Merry Gaga-mas

I do love London but sometimes I wish I was New Yorker; they have way cheaper taxi's, better bagels and now to top it all they have Lady Gaga's Chritmas takeover of Barneys!



Hitting the shops really isn't high on my list of things to do at anytime of year, but with the Christmas shopping madness approaching it would take something super special to get me near one - Gaga is that thing.

I've been quietly excited to see what her team would pull out of the bag for this and so far it looks pretty good. I love the 'hair' windows - below and the whole 'Nightmare before Christmas' vibe of the rest of the store.











You can see some of the products online and its nice to see something a bit different to tempt you to drop your hard earned cash.

My favourite has to be these amazing stockings! The perfect gift for your inner street-walker!

  

I'm sure there are more exciting things to come, unfortunately here in London there will be no hooker heel stockings. I suppose we Brits will have to be satisfied with some X factor rejects switching on the Regent Street lights.

Palm Springs Revisited

Today Is my first day off in quite some time. Yes, day off! I am once again in very full time employment, to none other than Jonathan Adler! I've written about being a fan of Jonathan's work and ethos before so you can imagine how happy this makes me.

Well time for a bit more appreciation. I've been dying to go to the Parker hotel in Palm Springs for some time now. I'm so drawn to the idea of the place, the low slung mid century buildings,sun bleached pastel colours and waif thin palm trees reaching into the cloudless sky. I have a definite feeling I may end up seeing out my later years somewhere like that, perma-tanned in a kaftan!

Well I had somehow not realised that Jonathan had done the amazing interiors for the hotel - shame on me. So to make up for this oversight here are some images of the amazing Parker hotel.















Today I have well and truly put my feet up and relaxed. This is the result of a lesson learned on my last day off when I rushed about like a mad thing being productive. Being productive and virtuous is all well and good but, days off are for serious chilling so I have indulged in the box set of Brideshead Revisited. I've only managed to get half way through it because it is a truly epic watch but what a great way to spend the day .If you haven't seen it you must, it really is the kind of masterpiece television was made for.



The filming on location at Chatsworth house is truly incredible. It seems so strange to think that just one family used to live in such epic places! I'm not sure if it would be truly amazing or just plain ridiculous to live in a place like that. I think probably ridiculous, after all what would you do with all those rooms? As soon as you become the kind of person with a present wrapping room you know there's something very wrong!

I also read today about this amazing house in  Witley - Surrey, which unfortunately doesn't exist any more. There is nothing that gets my sense of adventure going like the picture below. The though of these long gone, amazing places which I'd love to be able to go back in time and explore. Part of the house does exist and this makes it even more intriguing because it is an underwater ball room!



The ball room (below) is pretty much all that is left of the house but what an amazing room to have just randomey sitting at the bottom of a lake in Surrey! The builder, a Victorian speculator obvioulsy had some imagination and he aparently enjoyed playing billiards in his underwater folly!

It all looks a bit creepy now and I do wonder what would happen if one of the panes of glass need mending? But its nice to know there are these little oddities out there in the world, it gives me a great sense of comfort in a world where design is all to often about head rather than heart.

Postcards from Greece

Here are SOME of the photo's from my recent trip to Athens. I have a tendency to get very snappy happy when I am abroad. The photo's at the top were taken in the old Athens food market which I have been wanting to explore for some time and I wasn't disappointed! This is a pretty short post but then a picture paints a thousand words so maybe on second thoughts its not so short after all!