He Said She Said: Monday Morals

"Look to your health; and if you have it, praise God and value it next to conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of, a blessing money can't buy." - Izaak Walton (1593-1683)"If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us." - Hermann Hesse (1877-1962)

Weekend Reading List: Yours and Mine

I had a long discussion with J about the interesting long feature in Saturday's Straits Times about sex education in Singapore. It's pretty interesting to hear her views, as J is a teacher, as well as a devout Christian. I'm pleased to hear that, at least in her school, what I think are the two most crucial categories on this topic are routinely covered: The legal aspects (age of consent, rape, etc) as well as the medical aspects (STDs, etc). My view is that schools should not confuse the debate by bringing in religion and morals. They should simply stick to the facts. R does not read the papers, 'Actually, I've stopped buying mainstream broadsheets for a while now; I only read them online
I'm hoping that R is reading the Tash Aw book The Harmony Silk Factory that I gave him that night we visited his cosy Tanglin Halt flat, the book that KO said he couldn't read because it was too boring, and which I finished in two sittings. People are so hard to please. I find I'm always giving books to people who won't read them. Maybe the solution is to not give books. HHH messaged me: "W is out. I must tell you the W layout is not nice! I bought it before I headed out to Sentosa, and I flipped through it immediately u know! I just cannot wait."
BG said that he saw Princess Caroline (below) at Kinokuniya when he was shopping for books this afternoon.BG: "She's here to support her daughter Charlotte Casiraghi for YOG. Not bluffing. Only I know it's her. She's dressed very European and looks shabby, so you will like. She is dressed like you would to meet Vincent the drycleaner. I bought Sacred Hearts (Sarah Dunant) about noble nuns in 1570 Ferrara. Another one called Rossetti Letter (Christi Phillips) about a courtesan in Renaissance Venice, am I not classic?"As for myself, I plowed methodically through Vogue (HHH made me buy it, quite against my better judgement), all 668 pages of it. It's like a very heavy brochure for the Vogue event Fashion Night Out and 'stories' promoting this shopping festival keeps cropping up, in every section, every few pages. The Halle Berry cover story is unutterably dull and she says lots of sanctimonious rubbish. On the cover (by Mario Testino) she looks very smug, like she just booked a masseur for 3pm. Two fashion spreads are interesting: Peter Lindbergh's Checks and The City about plaids and tweeds shot on the streets in NYC, and Raymond Meier's Monsters Inc on fur bags and boots. I read the short piece written by HRH Prince of Wales (about recycling wool) and the fluff piece (it seemed mostly about her riding habit by Gucci) on Charlotte Casiraghi.And then I'm thinking who I can give it to already; I certainly don't want to keep it.

1950s

The 1950s fashion (yawn...) is predictably popping up in every magazine, which leaves us the bandwith to study how they are presenting it: In W this month, it's given a cinematic lushness in the story Brooklyn by Mert & Marcus. It's one of their better efforts, I have to say, and one of the more interesting 1950s stories this month.I also see that it's inspired by Edward Hopper(1882 – 1967), just like those (really literal) fall Fendi ads.The Fendi ads (by Karl Lagerfeld):More Edward Hopper paintings:

Rock Chick

Kate looking like the world's saddest rock chick in the latest Vogue Paris. Photos by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin.

Crystal Renn For Chanel

Crystal Renn in her first campaign for Chanel — for the reopening of the Chanel's Soho store. Shot in Paris by Karl Lagerfeld, the models (yes, that's the inevitable Baptiste Giabiconi) play lovers.
Ms Renn gibbering on about the Beloved Baptiste: “He is the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen hands down. I remember being on set and trying not to stare but staring at him methodically nonetheless to try to figure out how perfection in a male looks. It’s insane when you look at him.” Amen.
Seriously. The Cross-Eyed One is the 'most gorgeous' man? Was she paid to say that? Is this like a product placement thing?

Genius

Just stunning! See Paris through Marion Cotillard's (it could very well be Christina Ricci, who's to say? But let's not quibble) eyes in the September issue of Vogue Paris. Photo: Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott. Out August 26.

He Said She Said

‘‘I’ve always had a sense that if I can’t wear it, what’s the point?’’ - Phoebe Philo

iNotInterested

iMac. iBook. iPod. iPhone. iPad.
iSimplyNotInterested.
I'm not interested in buying more and more stuff just because it's the newest, especially when everyone has one, wants one, needs one to be up to date to be connected to be young to be hip to be cool.
Because iNotStupid.
Is this progress? One needs to know this.
Are things really moving faster, and to what end? One needs to ask: What sort of a race this is?
Does it really improve the quality of one's life? One rather doubts this, as one looks around and sees people unable to tear their eyes of their iSoStoopid - even during dinner. The bloody things look gummed to their hands.
They can't wait to flash their iTooCool, thinking of ways to introduce it into the conversation.
Are there 'apps' to reduce idiocy and moral decay?
(I forget: Morals are not in fashion anymore. What are morals?)
Are you less lonely because of the hookup 'apps', or rather, profoundly more?
Are you looking at stuff that really needs to be looked at like... mid conversation?
Do you really need to check your email every two minutes?
Do you really need to update your Facebook profile from taxi stand to taxi?
Have you lost the plot entirely?
Can you write/ think/ argue better because you have an iNoCare?
iKnowYouCan't.
(Photo: Tod's iPad case)

Love To Love You Baby

...But I don't.This is supposed to be Sienna Miller? Who can tell?... Not that it matters, but isn't it a bit of a stretch to call Ms Miller a pin-up? Even given the usual fashion glossy hyperbole?

William Chan

New model; Asian (truly rare); Doesn't look entirely Chinese; Hard to tell with the photoshopping; Possibly fat (or will be soon). But there's something in there...

He Said She Said

"I’m so happy to not pay attention to trends because they are meaningless anyway. They are over fast. As soon as you see them, as soon as you see people wearing them, they are over. That’s it. As soon as you see it on someone, forget it.” - Calvin Klein

Penguin Books Is 75 Years Old

My beloved Penguin Books celebrated their 75th birthday last month. Penguin brought affordable paperback editions of popular books to shops, train stations, and other nontraditional bookselling locations, and revolutionized publishing and reading. The bookcovers featured simple, bold design, and color coding: orange for general literature, blue for biography, etc
Here are some of my favourite Penguin Jane Austen covers over the years.

Weekend Reading List

When I was still buying books, and still travelling, I had a tall stack of travel books that fuelled and inspired me. Recently, in a new bid to spring clean the shelves (white shelves look neat and crisp in pictures but are hell to maintain, let me tell you) I came across two books from that era. Where are the others from this series? I have in hand The Best American Travel Writing 2004 (edited by Pico Iyer), and 2008 (edited by Anthony Bourdain); The rest are missing. But then I'm only doing two shelves this time, so the missing years might again turn up, in the manner of forgotten hurts, or retired handphones. Yes, inconveneintly.Flipping through the well-thumbed pages, I discovered how my tastes have changed and narrowed. I'm no longer interested in most of the pieces. I'm not that interested in the American pieces at all. I'm not interested in Patagonia. Nova Scotia. South Africa. I read the Joan Didion (above, in a photo by Brigitte Lacombe) piece Histroy Lesson (Travel + Leisure) about a little museum in Rue de Monceau in Paris, a graceful little piece that said so many things at so many levels. I read the Bill Donahue story Under The Sheltering Sky (The Washington Post Magazine) which was as much a portrait of Paul Bowles as it is about Tangier. Simon Doonan's Brighton Beach Memoir (Travel + Leisure) is still tart, and Karl Taro Greenfeld's Hope and Squalor at Chungking Mansion (WorldHum.com)familiar; But then Mr Taro Greenfeld's work is always about squalor. The Peter Gwin piece Dark Passage (National Geographic) is about Batam. Squalor. Next Stop, Squalor, by John Lancaster (Smithsonian) is about package tours to the biggest slum in Asia, the 432 acre squatter settlement Dharavi, Mumbai.
I almost wrote Manila. I was in Manila last month and I must say most of this sprawling, grey city seemed like a squatter settlement. Plus the food is quite inedible.A brief, but evocative piece by Emily Maloney, Mr Tingler (TheSmartSet.com) was about hostel (yes, hostel, not hostile) relations in Salvador, Brazil. Journey Into Night by David Sedaris (The New Yorker) was about flying business class. This is now nostalgia for me, as I was recently booted out of Singapore Airlines's PPS membership. Another piece from The New Yorker (still one of my favourite magazines) is Three Chopsticks, by Calvin Trillin. It's about Singapore food, about K F Seetoh's Makansutra guidebooks, about eating. This is a familiar piece, I've read it so many times. I love Singapore. I love staying at home, sleeping in my own bed, eating my own food.

The Shows Must Go On

Ladies, start packing your Goyard trunks. The travelling circus begins again. The Spring 2011 womens ready to wear is upon us:
New York September 9 to September 16.
London September 17-22
Milan September 22-28
Paris September 29-October 7

He Said She Said

"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast." - Ernest HemingwayEnvelope of a letter Ernest Hemingway sent (1924) from Paris to his parents at their summer home in Michigan.

Hard Boiled

Faye Dunaway in a (director) Kazumi Kurigami TV commercial for Parco. They don't make faces or commercials like this anymore.

Lady Like

From Vogue UK, this season's 1950s (yes, again) looks worn (with a wink of irony) by Guinevere Van Seenus and made fresh-looking by Javier Valhonrat. Perhaps the best, least literal take of this tedious trend. Very clever of Vogue UK to do it like this. Mr Valhonrat, the Spanish photographer is a favourite of mine - his pictures are painterly and romantic. He is, unfortunately underrated IMHO.