Anglo-feeling

Lately I've been obsessing about across the pond. At work at the museum, we must get three families a week who are on vacation from London and Manchester. I've become very good at figuring out where they're from based on their accents. I can tell apart Birmingham, London, Manchester and Leeds! Wohoo!

Best Shows: Absolutely Fabulous (above), QI,  The Graham Norton Show and Doctor Who .

Royally Yours...

      You really cannot go wrong with Princess Diana. It makes me sad to think how much she would love to be around to see Prince William's wedding next week to Kate. I remember watching her funeral on television as a child. My mother was watching it on television, and I remember seeing the procession go by. 

She was a wonderful person and we were lucky to have her in the world for the short time that we did. 

Royally Yours...

In honor of the Royal Wedding coming up very soon, I thought I would start posting pictures of my favorite Princesses and Royals. Naturally, I thought the first should be the lovely Grace Kelly of Monaco. She went from an American film actress to Princess of a French-speaking Principality. Right out of a movie you would have expected her to star in. 

Pearls, Politics, and Power.

When I went to the Smithsonian in DC at the age of 14, I loved seeing Jackie Kennedy's three strand pearls right there in front of me. Years later, I read a book by the first woman Governor of Vermont, Madeline Kunin. "Pearls, Politics, and Power" was a wonderful study of women in politics, and I told Gov. Kunin that when I got to meet her when I was 17. 

Dapper Men

Mr Hudson/Complex Magazine

Mr Hudson in The Daily Mail

As a young lady surrounded by men at times who don't usually think too much about their appearance, discovering some photos of British singer Mr Hudson made me smile. Apparently, he went to Oxford and he is approved musically by Kanye West, and was featured on Jay Z's song "Young Forever".  That, and I love the music that he did on his own, and with his backing band, The Library. 

Smart-looking ladies.

I was worried last year when I found out my eyes were not as perfect as they should have been. I'm near-sighted and it was getting more and more difficult to see anything far away.
My mother used to talk about her pink cat-eye glasses. I love the pictures of her wearing them, but she always recalled how she was made fun of for them.
So, I got some thick-framed dark purple glasses by Burberry and have loved them ever since. And I added some pictures of some beauties looking smart. Marilyn played the dumb blonde, but most people didn't know that she was actually quite intelligent. A voracious reader who kept in correspondence with many of her favorite writers.

The sort of old woman I want to be...

My mother is amazing. Her grandmother, my great-grandmother, recently died at the age of 98. She was a wonderful matriarch and someone my mother idolized. 

Whenever my mother walks around New York, she loves paying attention to the tiny old women. How they walk around, layered chicly in sweaters, scarves, with their giant leather bags and their hair done perfectly every day. My mother's main goal is to live to 100. A goal I completely support. She wants to have a long and exciting life. 

Ruth Gruber in Alaska.

So, when I told her about Ruth Gruber, she was amazed. Gruber, who is around the age of 100, was the youngest person in the world to receive their doctorate at the age of 20. She became a journalist, becoming a witness to major world events, including WWII. At one point sitting VERY close to Adolf Hitler at a rally when she lied and said she was a German citizen when she was really a Jewish-American woman. She's tough, intelligent, graceful, glamourous and she's still living her life her own way. There is a documentary about her life coming out, and I am going to see it at my first chance. 

She's definitely the kind of old woman I want to be. 

"I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china." -Oscar Wilde

I was in Macy's the other day and saw a gorgeous display of blue china. For some reason it had never struck me before how really pretty blue china is. I brought up the idea to my mother of buying some pieces for myself. She pointed out that I am still living on the campus of my University and that it would be ludicrous to buy some now. 

Then, I was instantly reminded of the quote by the great Oscar Wilde. My favorite Irish-Anglo writer. While at Oxford, he was a dandy, and often threw dinner parties at his rooms, which were grandly decorated in peacock feathers and tapestries thrown about. 

This is apparently when his friends quoted him as uttering the importance of his blue china. It was instantly immortalized and many people attacked him as being shallow. 

Maybe he was. 

Or, perhaps he was just remembering the importance of taking great pleasure in the little things in life. 

I prefer to think the latter. 

A drawing of Oscar Wilde's tomb, I found it online. Quite pretty and exactly what Wilde would have wanted. Wilde died penniless and destitute in Paris at the age of 48, after spending two years in prison for being gay, if you can believe it. 

The man was a genius, and I love him to bits. 

Going to the chapel...

Grace Kelly marries Prince Ranier of Monaco

April 18, 1956

Jacqueline Bouvier marries John Fitzgerald Kennedy

September 12, 1953

I made the mistake of watching a few of those wedding shows on television today. I was left with a few questions. The main of which was; what happened to a little bit of class ladies? Stop acting so rude, as if no one ever taught you manners. I like to think you're all better than that, and you're setting an awful precedence that women who don't have television cameras following them around will think thats how brides should be acting. I'm afraid this is a trend of being less than yourself and spoiled. I hope it doesn't continue. I beg and plead with all the gods that exist!

It also left me wondering how my wedding dress would look. I am not one for far too much fuss, but I do think these look gorgeous. My mother's mother eloped back in the 60's with my grandfather, so there is no picture of her in a wedding dress. But my other grandmother toiled over her wedding. And the last photo of Jackie reminds me a great deal of my grandmother's dress, except it was long-sleeved, much like Grace Kelly's. Also, she wore a crown. I might not make that decision, but I can't help but smile every time she talks about it. 

Audrey loved her bike.

My lovely Oscar...

Magritte.

The Lovers, Rene Magritte.

This is not a pipe.

Usually surrealism puts me off. But I am beginning to fall in love with the subtle quirkiness of Magritte. 

Thinking of decorating while looking around my UGLY little place.

Andy and Kate Spade's apartment in New York.

Candida Fisher Beekman's Apt.

Lou Lou de Falaise, Paris

Just soak them in. So beautiful.

The study in my future home.

Emma Watson in Teen Vogue.

When I buy that house in the English countryside. This is how it will look. Just add myself in Emma Watson's place, and a few children sitting in the corner reading The Velveteen Rabbit. I always think its necessary to make future plans, don't you?

Pretty pretty please.

Lovely

Isn't this photo of Ava Gardner divine? It makes me want to get a beautiful retro bicycle NOW! It also makes me feel so lazy.  The last time I was on a bike, I looked a bit shaggy in sweats. Yuk.

OH MY! SUN!

These photos of Grace Kelly make me want summer to arrive!
I want a lovely new black halter swimsuit, some striped, wedge sandals and the gumption to wear bring red lipstick in the water.
I think I will make sure I do that.
I think we should all make sure we bring some Grace Kelly-grade glamour to the usually irritating and unfashionable hotbed that is a tourist-frequented beach!
Giant brimmed hats. Large circular sunglasses. Revlon red lipstick. Hair done.
And don't forget sunblock! Because I believe a natural skin tone with just a kiss of sun is better and healthier-looking than being as orange as a citrus-fruit!

The Women Who Created Me...

I am a child of the women who raised me. I was raised surrounded by glamourous, stylish women. Stylish in the real way, not trendy. 

However, it took me years to figure out that that was an asset, not a thing to rebel against in my black men's band tee shirts, raggedy jeans and doc martens. Things that still hold a place in my heart. 

However, as I grew up I came to really appreciate my the amazing women around me. My Mother's mother and her love of the Kennedy's style and love of International Politics. 

My Father's mother and how she has always looked like a wonderful mix of Jackie O and Audrey Hepburn. How she still sets her hair in curlers and a hanker chief every night while simultaneously keeping daily drinking and smoking look chic while my partying friends just make it look messy. 

These women are my idols for different reasons, along with my own lovely Mother. They've all taught me that being a glamourous woman has nothing to do with being pedestrian. 

In short...Coco and Virginia are both real.