Little Missy's Health and Beauty Tips for Men and Women
29 March 2013

                                        Jawbone UP Bracelet--What Are You Waiting For?

It can't be all getaways and far flung travels.  Sometimes we just need to sit back and re-evaluate our lifestyle.  Little Missy knows. C'est ennuyeux.  But sometimes it is Good for us!  I have been falling into bad health practises, like not getting enough sleep, exercise or quelle horreur, bad nutrition.  But I have been watching French movies on television, and corresponding with Mr. Jacques of ModeWalk.  Which doesn't count as nutrition, but has added to my repertoire of foreign expressions.
Salted Chocolate has been my deepest low, and well, my soaring high.  What will they think of next? Deep fried alfalfa sprouts and French fries?  Package it in a chic manner and I am a big sucker for it.  Sea Salt Escape Chocolates from Ghirardelli were my downfall.  Now they are my reward for being more healthy.

And to that effect, Joni got me a Jawbone UP Bracelet.  Mine is a chic turquoise colour, but you can get black.  I don't recommend other colours.  UP tracks how many steps you have taken and how many hours you have slept.  I am supposed to sleep eight hours and walk 10,000 steps each day to maintain optimal health.  The bracelet plugs into your iPhone and once you have got the UP app you are set.  Yesterday my UP app told me I had walked more than a person going back and forth on the Golden Gate Bridge!  What a cool app!  Little Missy approves this devise for men and women!  It's fun, harmless, a little narcissistic and very modern.  As soon as I finish my post I will have to set foot down to University Avenue and back and then I will have met my daily goal.  Fun!  Really! Get one!

A good way to do the most important thing we can do to avoid stress, a killer, is to Relax.  Meditate and have massages.  Meditation is kind of hard.  You don't go to meditation.  It comes to you.  Turning off the chatty mind is just about the most difficult thing to do in the world.  But if I can do it,  you can do it.  I don't think you need a big fancy expensive Hollywood mantra.  But you might need some guidance.   I envision  the sun inside of my belly.  You can also envision the moon or a crystal, but being from California, I am staying with the sun.  My second favourite song in the world is The Warmth of the Sun by the Beach Boys.  Try singing it sometimes.  You won't be able to.  It is too complicated.  Can you imagine a genius like Brian Wilson growing up in Hawthorne, California?  Here was this guy, hearing fugues and symphonies in his head while those planes were roaring overhead into and out of LAX.  Is it any wonder he went berserk?  He is my hero.  I'll bet he meditates.  So here is another idea--stay far from airports when you can. Even if you are a world traveller!  Massage is easier.  It is such a large industry now in major cities.  Just let it all go, and feel relief from a good therapist.  You know what I am talking about. Just Do It.  Before I get into specific tips for men and women, I just want to add that if you can make someone else feel good, your generosity will come back to you a million times fold.  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  The truth.  Little Missy tries to live by this and fails once in a while.  But tries.

Now it's time for Men's Grooming:
The trend is now for men to have beards.  My son Michael has one, Freddie has one, Brodie has one, and this means that the three best looking men I know all have beards!  So men, keep your beards soft and trimmed.  No one likes scruffy beards, and by that I mean Little Missy doesn't like them.  Scruffy, that is.  Smell clean.  This means take a shower or bath each day.  And then there are products that are great for men's skin.  Most important are sun block and Retin A.

 

Sisley's Eye and Lip Contour Balm should be in every man's toilet kit.

Don't have baggy pants and jackets with vents!  That is ugly and old fashioned.  Of course you have to be in shape!  Get a Jawbone UP bracelet, like I have just said!  It helps!  Keep your hair well trimmed.  For heaven's sake, if you are going gray or going bald, embrace yourself!  You are fabulous and everyone knows it and you don't need to hide behind a hairpiece or some hair dye.

Now for Women's Beauty:
There sure is a double standard and we all know it, and Rome wasn't built in a day, so Little Missy cannot change too much in one epistle.  I'll just say what I have said before. Stay away from too much plastic surgery.  Use Retin A and sunblock.  Visit the best colourist you can afford and find your proper hair shade.  Keep your hair soft and lovely.  Go with either the smoky eye or the scarlet lips but not both.  Avoid hair extensions and fake nails. Sisley's Eye and Lip Contour Balm works for women too.  And try the Jawbone UP bracelet.  Get the turquoise one.  It's prettier.  Dance and laugh and swim and listen to music.  Be positive.  No one likes a Debbie Downer. Least of all Little Missy.  And keep fit and trim!

                               Rouge Automatique by Guerlain, Little Missy's New Secret.

Well, Easter weekend is here, and that means renewal.  Hope my tips have helped.  Now it's time for me to get cracking and get on that walk of mine.  Oh, and one last Little Missy tip:

SMILE!

Sojourn in Santa Fe
25 March 2013

A weekend in one of my favourite getaways, beautiful Santa Fe with my kids and my besties! And they do beautiful in Santa Fe!  Wind sculptures, rugs, cool clothes like Dries Van Noten, Native American art, baskets, pottery, and jewelry. Let Little Missy give you a tip.  Go straight to Luna Felix . Eighteen karat gold and platinum pieces that look like they were made in ancient Greece.   You want turquoise and silver jewelry?  That's not Little Missy.
We love Inn of the Anasazi.  It's a Rosewood property in the centre of town.  Bob, the concierge will nail down your every request.  Birthday balloons, flowers, and my new favourite, Gruet, Blanc de Noir, N.V., New Mexico (Wine Spectator Top 100, 2011)!  We were introduced to this crisp new sensation at The Compound, a divine hideaway on chic Canyon Road.  Some in our group (Brodie and Lexi ) opted for the Prickly Pear Margarita, but Carolyne, Joni and I were beseeched by the sommelier to explore New World Wines.  Let us not compare dogs to cats.  The Gruet Blanc de Noir is not Dom Perignon, but we did not come to Santa Fe to drink champagne!  Of course Freddie stuck to his Coca Cola.  Photographers must stay steady at the ready.
 

                                               Steady at the Ready with Freddie

The food in Santa Fe is wonderful.  My palate is so jaded that I do not discern that hotter flavor.  Bring on the Salsa Verde Enchiladas!  Go to The Shed!  Creative cooking! It's 25 degrees Fahrenheit this time of year with a strong wind blowing, so eat those chilies!
Art--I don't know.  I like getting my chakras cleansed better in this town.  Joni took me to
Ten Thousand Waves and treated me to a Master massage therapy.  It was the most incredible experience.  Be like Nike and Just Do It.  It's hard to talk about these things.  You must Be Here Now, like Ram Dass.  But Ten Thousand Waves is a dead zone and we couldn't get Internet and I was going berserk.  Like they say at SFMOMA, if it's not on the Internet, it doesn't exist!  Some day when Internet and art can peacefully co-exist, we can return to Ram Dass, but for now, he sure sounds old fashioned!  All of these actors from Hollywood and people from DC and so on seemed to find Ten Thousand Waves on this particular cold and spectacular Santa Fe day, and so did Joni and I.  A great leveller. All of us walking around in scanty white cotton kimonos. Joni's kimono didn't have a belt, a bit of a problem, but easily solved.  Her therapist was called Karma.  My therapist was Nualla, and she was a master. We left Ten Thousand Waves feeling peaceful.
We wanted to make a pilgrimage to the house of Georgia O'Keeffe, but the timing was impossible.  So we stuck to shopping and dining, nice work if you can get it.  And you can get it if you try!
Lexi and Michael hosted a dinner for us at Geronimo.

                                                                    Geronimo

Geronimo was a great Chief and as every American kid knows, when you really want to go for it, you scream "Geronimo!" at the top of your lungs.  And that is what I felt like screaming, I was so happy!  Little Missy In The Pink!  La Rose en Vie!  Dinner at a fabulous spot with my kids and my besties! Carolyne had to hand me a hanky.  Little Missy speechless!  But I didn't have to speak because everyone was making toasts I can't remember because I was so overcome with emotion! Turning forty isn't so bad after all! In fact, I turned forty in Paris a few years ago, and now we were in Santa Fe, doing it all over again.  Birthdays are so funny, always cropping up on you!

This should be the end of the story, but there is more!  Joni and I had an Adventure when we were looking for a gas station in Albuquerque! Streets with names like University, Yale and Stanford sound kind of safe, right?  Wrong in Albuquerque!  We ended up at a sketchy place called the M and M.  "This looks like a trucker kind of station", I chirped hopefully.  When the pump stand took my card but did not deliver the gas, I thought I had done something wrong.  But guess what?  There was no gas!  The attendant tried to tell me my card was from out of state, etc. and that he had to hold on to it and then I could pump gas.  Little Missy marched into that station. All this guy had was sex toys and drug paraphernalia.  And my credit card.  We had a scary moment, but I got my card back and we learnt a lesson.  Sometimes there are gas stations that do not have gas but pretend they do.

                            Even Little Missy Thinks Some Photo Opportunities Aren't Worth It

At the airport as we were going through security, we asked an agent who looked like she could handle a terrorist if it was true that certain gas stations in New Mexico didn't take cards from out of state.  She said it was a lie and asked where we had gone.  "That's the bad part of town, where the gangs are.  I wouldn't go there ever".
Well, there was another lesson to be learnt, in fact probably a lot of lessons.  But I will focus on Freddie's lesson. Carolyne, Freddie and I bought rugs from a woman (Georgia O'Keeffe Jr.) who called us to come in from the street to her gallery.  Joni was walking around thinking we had lost our minds. The woman said she could not call from her phone to verify our credit cards because her phone was not working.  After we paid, she said "Now I can fix my phone".  "Wow, on a Sunday she can get get her phone fixed?" Freddie asked as we left.  "Trust me, this means she is paying her phone bill since you were her first purchases in a long time", said Joni (who knows a lot about the art world).
Little Missy goes to Santa Fe for the ambiance, and as for the art, I am not sure.  I do like the wind sculptures and garden statuary.  And Santa Fe on a cold, blue sky afternoon has sunlight that is magic.  This was my most happy time ever.  Little Missy goes to heaven on earth.  Sometimes it's all about the ones you love, and, inshallah, we will have more of these times together.

                                       




                                                                      
           







 

In A New York Minute
11 March 2013

 

Chanel and Rodarte at The Met

 

 

 

Chanel and Rodarte.  Paris and California!  What do these designers have to do with New York?  Everything!  They along with Vivienne Westwood, Yohji Yamamoto and just about any great designer I have ever loved are being honoured this May by the Costume Institute, the esteemed fashion collection of Metropolitan Museum of Art. It will be in the form of a gala known as the party of the year.  Every year!  Harold Koda is the Director of the Costume Institute and Andrew Bolton is the curator, and these guys know what they are about!  Getting the best stuff ever for the Met. Clothes.  Accessories.  More clothes.

                                         My favourite dress in the world is here, but it is not Punk!

I know that there are some really great designers in New York and New York embraces all fashion!  New York is an embracing kind of town! They give kids a chance.  Thousands of kids coming from everywhere!  My kids are here--this is the place to be when you are young.  Even Little Missy did a stint here in her twenties.  Talk about Punk!  I do know my Punk!  The Sex Pistols, The Ramones and Blondie!  Been there my friends!  Back in the day!  But now I am returning as a patron of the arts.  Alive to tell the tale!  Punk is consecrated!  No wonder Vivienne Westwood is fuming!  I'm with Vivienne.  With all due respect to Harold and Andrew, why wasn't Vivienne given her own retrospective at the Met?  Why is she being bunched together other designers?  Even  though they're my favourite designers?
Anyway.  Let's talk about New York, and all the good things about it! 
The men in New York are smart and sophisticated, that's for certain!  When I walk out of a fashion show in September and it is boiling hot but I am wearing the coat of the season meaning Autumn and I look ridiculous, New York men come up to me on the street and say "Hey darling, you are looking good!" Not, "You are looking hot"!  Because they get it!  Fashion rocks their economy.  Just read the Wall Street Journal!  And Tell us about the boy from New York City!

My kids live in Williamsburg and TriBeca.  Where else would they live?  Little Missy raised them!  Hipsters R Us.  But I don't want to live in those neighbourhoods.  If I lived in New York, I think I would want to be in the Upper West Side.  Must have been all those Woody Allen movies.  Tree lined streets where kids can play ball,  the American Museum of Natural History, Central Park, the Met.  It's a no-brainer for me.  My kids could come and visit me.
Food?  This city has it!  Jean-Georges is on the Upper West Side. Nougatine for a more casual bite.  The Met's Private Dining Room!  But you have to be a member.  And it's kind of stuffy!  Everywhere you turn there is a restaurant.  The thing to do in New York is find the couple of neighbourhood spots you like and patronise them.

                               It's easy to get stuck in a time warp, and this would be mine.

Then there's FIT.  Dr. Valerie Steele runs the fashion school and it is a great one. I also recommend the school's museum.  The current exhibition is called Shoe Obsession. And here is another tip.  This one may be more difficult.  If you want to have your hair be the most perfect colour you can ever imagine, go to Louis Licari.  The salon has a client roster that is unbelievable, and Louis personally treats each of his clients exactly the same.  Whether you are Caroline Kennedy or you are not anyone famous, Louis will give you his undivided attention.  In fact I think that Louis Licari is the purest form of democracy in our country.  And Louis is the best colourist in the world. 
To be honest, most of the places I have loved in New York have come and gone, only to be replaced with awesome spots I have yet to get to know.  Adventures await me!

                               I lived near Washington Square Park in the late seventies

I don't know if I'm ready to move to New York and you can bet my kids are probably not ready for it.  But this city is definitely one of the places I would want to think about.  It's fun thinking about "What if I lived in New York?"  Try it some time!

LA Confidential
But Can I Go Home?
10 March 2013

 

 

If the astrology and geography have any say at all, by birthright Los Angeles is my home.  I was born here!  And like Aung San Suu Kyi (who was born in Burma) I am a Jupiter Lion.   Deceptively tough LA Lady, but Little Missy was brought up to the Bay Area in the blink of an eye, before the age of three.  But feels very LA Confidential!  The first colour image I ever saw in the New York Times was of Kim Basinger from that movie.  Someone at the NYT really liked Kim Basinger!  And I really like Kevin Spacey and Guy Pearce. And I think the only mistake in that picture was not giving enough screen time to Kim. Anyway...
Beverly Hills!  The place has always left me cold.  I don't know why.  I have so many friends there, it's where I always stay when I'm in LA, but I don't know.  The gardens are really too perfect, too manicured.  But it's the  place to go to get manicured.  Hello!  Go where the stars go!  Go to Senna!   You will still be thanking me when we are old!  But we will never get old with Senna around.  And take it from me, Senna has some of the best vintage things ever.  And speaking of vintage, how could I not mention my old friend Cameron Silver, one of the famous Dukes of Melrose? Cameron's store Decades is not technically Beverly Hills, but Cameron certainly is!  And if you can't get enough of reality TV, there is always the Shahs of Sunset.  I was with a friend and my son at Spago about a year ago.  We had just greeted Wolfgang Puck, the genial owner-chef.  We sat down at our table and all of a sudden, right next to us a guy pulled out a knife and threatened to kill another guy at his table.  It was the dark side of Shahs of Sunset!  At least the woman at the table had a  Birkin bag, my friend quipped.  Wow, that's Beverly Hills these days! For respite from these tiresome antics there is...
Los Feliz

 

Los Feliz is a magical place in the Hollywood Hills.  I attended a fabulous masked ball at the home of designer Sue Wong.  Sue Wong is a trip!  I want to be like that when I grow up!  A masked ball and a fortune teller!  That fortune teller told me I was going to become the editor of Vogue Magazine!  Not a very clairvoyant fortune teller!  Maybe Sue told her to tell me that. Who knows?

Let's go downtown, to the City Of Angels...

Little Missy was born in Good Samaritan Hospital, not far from the statue known as Our Lady of Angels, the patron statue of Los Angeles.  Angels and Samaritans are good omens for Jupiter Lionesses, don't you think?  And speaking of holy matters, perhaps Bono should become the next pope. God only knows he has got enough followers, even amongst the most prominent, the taste makers and so forth!  What a coup for the Church!  But they would have to change some stuff fast, and they move slow!  Too bad.  Then there is MOCA and LACMA These museums really rock!  They have all the tedious problems any large museums have, and they are working on them!  Plus they know how important fashion is!  Something which seems to escape certain other cities.

Then there is Venice Beach and Santa Monica and Pasadena and I love all of these areas.  A great neighbourhood for Little Missy might be Pacific Palisades!  An ocean front loft, and beautiful weather!  No boring fog like in London or San Francisco.  Always blue skies!  Maybe!

Best People and Things To Come Out Of LA and Environs In The Past Fifty Years
1. Cleaner air
2. UCLA becomes more prominent than Cal
3. Art
4. Rodarte
5. The Beach Boys
6. Koreatown
7. Mexican culture
8. Movies by George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola
9. Valley Girl Culture
and last but not least
10. Snoop Dogg

So what's holding me back from moving to LA?  I don't know!


 

Little Missy Looks For A Home
Palo Alto, California, Sometime Before Daylight Savings
March 9, 2013

 

                        Little Missy at Cocomaya, photographed in 2012 by Frederic Aranda


Whoever said it would be easy?  Not Little Missy!  We just make it LOOK easy!  Good hair day?  Snap!  New dress for the museum opening?  Snap! Drive up to the city in the rain? Snap!  Look good in the photographs?  Done done and done!   Oh my.  Home now for a while after my world wind Kidnap Capital World Tour (see blog)!  It's a little...dull around here.  Throw the dart and let's see where it lands.  I hope LA, NY or LONDON!  Let's dream about moving to LONDON.

1. Marylebone--my most favourite neighbourhood ever.  It even feels right to walk alone at midnight or six in the morning.  And at six in the morning, you should see the trash on the street.  I mean trash as in refuse.  Entire brand new floral arrangements. Unused sports equipment like tennis rackets and golf balls.  After New Years, entire Christmas trees with fabulous ornaments. Right on Great Cumberland Street (where Madonna had a house)!  It's a great place, near Hyde Park, Paddington Station (for Heathrow Express, a revelation) Selfridge's, Vivienne Westwood and Claridge's.  My Thai meditation healer lives here. Should be a no-brainer, but then there's

2. Marble Arch--Cocomaya is here, the cafe where I conduct most of my business in London.  And several photo shoots.  By Walid is also here.  But you can buy Walid at Barney's in NY!  I prefer his London atelier.  Bet you would, too.  Also close to Hyde Park, movie theatres, and if you like hummus, you have arrived!  This is home to thousands of Arabic expats.  Hookahs galore!  And lots of Louboutins and Jimmy Choos peeking out from under those abayas! (see Kidnap Capital World Tour Day Thirteen).  Which you don't want to wear unless you have to!  That is if you have to go to Saudi Arabia!  So let Little Missy give you a timely tip--don't go!  Marble Arch is all the flavor of that neck of the woods you need.  Then there's

Warren Zevon, the best ever songwriter

 

3. Mayfair--backdrop of my favourite song ever, Werewolves of London by Warren Zevon.  Claridge's...Bond Street...South Molton Street where Diana's ghost still haunts me..again, Vivienne Westwood, my home away from home..and the FedEx drop off, where Jim always asks me what exhibitions I've see...because I'm always shipping heavy museum catalogues..and lighter than air Vivienne Westwood accessories!

                                                         Vivienne Westwood Heart

London---what a town!  It's the most fabulous city in the world.  Bar none. But the weather! I can't even stand San Francisco's weather!  How could I take London's? It's a dilemma! The arts in London.  Check.  Music. Check.  Fashion.  Check twice!  Good looking men.  Check.  Holistic health services. Check.  Hair and beauty. Check. Let's see.  San Francisco?  No checks.  And if fog is romance, romance is overrated!  But maybe a foggy day in Londontown is still preferable to a foggy day in San Francisco?  But I have lived in Northern California forever!  But I don't feel like this is my home.  Home is where the heart is.  Where is my heart?  Where is my home?
Next blog:
LA, The Pros and Cons