Odette New York Dachshund necklace

Dachshund necklace Sterling Silver: $105 Yellow Gold Vermeil: $115 Rose Gold Vermeil: $115

I'm wondering how my life was complete before I knew about Odette New York's wonderful dachshund pieces. Alerted by Crystal who pointed out that Posetta Baddog appeared to have been immortalised in silver, I clicked through immediately and was overcome with lust.

Because, although the dachshund pieces rock my world, the rest of her work is pretty damn lovely too.



Odette New York was started in 2006 by artist Jennifer Sarkilahti out of her Brooklyn studio. Each design begins from a pencil sketch that is carefully translated by hand into wax before being cast into metal.

www.odetteny.com

Cole Haan - things are looking up

I have always thought of American accessories retailer Cole Haan as the place that successful women in their thirties or forties who like well made, stylish but not fashionable clothes go to to buy shoes & bags. They want good leather & a little bit of a heel, (but not enough to scare the horses). They are lawyers, senior management, bankers.

The last time I entered a Cole Haan store was with my mother in New York last November. She always finds several pairs of shoes she likes at the Columbus Circle branch on her annual Manhattan Christmas shopping trips.

I've never been that enthused: my usual MO in the Cole Haan store is to flop on the nearest chair with all the shopping bags, pecking away at my Blackberry whilst she makes some commission-based assistant's day.

Don't get me wrong: I always run a quick eye over the offer - my mama is very generous - just in case anything appeals but nope, never anything. The heels are always too low, the styles just the wrong side of frump chic and, to cap it all, pretty damn expensive for a shoe that doesn't have Alaia or Nick Kirkwood stamped on the sole.

I do like the concept of the super comfy Nike Air technology (Cole Haan is wholly owned by Nike), but never understood why they bothered putting it in a 3" heel: that's a starter shoe as far as I am concerned. My feet don't start to ache until my heels reach 4”.

Then I did a press appointment for Cole Haan last year when I was on the American publication, must have been for SS09, and was blown away. I saw plenty to like and a little to lust after. There were proper high heels, great bags and interesting skins. Sure there was a lot of ahem, influence, from the runways, but the finish was excellent and the designs fashion-y enough not to be immediately recognizable as Cole Haan. (This is absolutely a good thing.)

Browsing through the website today I saw a pair of shoes I think I might actually buy. Granted they are remarkably familiar to a pair I bought in Paris three seasons ago – but they would be my everyday shoes (finally a higher heel shoe from Cole Haan with Nike Air technology) for this season, and I wouldn't expect them to last style-wise beyond this winter.

The Nancy Air Sandal



I am, however, going to draw a veil over the boot offer. ($498 for a faux cropped cowboy boot? Please.) And the website still needs work. A lot of work. No zoom function, no 360 views, only one picture of each shoe, no view all function, and a very slow load.

(I'd be interested to know from my American readers what they think about Maria Sharapova's new line for Cole Haan. There's an interesting pair of black suede flat over the knee boots, that come with Nike Air bounce. Kind of appealing for trekking round fashion week. Believe me, even if you have a car & driver, your feet HURT.)

Four great food books

Lying in bed the night before I moved out of the East Village apartment, I glanced over at my left hand bedside table (nightstand), and was suddenly struck by the titles piled up there. No devotional reading, light bedtime novels, or volumes of bien pensees for me. No, I had a stack of books about food.

Since I discovered the cookery book section at Strand, my book spending habits have been out of control. Since Union Square is on the way to just about everything, I convince myself at least twice weekly that Strand, just a couple of blocks south, is equally en route.

Just a leeetle look, I mumble to myself, already pushing through the doors.

Thing is, not only do they seem to stock just about everything (Strand buys thousands of books every day, so the stock is continually changing), they also have great discounts on list prices (often cheaper than Amazon) and, in addition to the largest rare books collection in New York City, they also buy/sell secondhand books so there are treasures to be unearthed.

And, of course, I'm all about supporting independent book stores. Yup, that's why I spend so much money in Strand. Nothing to do with my verging on uncontrollable book addiction.

That pile next to my bed:
Cooking for Kings: The Life of Antonin Careme, the First Celebrity Chef by Ian Kelly.: Tales Near the Runway gave me this when she stayed over for last season's NYFW. Wonderful insight into the beginnings of the cult of the chef in the 18th & 19th centuries.

American Food Writing: An Anthology: With Classic Recipes by Molly O'Neill. At $40 I lusted after this book for months, stroking its covers and dipping into the essays whilst lurking in Strand's corners, before finally giving in. From Meriwether Lewis's pioneer treks across the country to Michael Pollan's food missionary zeal, this book runs the gamut of the American way of eating. Extraordinary.

Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution by Thomas McNamee. Extremely thorough & fascinating biography of a curiously unlikeable woman, which illustrates how this visionary overruled normal boundaries of common sense, politesse and feasibility to achieve her ends.

Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink by David Remnick. Ranging across memoirs, short stories, poems and essays from the life span of The New Yorker, this is a wonderful dip-in anthology from writers from all fields.(M.F.K. Fisher, Roald Dahl, Julian Barnes, Joseph Mitchell, Calvin Trillin & Adam Gopnik all make an appearance.)

Let me count the ways in which I hate department stores

(specifically utterly bloody Macy’s)

1) Too big. Way, way too big. This does not equal choice, this equals confusion.

2) Lack of service. Has commission been done away with here? Very, very short-sighted, especially when it’s my mother doing the shopping.

3) No signage. I may be a practiced shopper but I am not psychic, so don’t look at me like I am stupid when I can’t find the blooming knicker section. (I can’t believe the signs have been removed for security reasons. Surely Al Qaeda aren’t planning an attack on the underwear department in Macy’s?)

4) Trying to be all things to all people. History tells us you can’t please all of the people all the time. So don’t try. Aim for excellence not over-abundance.

5) Tourists. Specifically the ones that move in lemming like packs.

6) Assistants Who Know Best. If I have chosen to take 22 dresses into the fitting room, it’s because I have spent 30 minutes raking the floor for things I like. Please do not bring me dresses that bear no relation either to the pieces I have already picked, or to the clothes I was wearing when I was arrived. This is not imaginative. It is bloody annoying. Surely any fool, let alone someone who works on a fashion floor, can see that a girl with a large bust can’t possibly wear a plunging to the waist neckline without looking like she is solicting for custom?

7) Apart from the fact that Intimate Apparel sounds like a department in a porn shop, I am at a loss to understand how, in a nation with so many obese people, they only seem to sell a selection of thongs in rainbow colours, and bras up to a Double D cup. Not even vaguely in my ball park.

Soho: The Kartell Mademoiselle chair exhibition

I have been rather social of late. D & H flew in on Friday for The International Contemporary Furniture Fair ,(the NYC version of 100% Design & Salone), so we caught up over fiendishly good gin cocktails at the ludicrous bar at The Hudson Hotel, after which lovely L & I headed to The Gramercy to check out the new private rooftop bar (more of this later).

After a weekend spent at ICFF meeting designers, I dedicated Monday night to design party hopping down Greene Street in Soho with JSL, from Boffi up to B&B Italia. Of most note (that is items noted before I drank too much delicious Prosecco and my camera battery died) was the clever reworking of Philippe Starck's 2004 classic, the Mademoiselle chair for Kartell, by several Italian fashion houses including Burberry, Moschino, Dolce & Gabbana, Valentino and Etro, turning a simple upholstered Perspex piece into a covetable collector's item.


We ended the evening over som tam & curry at Tai Thai on Bedford in Williamsburg in Brooklyn after drinking some lethal vodka at a busy party (filled with people dressed in the kind of hmm, ironic clothing that style commentators admire on Chloe Sevigny but actually just makes you look like your house burnt down & you had to get a last minute outfit from Cancer Research whilst your eyes were still blinded by the smoke) thrown by ID & LLadro at design store The Future Perfect,& its neighbour A&G Merch a shop filled with covetable modernist pieces at silly prices. One more cocktail & I would have been walking home over the Williamsburg Bridge with a floor light under my arm.


Chairs (Top to bottom) by Burberry, Moschino & Valentino.
Pictures by me - can't you tell?

HIgh Street: London vs New York

The lack of well-designed cheapo clothes in Manhattan is starting to exercise me greatly. My wardrobe looks tired: my AW clothes have been worn & worn, and it's too bloody cold to break out any acceptable SS pieces. When I want a quick fix here there's literally nowhere to go. I've always relied on a mix of New Look/ToSho/Miss S etc, vintage and sample sale/private order designer to pull my look together. Sure, vintage here is particularly strong, esp in Williamsburg but I just don't have time for half a day's rootling. I'm still waiting for my SS private orders to arrive from London and the sample sales I've been to here so far are crapola. I tried Forever 21 yesterday but got scared & ran away. Think New Look on acid. 10 000 pieces of clothing rammed on rails, some so far above yr head that you get arm ache just reaching for them, and nearly everything in size twiglet and poly blends.

Banana Republic is all very well, but it's not cheap enough and everything is taupe or navy. Zara - I'd rather save up to buy real Chanel. Proenza by Target? I don't think so - the good pieces sold out within seconds. And the ubiquity of Hennes here means that everyone has the same few pieces. Dull dull dull. I want NEON, print and interesting. A couple of clever bargains is all I ask.

Unless someone comes up with a solution, I am going to acquire an expensive online shopping habit and a v gd relationship with Fedex.