May 2019

It's May!  And to start our celebration of this beautiful month, here is a vintage Verdura brooch.  Verdura is a fabulous jewelry company founded by Duke Fulco di Verdura of Sicily.  He made Maltese cross cuffs for Coco Chanel and his business took off. He went to Hollywood and created pieces for stars like Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich.  He is most known for his bold, understated chic.  Needless to say, Verdura is my favourite jeweler.

An outtake from Electric Fashion

As long as we are thinking about spring, here is an outtake from Electric Fashion, the book I produced with photographer Frederic Aranda in 2015.  This photograph was taken in Regent's Park, London, and I'm wearing Christian Lacroix Haute Couture from Spring 2005.  The ensemble is now in the collection at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. A sweet reader told me this image reminds him of Monet.  Freddie and I are flattered!


The world is a wild and crazy place and still there is beauty everywhere we look. I want to share with my wonderful readers the images which defined the past few months for me.

Karl Lagerfeld's passing

This was not unexpected and still it was incredibly heart wrenching.  The fashion world in which I  worked as a journalist in Paris has all but disappeared.  Here Ciina Feng and I celebrated Karl's 75th birthday in New York.

Elton John performing Tiny Dancer at his Academy Awards Dinner

To hear a star of Elton's magnitude performing a signature piece is unforgettable.  The Awards dinner was great fun, but Elton taking the stage was a memory I will always treasure.

Rodarte blue gown from their Huntington Gardens show in February 2019

This photograph generated the second most likes for me of the year.  The model is spectacular and wears the beyond gorgeous dress---the dress does not wear her!

Palo Alto flowers

Here is the photograph that was the most liked on my Instagram account. It's proof that when all is said and done, people love to look at flowers.  I know I do.

Finally, I don't think I can post this enough.  Remember what you needed when you were younger and please try to pass it along to the generations coming up.  Be kind.  Show love every day, in all the ways you can. This is what all of us need now.

Love,
 Little Missy

Two Weekends in Hollywood and Berkeley

Two weekends ago I had the pleasure of attending Elton John's Academy Awards Dinner in support of his AIDS Foundation (EJAF).  This meant I also had the pleasure to hear Sir Elton perform Tiny Dancer, certainly worth the price of admission.  As I got dressed and made up for the big night, I realised that Hollywood is really no different than any other company town.  Residents of Hollywood, Washington DC, Stanford and Berkeley need to make a living.  They need places to eat and entertain themselves.  They need health care and lawyers and agents (agents are crawling all over the campuses to get athletes and let's not think about DC). We sometimes get mesmerised by the glamour of Hollywood, the way some of us used to get mesmerised by the power of DC.  Don't get me started.  I know a lot of diva professors at Stanford and Berkeley who probably wished they had agents.  The last time I checked, at university campuses, agents were reserved for athletes.  But back to Hollywood.

Here Is Elton John playing Tiny Dancer.  

Sir Elton's dinner had a big British crowd, so naturally they were rooting for Bohemian Rhapsody and The Favourite.  I must be honest:  for the first time ever, I actually saw most of the pictures nominated.  I liked If Beale Street Could Talk, Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, Green Book and A Star Is Born the best.  Not that it matters in the least.  Our party went berserk when Rami Malek won Best Actor for his portrayal of Freddy Mercury, and almost as berserk when Olivia Coleman won best actress for The Favourite.  Then Elton brought out The Killers. What a great band, and they love to remind you that they hail from Las Vegas.  It's easy to forget how many great songs they've done.  I used to think that if I had a really big blowout I'd try to hire Santana (only if Carlos would play). Now I think I might think of hiring The Killers.  These guys rock!

Anyway, with winners, come losers.  As Shelley Winters so poignantly demonstrated in The Poseidon Adventure, "There Has To Be A Morning After".

The morning after in Hollywood.  What in the hell was I doing up at that hour?

No problem.  I chilled by my hotel pool like you're supposed to do in Hollywood.

OK, enough of Hollywood.  The following weekend was my birthday weekend.  Bruce took me to Berkeley, where a friend who shares my birthday was having an anniversary of her 30th birthday in a nearby suburb.

Rasputin Music on Telegraph Avenue.  This is definitely not Hollywood.

Here's Little Missy standing next to a tulip tree on the Berkeley campus.  Yes, that's a Burberry umbrella, a Saint Laurent sweater, a Rodarte jacket and an Alaia handbag.  What do you take me for anyway?

For my birthday breakfast we went to the Lilac Bakery in North Berkeley.  Note the yellow Beetle.

It was delicious but not exactly gluten free.

Berkeley's beautiful in the morning.  It was overcast. The soundtrack would be Simon and Garfunkel's great song "Cloudy" which contains the unbelievable lines:

My thoughts are scattered and they're cloudy, they have no borders, no boundaries. They echo and they swell from Tolstoi to Tinker Bell. Down from Berkeley to Carmel.

I'm not making any judgement calls here.  I was however sort of formed by this kind of music, even if it appeared in the very Hollywood movie, "The Graduate".

I was born in LA and I have lived in Palo Alto most of my life.  I'm just glad I live in California and I can have the best of two very different worlds!

How to Combat a  Cold Virus 

The Little Missy Way!

Have internal monologues about Life With Beauty
Here we have Natasja Sadi's Cake Atelier Amsterdam floral arrangement and Victoire de Castellane's jewels for Dior.

Caviar Wishes and Champagne Dreams

For those of us old enough to remember "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" presented by the rather endearing late Robin Leach, it can be comforting to return to the 80s and 90s when things 

seemed easier but actually weren't.  Little Missy was no fan of typewriters and too lazy to learn how to use the most rudimentary computer, so I wrote by hand eight novels, two of which were published. No cell phones either, so we were forced to actually look at other people and have conversations.

New Orleans
I know I published this photo in my last Little Missy but I'm under the weather and wish we could be back in New Orleans, which has the best coffee outside my own kitchen.  I finally found a city that uniformly knows how to make real coffee.  The native New Orleanians, once they found out I was from Silicon Valley, confessed to being backwards technologically.  Funnily enough, I didn't notice any backwardness at all, I was so happy to be there.

January, 2001 before the world started to go really crazy
Yes, it's Little Missy dressed in on aura tout vu during my Fashionlines.com period, when I was spending a lot of time in Paris and had access to the best hairdressers and makeup artists in the world.
The hair and makeup is the work of Ronaldo Escobar from Brazil.  I understand the photographer vanished back to his father's rice business after family pressure to leave the Paris fashion world.

'"No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" by Frederic Aranda
Happily, Freddie didn't vanish, and as his speciality is group portraits, this photograph with him in it is extra special!

Home Sweet Home
When it's all said and done, if I must be sick, at least I'm at home with my linens and pillows and scented candles and books.

Although it looks more like this because it's raining.

Christmas Amaryllis
It's a sign that everything will be OK.  My amaryllis decided to bloom yesterday!
Wishing everyone all the best in 2019, or as Robin Leach would have said,
"Champagne wishes and caviar dreams"!

First Trip to New Orleans

The French Quarter

Dear Readers:  Have you ever read about a place that was written about so well that when you finally saw it, you felt like you had been there for many years?

"America only has three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans.  Everywhere else is Cleveland."

I read Tennessee Williams at an impressionable age (before 20).  I imagined him in a linen suit, sitting in an interior courtyard in the French Quarter, lingering over a cafe au lait and a beignet and the newspaper, perhaps chatting with a friend, before beginning his writing.

I felt the courtyard had to look like this, except in morning.  This is the hotel in which we stayed, The Mazarin.

I received more likes for this image than any other image I have ever posted on Instagram. The palms, the old elegance, the verdant lushness--I'm not the only one who's in love with the French Quarter.

It's easy to get lost just wandering on a drizzling late December day, becoming mesmerised by an iron smith  crafting a lantern.

Bourbon Street on a sunny day is gorgeous.

Antique stores are everywhere and they specialise in French furniture.

Dining at Brennan's, easily the city's most renowned restaurant, is a must for Creole and Cajun classics.

And whether it's jazz or Cajun, you will most certainly hear great music!

And of course see the fancy ladies on Frenchmen Street.

If you can be dragged away from the French Quarter, The Garden District has beautiful old houses, filled with charm, history and mystery.

Elegance is everywhere.

It was the holiday season when we were in New Orleans, and one had the sense that the citizens really knew their decorating skills---once Christmas decor comes down, Mardi Gras goes up!

I even went to a fortune teller called Laslo on Royal Street.  I don't believe that's his real name, but I do believe he knew how to read people.  He told me it was obvious that I was a writer and had lived amongst philosophers all my life.  I became very interested.  Most of what he told me was true.  He was surprised however when I finally told him I was "in fashion". He quoted Tennessee Williams a few times. The name of the place was The Bottom of the Tea Cup.  Check out Laslo and see if he gives you an accurate reading.  It's all about mystery, elegance, amazing food, jazz and Cajun music and most of all, preserving  Creole roots. I can't wait to return.  Thank you Bruce for this amazing Christmas present!

Bruce Turns Sixty (But He Looks Fifty)!

What do you give the man, who seemingly has been gifted with with every possible talent, for his 60th birthday?  He's a particle physicist.  He's a classical pianist.  He plays harmonica in a band.  He backpacks with an ice axe for ten days at a time (Good God, an ice axe and not with me)! As my daughter says, "And don't tell me, he writes poetry and volunteers to fight fires.  Of course he does"!

Well, you give him a party.  He wanted it at Seascape Resort in Aptos near where he works at UC Santa Cruz and lives nearby.

Seascape Resort view by day

Seascape Resort at night

Bruce's table flowers (selected by me from Bonny Doon Florist in Santa Cruz).

I had nothing to do with the next three images

He requested German Chocolate Cake from the Buttery, his favorite bakery in Santa Cruz.

So forty of his nearest and dearest are coming to Aptos to celebrate a wonderful guy's big 6-0.  We'll have an open bar, beautiful sunset and a lovely dinner in a special room. Funnily enough, Bruce specified no music.  So ok, no music!

Happy Birthday, Bruce!  I love you!

Little Missy's Reading Roundup

Your Autumn Armchair Entertainment

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

Knopf, 2018

This is Elizabeth Holmes.  She dropped out of Stanford after one year because she thought she was Steve Jobs and was going to change the world with a blood testing devise (that would change the world). She spoke in a fake baritone, wore black turtlenecks and slept with a corporate bully who she made vice president of the company she called Theranos. She looks like a psycho to Little Missy but apparently old white male fogeys like Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, James Mattis and Rupert Murdoch (good Lord, what a line up!) gave her  $$$$ and support and she got Safeway and Walgreen's to buy into her scheme WHICH NEVER NEVER WORKED, NOT EVEN ONCE!  Somehow, by getting these old goats to support her, her net worth climbed to 4.5 billion dollars despite the fact that she did not have a product which functioned, in fact she had a faulty product that likely put thousands of patients at risk. Wall Street reporter John Carreyrou courageously risked flak from his own paper which seemingly was buying into the Holmes mystique. He smelled a rat and came out to Silicon Valley.  The result is a meticulously reported page turner, Bad Blood.  Interestingly enough, one of the main whistle blowers inside the company was George Shultz's grandson, Tyler Shultz, who tried in vain to alert his grandfather that Holmes was a liar and a fraud.  Many of Little Missy's friends are in this book as victims of this creep, (because they live or work at Stanford, where Holmes syphoned off talent with her creepy fraudster charm, which initially passed for nerdiness).  I remember seeing her interviewed on television before the bloom was off this rose and thinking, She sounds crazy to me, like a blond vampire on a mission to self destruct after hurting many people. This criminal will probably go to jail, where she belongs. Silicon Valley at its least appealing!

Fear Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward

Simon and Schuster, 2018

And then we have Washington DC at its least appealing, but the book by Bob Woodward is a mesmerising trip through the Trump swamp.  Of course it's meticulously reported.  There are so many jaw dropping moments, all backed up with source notes, and while I am no fan of Lindsey Graham, (in fact I despise him),  I do think his crack about Trump having read one book is worth the price of admission.  Bob Woodward is a gentleman, and while that does not make him any less relevant, he has rigorously left out the more salacious stuff, which will make this book a classic on a par with All the President's Men, his 1974 book about Nixon and Watergate, which he co-wrote with Carl Bernstein.  Good work, Mr. Woodward.  Who would have guessed you'd be doing another book like this in our lifetimes?

Eileen

Homesick for Another World

My Year of Rest and Relaxation

by Ottessa Moshffegh, Penguin Press

Ottessa is a Stanford grad, about the same age as Little Missy's daughter Lexi. I wonder if they ever met? I'm going to ask Lexi after I finish writing this.  You see, I think Ottessa is probably one of the best writers of her generation.  She is the antidote to Jane Austen-- it's not a romantic place, not Ottessa's world view.  These books will shock and stun you.  Ottessa's writing is so seemingly simple and guileless that you will sometimes feel you are being had when she gets down and dirty.  It's gritty reading, no doubt about that!  I'm not going to say much more, except that Eileen was my favourite.  What a piece of genius!  But you be the judge readers!  I've just given you the five best books I read in September. Do like Warren Buffet (Little Missy's idol, remind me to tell you how I met him !!!!) and READ EVERY DAY!

Love 

Little Missy 

Little Missy Visits the Oldest City in France

Yes Of Course It's Stylish--It's FRANCE!

Voila! I Give You Beziers!

Here's a Little Missy trick.  Remember last summer when I told you about the splendours of Souleiado, one of the oldest textile houses in France, headquartered in the south of the country? I am obsessed with their textiles, so much so that my boyfriend, not usually prone to weighing in on fashion topics, suggested I open a branch in the Bay Area!  Genius, Bruce!  I will think about it...

Souleiado is a Provencal word meaning the sun after the rain.

Well, here is Little Missy's trick.When visiting Southern France (as opposed to the South of France, which includes the Cote d' Azur and Provence) you are going into the wild Languedoc-Roussillon region, with the Pyrenees mountain range as a backdrop and masses of wild lavender and cultivated vineyards everywhere. Google Souleiado.  This company has a brilliant habit of putting their stores in the French towns which are the most historic and most cultured.

It's beautiful here, in a wild and rocky way.

We happened to be in the charming village of Lagrasse for a Royal Opera Ballet festival and were looking for a side trip. I Googled  Souleiado stores close to Lagrasse and up popped Beziers!  I have always wanted to visit Beziers, but it's a little out of the way...I knew its reputation for being if not the oldest, the second oldest city in France after Marseilles. It was built by the Greeks in the 6th century BC.

Cathedral Saint Nazaire de Beziers.

So we took a one hour drive through the beautiful countryside with our GPS to direct us to the Beziers Souleiado store.  I knew we would not be disappointed and in fact I was elated by this charming city. The store of course is located in the finest shopping district which is in the historical district.  The Cathedral Saint Nazaire, built in the 13th century, anchors this leafy neighbourhood, with dozens of narrow streets and alley ways, most looking very mysterious and charming.

Paper lanterns add elan.

There's a lot of pride here, and there should be.  This city doesn't have to justify its existence to anyone. It's been here longer than the other French cities. And it's had a past which is breathtakingly tragic. The Massacre of Beziers during the Albigensian Crusade on July 22, 1209 killed up to 20,000 men, women and children who were Cathars (a  Christian sub-group not tolerated by Rome), Jews and supporters of these groups.  The population had been living and coexisting peacefully until this dreadful day.

Church of the Madeleine.

This church looks imposing but very sad and with good reason.  Seven thousand men, women and children were killed within these walls during the massacre.

Civic pride is as important here as national patriotism. The food and shopping are great.  The real estate is jaw droppingly affordable.

An antique store belies the natural chic and charm of this city.  

Beziers is a real Little Missy place.  I'm working on getting back before too long. It's still a secret spot but for how long--who knows?