms Loy about perfumes for an hour or so. Chanel doesn't use paper blotters - they are so classy that they use these white ceramic tubes that are fitted into a tabletop and you just pick each stick up and sniff at it. Very civilized. We sniffed and talked, sniffed and talked. I went away with a new fascination for Coco eau de parfum (1984), as they haven't added to thier Les Exclusif line after Beige.
I went home and climbed on a teak stool in the bathroom, and shifted three shelves of perfumes around untill I found my bottle of Coco. I also found the matching body cream, and a bar of Sisley bath soap. I put some perfume on while still atop the stool, got down, teased out the Luca Turin perfume guide, and read all about Coco. That night, I went to bed smelling of Coco, and read all the magazines (Vogue, Man About Town, etc) which I dragged home from the office, and fell asleep at 11.You see, I didn't rush out to get an extreme hair cut or tattoo, or pierce my ears so that I can look disagreeable, or wear hideous cargo berms with hideous new trainers.
I have a closet full of perfume.
I have friends who are interesting to talk to.
I have a bed with lovely grey Egyptian cotton sheets and candles from Laduree.
I read.

Jil Sander or H&M?

Hedi/ i-D

He Said She Said

"You gotta have Style. It helps you get down the stairs. It helps you get up in the morning.It's a way of Life. Without it you're nobody. I'm not talking about a lot of clothes." -Diana Vreeland"I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people." - Mark Twain

"I think it is important that people not get too caught up in having a certain style. It is so limiting. People should do what pleases them and it will all work out." - Isabelle D'Ornano

Wet

And god created Jon Jon!

He Said She Said

"In came Marlene, with a great, big record - great, BIG record! -- and she said, 'Oh, dahwings, would you like to hear my wehcord?' And she put the record on, and it was just applause! And Marlene would lift needle and say, 'Und dot's Fwankfuht.' 'Dot's Berlin.' But not one note of music...just applause! And Noel [Coward] turned to me and said, 'I hope there's not another side!'" - Judy Garland

That Sabrina Dress

"Secondhand accounts can ruin someone's reputation as much as malicious rumors. Therefore, I feel it is time to set the record straight.
In early April of 1974, I had the following conversation with Edith Head in her bungalow on the Universal Studio lot while we looked at a rack of costumes she was going through to select garments for her Vogue fashion shows.
She pulled from the rack a crumpled and sagging black dress, and examined it.
I stared at the dress, recognizing it immediately. "That's the infamous Sabrina dress, non?"
"No! It's the muslin [first-fitting dress], although it's made in rayon taffeta. See the peplum here? I did away with it when I finalized its look."
"But, by all the accounts I have heard, didn't Givenchy make it?"
"Ha," retorted Edith, "that story has been circulating for years, thanks to Miss Hepburn."
"But why?""So she could gain his favour, I suppose, and get clothes free." She paused and fluffed up the skirt. "During preproduction for Sabrina, she was in San Francisco touring with Gigi, and had no time to come to Hollywood for a meeting. So, once more, I went to see her like I did for Roman Holiday, when she was performing in New York. She was pleasant enough, but very tenacious in her taste. Her manner remained aloof, although somewhat sad and unhappy. She smiled only when it was necessary.I was beginning to believe the rumors I had heard of how some journalists and other actors regarded her as being self-absorbed. And I realized that any confidence I had built up with her before, now carried little weight. She handed me a croquis, a rough sketch similar to the quick ones I had shown her originally for Roman Holiday, and said she had made it while viewing Givenchy's runway show in Paris. Years later, I learned she had gained access to the showing giving the name 'Miss Hepburn.' As she was hardly known at the time since Roman Holiday hadn't yet been released, Givenchy thought it was Katharine Hepburn. The sketch of this dress and several others she pulled forth were the costumes she wanted for Sabrina." - Jean-Pierre Dorléac, Emmy-winning Hollywood costume designer who was mentored by the legendary Edith Head.

The Photoshop Gym Workout

Ms O after getting a complete photoshop gym workout (it involves quite a lot of clicking). That chiselled feline jaw looks completely unreal!

Love in Idleness

Love in Idleness, 1900, Sidney Harold Meteyard
You've got to love those lilac sandals!

Darling Daria

He Said She Said

"I’m sure there is a lot who want to push me out of the way, because this is fashion. It’s never very faithful, you know, and people want change all the time. This is the purpose of fashion, so I don’t know what is going to happen with me." - Carine Roitfeld

Valentine's Bouquet

The paintings are from Fragrance Fills the Courtyard: Chinese Flower Paintings through the Ages, an ongoing exhibition at Taipei's lovely National Palace Museum. That one chrysanthemum is sublime! So refined and elegant beyound anything on earth.

Young Anna

It's hard to imagine Anna Wintour as having ever been young - but there you go!

Weekend Reading List

I've been eating a lot of fine Chinese food over the Chinese New Year, and lots of yummy stuff cooked at home by mother, so pardon me as I leave a trail of drool as I stick my snout into the wonderful hawker food guide The End of Char Kway Teow and other Hawker Mysteries. It's by award-winning food blogger Dr Leslie Tay (ieatishootipost.sg) and it's gastroporn of the most delicious kind. Divided into chapters featuring all the heart-stopping Singapore street food like laksa, satay, rojak and other obsessions which I've not eaten in ages, it's a pretty definitive, opiniated, well-researched, guide including ratings and addresses and directions. I just want to tear downstairs and fly to the nearest hawker stand. Fortunately, the nearest one for me is Singapore's top biryani store (across the road); I don't like biryani, otherwise I'll be eating, not blogging.On a different note, I've been reading E M Forster's Collected Short Stories. They are queerly comforting, and read very much like period pieces. I didn't use to think so when I first discovered these in my 20s, but upon reading them again, I find that they feel anachronistic. It's truly a vanished world. Just downstairs, gay couples, with their Stussy T-shirts and sling bags, stroll in pairs of a Sunday morning, with nary a care in the world. They know no repression. They don't need polite metaphors for the love that once caused Forster panic and anxiety. They have their lattes, and designer flip flops and Lady Gaga.
Needless to say, I prefer polite metaphors and Merchant-Ivory movies.I just read in the papers that drinking more than two cups of coffee a day can be good for your health - specifically, some substance in coffee supposedly lowers the risk of diabetes. Alas I can only drink one cup a day, and never after 1pm for fear I would be tossing and turning the better part of the night away. However, I've been completely absorbed by the 2008 Korean drama Coffee Prince. I'm not ashamed to admit this because this is simply one of the best things I've seen in a long while and it's a very well made entertainment, perfectly cast (gorgeous good actors) and cleverly written to milk every adult tear still left in the desert of your folorn heart. It's completely escapist of course, with little that is realistic, but that's its magic I suppose. The girl is so poor that she has to disguise herself as a boy to work in a coffee house; No it doesn't make sense, and even her poverty never feels desperate or ugly, and is instead an excuse for very cute antics, and silly behaviour. There's no real crisis, no fatal illness, nothing upsetting or stressful, just the bittersweet romance of The Butterfly Lovers, or Yentl, or As You Like It, where the boy falls in love with the boy who is a girl, but with a Starbucks setting.
Gong Yoo, the leading man, is of course meltingly adorable (as yummy as the best oyster omelette), and has become an obsession. I can't believe how ideal they've made him, and how unrealistic and impossible to match in real life. So that's my discovery in the Year of the Hare, and if you find yourself all alone this Valentine's Day, do not despair. Go to your nearest DVD store and buy Coffee Prince - Gong Yoo is simply the best thing since... E M Forster?

Sunday Self Pic