Blog-sploitation*

When I started writing this blog at the beginning of March 07, it was only ever intended to be a record of my time in Manhattan. Since then I have picked up an entirely unexpected constituency and am thrilled by the sheer volume of readers each day. Month on month both my page views & unique visitors double. With this rise in exposure have come emails from potential advertisers: both Agent Provocateur & Net a Porter have approached me in the last month and, today, a blog syndication company asked me to join their network.

I am still in two minds about advertising: I'm not sure that my volume of traffic would generate enough income to make it worth losing my independence. This is because, as a commentator also reminded me, internet advertising for the small, but high quality (!) blog is a somewhat one-sided: the advertiser gets a permanent presence for basically jack, but I get very little recompense.

However, where blog syndication is concerned, forget it. The business model is that they ask you to sign a very wide-ranging licence allowing them to freely edit and then to syndicate your work, royalty-free, in return for the added exposure your blog would receive. The blogger has no control over which parts of the blog they syndicate or to where it will be syndicated.

Whilst I am not, in principle, against the idea of reaching out to new readers in this way, what offends enormously is that the syndication company is paid for the blog content they provide to external media sources, without in turn paying the bloggers.

Of course, I understand that there are 60 million or so blogs out there, and that many people would be ecstatic to be picked out in this way. I am indeed flattered but, dislike the way that bloggers are supposed to be SO grateful at the exposure that they will relinquish their rights - and payment.

I am not in the habit of letting other people make money off the back of my own labours without recompensing me accordingly. (I should make it clear that there is a very small amount of money that can be made through this company, but it is truly, truly negligable). Ethically, I believe that their offer is unacceptable and I will not be taking up their offer to join their network.*

*(Of course, added traffic would make advertising more lucrative, but this is a side effect and still does not address the matter of the blog syndication company making money off the bloggers copy.

*ps I have changed the title of this post at the genius suggestion of the wonderful Nonsense on Stilettos

IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!

It is my birthday today and I am feeling very weepily happy as I hadn't expected many people to remember as I am so far from home. But, of course, technology has made 'far' a relative concept, and Facebook means it is difficult to forget a birthday (unless, like me, your notifications are at the bottom of a page and you end up forgetting your best friend's birthday last month - of which I am very ashamed).

So I have been innundated with an extraordinary amount of Facebook messages & emails, and received two splendid bunches of flowers. Best of all my two year old goddaughter Amelia sang me Happy Birthday. I am feeling very blessed right now at having so many thoughtful and funny people in my life.

Still, my lovely ex-boyfriend R summed up the age in which we live rather brilliantly:

"How I hate Facebook. It has in an instant degraded the kudos of people like me, who always remember friends' birthdays, by automating that once meaningful feat of recall. Have a wonderful day."

Normally I thrown the mother of all cocktail parties chez moi for 100 or so people, with my patent martinis made by lovely barpeople, and all my girlfriends in fabulous frocks looking delightful. This year I have invited twenty or so New York friends to drink some pre-supper Champagne with me at Soho House. It will certainly be more civilised than my London parties but, I am sure, given the brilliant friends I have made over here, no less enjoyable.

And ooh hoo I have a GREAT party frock to wear too. (Thank you CA for coming shopping on Bleecker today!)

Liberty at Dover Street Market

These Liberty of London evening bags are fantastic: I think a shot of colour looks fabulous against black and, even better, clashing against this season's colourful cocktail dresses. I didn't pick on these Liberty pieces because they match the name of my blog*, but because I admire the way that they are moving the brand into the 21st century without losing sight of their identity (Hello Jaeger).

Blowing up the iconic art nouveau Ianthe print from the Liberty archives in this way looks fresh and avoids the feeling of cutesy that haunted Liberty for so long. It's also particularly clever to make these brilliant colourways available exclusively at Dover Street Market.

Without a doubt, DSM is London, & possibly Europe's most exciting retail space now. Nominated for Best Retail Concept at the British Fashion Awards last week, they was robbed by Marc Jacobs (woo hoo - opening a store. Really innovative), as I have complained at length already, both on this blog & in the real, bylined world.

*(The name of my blog has nothing to do with the Liberty of London store)

Guilty Pleasure: Gossip Girl

If you are female, under 35 and live in Manhattan, chances are that you watch television's newest vice: Gossip Girl. It's a sherbet light froth, more believable than The OC, & as addictive as 90210 in its heyday. (Now I'm showing my age), Set on in the world of private schools, & millionaire parents, these High School-ers exist on cocktails & thin air, shag for, well, Manhattan, & party for America. It's no wonder it's become so popular: it's executive producer is Josh Schwartz, who conceived The OC.

I may be (sometimes) a proper grown up with a serious job in the fashion world, but this is my weekly dose of escapism. All my girlfriends here are equally obsessed - and we are in our 30's and, I suppose, could be said to know better. But sod it, I like fluff as much as I do more cerebral pursuits, and I'm happy to say so.

Gossip Girl is based on the popular novel series of the same name written by Cecily von Ziegesar, which shines a spotlight on the lives of six teenagers attending private school on Manhattan's Upper East Side.


Blair and sidekicks.

Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) and best friend Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester) are the two key female leads, and slated to be the Mischa Bartons of their generation. Blair's boyfriend Nate Archibald (Chace Crawford), trust funder Chuck Bass -(played by you'd-never-guess-it-but-he's-English Ed Westwick) and the outsider Humphrey siblings from hipster Williamsburg Dan (Penn Badgley) and Jenny (Taylor Momsen) complete the key characters. The series is narrated by "Gossip Girl" (the voice of Kristen Bell), who writes an onlooker's blog which continually stirs up trouble.



Serena, Dan, Nate & Chuck.

The costumes rock too, less costume-y than Sex & The City, which went beyond parody in the last couple of series, generally making guys of the actresses. The designer is Eric Daman, who was an assistant designer on SATC, and also styles for i-D. Although I've yet to meet a schoolgirl who wears $900 Clergerie boots or $500 sequin Tory Burch frocks, they look hot enough on Blake Lively aka Serena van der Woodsen to make me seriously consider some copy-cat retail.

And it's not just the clothes that rock, the music does too. In the same way that she broke niche bands on The OC to a wider audience (Death Cab for Cutie, the Shins), Gossip Girl's music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas, has picked up on new NYC bands like The Virgins, who she mixes in with acts like The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Amy Winehouse, Feist, Air & The Bravery.

It certainly has its ridiculous side: all the mothers look about five years older than their daughters, which isn't surprising considering that Serena & Blair both look 25 rather than seventeen. All the teens drinks like fishes, and have no problems getting into bars & clubs where they suck down martinis like Kool-Aid.



Serena: Seventeen, going on thirty.

Rumour has it that Gossip Girl's been bought by ITV2. Every time I try to describe it to my London-based girlfriends, all I have to do is say , "better than 90210" and I have instant converts: I predict the next UK cult show. (Let's just hope the Writers' Strike is resolved soon - they've only shot 12 out of the 22 episodes slated for this season.)

Christmas presents

I am feeling super smug as I had actually bought all my Christmas presents by the 1st December. This is unprecedented: I am more of a desperate rush on Christmas Eve type of girl, but living 3741 miles from home means I need to be a little more efficient this year. It also helped that I had a massive deadline to meet last week, which meant I royally procrastinated and got a lot of admin done instead of writing. C'est la vie.

I have ten children & babies to buy Christmas presents for, and four of them have birthdays near Christmas too. For the adults, 75% of people are getting books because they can be ordered on-line and delivered to my sister in London, so I don't have to schlep them across the Atlantic, but I do have some genius American presents: I'm particularly pleased with a leather baseball glove and ball for Miss P's stepson and a whole family of Little Red Riding Hood fingerbobs for his sister from Dinosaur Hill, a teeny toy shop in the East Village. I've bought my godson a Tiffany piggy bank with blue spots. They aren't expensive over here, (& I'm staying with his parents for a week). I think it's a perfect godmother-ly present: it'll (hopefully) teach him thrift and his mama will appreciate the Tiffany gesture.

Hokum

January is a pretty dull month. If you happen to find yourself in London, then may I suggest that you relieve the pre-fashion week boredom by booking yourself a ticket to Hokum, master magician Pete Firman's show at The Bloomsbury Theatre on Friday 25 January 2008.

Thank you.

Sunday brunch

Well, Mr W was beyond charming, and we had a delightful - and delicious - lunch at Café Cluny in the West Village. I worked my way through asparagus with chanterelles, hollandaise and a poached egg, with a huge pile of French fries on the side to mop it up. There may have been some frisée & leaves for texture, but I wasn't so interested in the salad component...

Cluny is only three blocks from here but I nearly went arse over tit every other step on the icy pavements. Mr W insisted on walking me home, so I clung onto his arm, but I am afraid there was zero chemistry on my side. Thing is, he's a proper grown-up, in his forties, whilst what I really need are some bad, naughty going-out male friends who want to paint the town red and misbehave, regardless of age. And, whether a boyfriend or a friend, I need a boy who can throw snowballs, chuckle at nothing, eat a lot, and jump around at gigs. I don't think Mr W is one of them.

Romantic Manhattan

Oh it's snowing! There are big fat snowflakes drifting past my top floor flat. All I can see from my bed are snow laden branches and the grey, snow-filled sky. I was woken up by the sound of the neighbours scraping the pavements. I'm staying on Perry in the West Village for five nights at my friend M's beautiful and very grown-up apartment whilst she is on business in London. The rooms have cornicing, architraves and wide sash windows and there is a working fireplace. I feel as though I have been teleported into the New York of Edith Wharton.

It's minus four outside (or 24F - I do love that you can choose between 'English' or 'Metric' on weather.com to get either farenheit or centrigrade readings), and the snow storm is predicted to last until Tuesday. Meanwhile I have a lunch date with Mr W. I'm not sure exactly what kind of lunch date it is: a friend in London asked if I was single and then introduced us to each other in an email, so I am presuming this is a kind of unspoken blind date. Although whether Mr W knows this is another matter. Still, Sunday brunch in the Victorian haven of the Village with an interesting man in a snow storm. That sounds fun.

I'm hungry now tho, so I'm going to make a huge pile of eggy bread )French toast w/out the sugar & syrup) and eat it in bed with the papers, whilst listening to my new music.

Saturday occupation

I had a perfect Saturday, which ended up in the Union Square cinema with a bag of popcorn watching the sugar-sweet new Disney romance-fest, Enchanted, starring MacDreamy & Amy Adams, and a hamming it up Susan Sarandon & Timothy Spall.

I spent the day writing, checked out Project Runway for the first time on TV (so much better then the English one), and then popped on my heels and cabbed it to Sushi Samba (made famous by Sex & the City) on Park Avenue & 20th for girls' supper. Friday & Saturday nights in the city are flooded with weekend warriors. Everywhere is rammed, and the streets, especially in the East Village, are filled with drunk twenty years olds. So, a quiet, healthy, alcohol-free supper is exactly the way forward.

The girls were on their way home by nine fifteen, so I trotted down to Union Square to Virgin and bought the new Killers & The Cribs albums (both excellent), plus some My Bloody Valentine and Louder Than Bombs - The Smiths' 1987 America-only album, both of which I have on cassette. Does that show my age? After the movie, I marched home to the West Village in the sub-zero temperatures, dancing along to Editors and The Pixies.

Alpaca

This, my friends, is an alpaca scarf. The Barrister brought it back from Bolivia for me. It's incredibly soft, and a splendid colour. But, best of all, it's about as ethically sound a piece of clothing as you'll find.

On the steps of The Met

I get a lot of blog-ettes wondering what I look like, and asking me to post pictures. Well this blog is anonymous, so I'm afraid this is the closest the camera is getting to me.

Christmas in Manhattan

These are my favourite Christmas lights: Fendi on Fifth Avenue, although I think Cartier get a special mention for making scaffolding look so delightful.

Johnny, Johnny - pull your socks up

I am so very, very disappointed with Boden. When I posted back at the beginning of November I was very enthusiastic about their offer but, because of my peripatetic lifestyle, I had missed the UK AW07 press day so hadn't actually seen it in the flesh.

I made an order for two pairs of boots and a leather satchel on 08 November. They warned me that the riding boots had a 2 week delay & the satchel a 1 week delay, but that the other boots were in stock. On 16 Nov (8 days later - far, far too long) I received an e-mail telling me that the pair in stock had been dispatched. As of today, the 29th, still no sign of them. However a couple of days later, the riding boots arrived, out of the blue (no dispatch email). Unfortunately, their sizing is completely f**ked up, and a size UK6 was enormous.

Today, the 29th, I finally received the satchel. What an enormous letdown. Although well-made, it looks extremely cheap. The leather is floppy, which is not how it was shown on the website. The web image purports to show a more structured bag with a flat bottom - but instead it is just completely shapeless. A classic example of catalogue over-styling.

And what really, really galls me is that I now have to schlep to the post office, with two heavy, unwieldly boxes, & have to pay quite a lot of money to return both the (very, very heavy) boots and the bag for mistakes of Boden's making. (Their sizing is inaccurate, and the photograph on the site erroneous.)

I emailed customer services the day before yesterday, querying the missing boots and still no reply. In this day and age it is ludicrous that customers cannot track & trace their orders after purchase. If Boden is to succeed in the US it seriously needs to pull its socks up and invest in both a decent inventory system, and a meticulously accurate on-line track & trace system. Frankly, their technological offer is antediluvian. They also need to post more accurate product images: the lifestyle stuff is all well & good, but is ultimately misleading.

My advice? Avoid like the plague. Enormously disappointing.


Leather satchel as shot for catalogue.


Leather satchel as arrived chez LLG

Topshop finally confirm Manhattan opening

Topshop have just confirmed that they will be opening a 40000 sq ft store in Soho in September. Two more stores are planned for New York, with flagship roll outs planned in Miami, Los Angeles and Boston. That should shake up the moribund under $150 fashion market in the US.

Let's just hope they don't use the useless UK press office to handle the PR.

Pierre Hardy for Gap IS coming to the US

WGSN reports today that Gap WIlL be launching the covetable Pierre Hardy shoe collection in the US, three months after the European collection made its debut in France and in the UK. The collection will be available online and in Gap stores nationwide beginning February 2008. It's not clear yet whether this will be the same collection that was available in Europe, as Hardy has been tapped for a second collection to launch in the Spring in Europe.

Lest you are unfamilar with Pierre Hardy, apart from his blissful eponymous line, he has also designed some of the most iconic shoes for Balenciaga and for Hermes. He's possibly the most exciting, and stealth, shoe designer working today. He's a super intellignt choice for Gap: instead of using a marquee (and somewhat vulgar) name like H&M did with Cavalli, they have gone for a designer whose work speaks for itself, rather than screaming off the pages of gossip rags.

It's interesting that they are launching here, as the European Gaps are run separately from the US ones: they have their own design team, producing vastly superior and more fashion forward pieces than the US team. Back in August the UK PR told me that the US team were visiting London imminently to talk about buying from the European collection. Let's hope that the Pierre Hardy collection is the first step in this direction. (Especially for me: Gap is twice the price in the UK.)

The US collection will range from platforms to flats priced $78-$98, which is a damn sight cheaper than it was in England, where the black platform heels retailed for £70/$140.

I, of course, am feeling smug as my pair of Pierre for Gap arrive today, courtesy of my fabulous ex-managing editor who offered, yes, offered to go buy me a pair and send them to the US after reading on here of my desire for a pair of Mr Hardy's diffusion shoes.

Pop up Comme opens today

Pop up shops which appear for a week or maybe a month, then close for ever have become increasingly popular from Tokyo to London. Especially in London. The latest is from Comme des Garcons which has been conceived to celebrate the launch of the new 88 8 perfume. It won't sell an an awful lot but a limited number of 8 88 Fragrance, T-Shirts and Candles will be available, well before they launch in regular shops worldwide in February / March 2008. There's also a downstairs section selling vintage CDG Parfum T-shirts and collector CDG Parfums, all from Comme des Garcons.

The pop up is at 5 Burlington Arcade, London W1. It's open from 1.00pm on 29th November to 8th December. (So you can pop into Ladurée for a (several) macaroon(s) afterwards.)

Rollercoaster

I am now so sleep deprived that I am finding it hard to function. I stayed up 'till 6.30am on Monday & then got in a scant four hours, didn't sleep at all last night, managed a three hour cat nap this afternoon, and am still up at 2.20 now...(Now I know how Miss P feels after young Master Edward's refusal to sleep.)

Deadlines are the problem, plus a rewrite. Not only do I blog 2-3 times daily for a paid anony-blog for a creative network elsewhere, I also have several overdue features for them, plus I'm filing for a super prestigious UK glossy. I am feeling the pressure somewhat: it's a muli-layered piece, involving having interviewed several Hollywood A-list, so I can't screw it up. ("You'll never work in this town again", rings through my head from time to time.)

Thing is, my real life continues: the barrister flew in from Bolivia this am and requires my attention before he buggers off back to Blighty tomorrow evening and I had to go interview Lydia Hearst this morning, plus attend her party at 60 Thompson this evening.

Still, the only thing worse would be no work, no friends, no social life at all...

(And the barrister did feed me cup cakes and dim sum in Chinatown for lunch)

Party season is upon us....

Goodness: the party season is starting up. Globetrotting P flies in from Bolivia tomorrow for one night, before hotfooting it back to London. I'm taking him out for supper to The Stanton Social, and then as my date to a small party Lydia Hearst is hosting at 60 Thompson in the evening. Wednesday is the gala opening of The New Museum on The Bowery, and Thursday sees Paper Magazine & Adrien Brody hosting a party for Miss Sixty in the Flatiron. (Better than London, where the equivalent party would see Patsy Palmer hosting).

Then there is a temporary respite until Sunday when some New York Times friends throw a tri-birthday party at a bar in the East Village. Then it's my birthday week, with plenty of shenanigans planned, and lots more parties. This is why I need a continual supply of sparkly party frocks. Although I am starting to feel exercised about a lack of amusing walkers....

Fashion and sentimentality

I am haunted by the clothes that I have mislaid around the world: a Jaipuri silk embroidered scarf bought in India when I was nineteen, and dropped at a London bus stop; the Florentine silk lined glove that blew away over the Charles Bridge in Prague; the cerise patent dancing shoes I left in the back of a cab in Miami...And now my favourite winter accessory.

After covering my friend A's charming and really rather attractive neighbour in bright pink lipstick two weeks ago, I managed to leave my absolutely most favourite, most irreplacable, searched for for ages, brown wool hat at his place. I'd been making bad jokes about leaving odd earrings lying around for other girls to find, then went and promptly left my lovely hat behind.

My chances of retrieving it seem slight as he appears to be ignoring me. Somewhat irritating, not least because he's the one who tracked down my number the next day, texted to say it was great to meet, and that he hoped to see more of me.

'Of course', I replied. (Not mentioning the hat). But then silence for a week. My ears were cold. So I suggested an after dinner drink - and a hat reunion. He SMSd at 2am to say he'd been in Mexico, and wld hat hunt. And that was that.

Eventually I texted a gentle hat chasing message yesterday, a week later. Quelle surprise: silence from his end.

I remain a little confused. Is "May I have my hat back please?" code in Ameri-English for "I'm a psycho bitch stalker. Ignore me."?

I REALLY WOULD LIKE MY HAT BACK.

Gah. How far does a girl go in order to retrieve her possessions? My pride is feeling a little damaged: by ignoring me, he's making ME feel stalker-y, dammit, merely for chasing my beloved, if somewhat unprepossessing to the un-fashion eye, hat.

Dearest H has gone all John Le Carré on me, suggesting I should capitalise on the stalker vibe for amusement purposes, by hamming it up with odd, foreign language requests for le chapeau via SMS, cyptic blurred photographs and oblique references to bribes, followed by the suggestion of a Cold War-style dead letter box drop. (I think maybe his & my English sense of humour is too, well, English.)

I suspect that, being a boy, he has no idea of the attachment girls can have to their clothing. Sure I could go out to buy a replacement, but it wouldn't be the same hat, the one I searched for for ages, that fits me perfectly and doesn't make me look like an elf on acid.

BY Malene Birger & American Vintage London sample sale

BY Malene Birger & American Vintage Sample Sale

Thursday 6th of December 2007 9-19pm
Friday 7th of December 2007 11-19pm

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