October 2012
1 post
September 2012
1 post
August 2012
4 posts
“Nobody else working in movies today can make her own misery such a source of...”
– The New York Times’ A.O. Scott on Diane Keaton’s performance in “Something’s Gotta Give”
Nothing Gets Between Me and My Calvins
These are my latest addiction. Can’t seem to have enough in black and nude. Sleek, minimal, classic, edgy, sexy, comfortable… Yes, all of those words just to describe a pair of undies! And for 3 for $30? You can build a whole collection of them!
July 2012
2 posts
Currently Listening To
It was the summer of 2000. I was obsessed with Sex and the City and would listen to this album over and over again.
As a farewell present for my move to New York that August, my sister and cousins made a little poster with the above image of the show’s characters, except with their own faces on top of their corresponding character. My cousin Vicky was sweet Charlotte, my cousin Jen was...
“I think that, when people seek any form of self-education, their accent just...”
– Reggie Watts
June 2012
3 posts
“Here’s the thing about dessert — you want it to last. You want to savor it. Dessert is so delicious. It’s so sweet. It’s so bad for you so much of the time. And as with all bad things, you want it to last as long as possible. But you can’t make it last if they give you a great big spoon to eat it with. You’ll gobble up your dessert in two big gulps. Then it will be gone. And the meal will...
“LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23). Highlighted today is a certain longing in your heart...”
– Holiday Mathis
The World According to Vogue
“When I first moved to New York and I was totally broke, sometimes I would buy Vogue instead of dinner. I just felt it fed me more.” —Carrie Bradshaw
I recently joined a new company and our team went to lunch yesterday at Soho House to get to know one another better. We all took turns making introductions, and, instead of firing out key bullet points, we started sharing mini...
May 2012
4 posts
A Jerry Maguire Moment
That feeling where you have a belief stirring around so strongly in your mind that you can’t sleep until you create something tangible from it, so you open your laptop and a rush of thoughts and ideas push through your fingertips and onto the screen—candid, but magically articulate, concise, and organized. Then, you click send. It travels through the World Wide Web into your...
Watched Willie Nelson perform this song (a cover...
My Huckleberry Friend
Years ago, after a particularly heated fight with an ex that left me in tears, I called my friend Edward who lived nearby, sobbing for solace. He invited me over for tea. I remember exactly what I wore: a vintage Afghan dress with mirrored paillettes hand-embroidered on the bodice, black tights, and my tall black velvet Chanel boots. I made the walk down Park Avenue that winter’s evening,...
The Estella Complex
Estella: groomed to be the unattainable muse; conditioned to believe that loving would only lead to heartbreak. She could receive love, but was unable to give it in return.
In the film Great Expectations, after his first solo showing at a gallery, a drunken Finn determinedly marches to Estella’s uptown mansion, unabashedly rings the doorbell, and screams up to her window:
“I DID...
August 2011
1 post
FALL 2011 ESSENTIALS LIST
THE NEW BALLERINA FLAT
Dieppa Restrepo - Camel penny loafers
Image [via]
Last fall, a stylish woman with a chic blonde bob walked into Cafe Cluny wearing a black wool cocoon coat, chunky black sweater, cropped skinny black trousers, and nude patent loafers. Her shoes were understated yet made such a statement that I had to ask her who the designer was. She told me that they were designed by a...
July 2011
2 posts
The Little Writer That Could
Something major happened yesterday: I received a paycheck from one of the publications that I contribute to and it was enough to cover one month’s worth of rent. This is a big deal for me because, when I first started freelance writing three years ago, I was paid in peanuts. (To give you a frame of reference, my rate for 250 words back then could probably get me a nice lunch while my rate...
4 tags
Back to Basics
“I know it doesn’t look like it, but I’m in the midst of a major metamorphosis,” I said to my boyfriend this past weekend. “I’m in the process of becoming my ideal self. And I think it’s time that I started working on my style. Style communicates so much about a person and right now my quote-unquote style says nothing about me.”
He opened up my...
June 2011
1 post
6 tags
I Dream of Jessica Alba?
The other night, my boyfriend gave me three movie choices and asked me to pick one for us to watch before going to bed. I forget what the other two were, but I ended up choosing Little Fockers (which probably gives you a clue as to the level of cinematic works I was dealing with). One thing that you must know about The Boyfriend is that he is completely obsessed with horror flicks, so whenever...
May 2011
3 posts
6 tags
Single Girl Dinners
I used to cook. A lot. My old blog on Xanga was sprinkled with recipes—ones I’ve made up and ones inspired from new cookbooks, vintage cookbooks, dishes I’ve had on my travels, dishes from retro eras, macrobiotics and health dishes, cooking shows, magazine articles, and restaurant menus. The catch is that I’m only moved to cook when I know I’m cooking for others...
5 tags
Friends at First Sight
There she was, sitting at the edge of the pool at Hotel Zaza in Houston, swinging her toned legs into the water, wearing a white string bikini with her blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail—my friend Gina. Little did I know at the time that we would become such close friends. We met last May when I had moved back to Texas for only about a month. A friend of a friend had reached out to me...
6 tags
Princess Ashley and the Ogre
My friend Ashley is an absolute hoot to hang out with because she’s one of the girliest girls I know. She holds relatively traditional values when it comes to male and female dynamics and is always impeccably dressed. Her room is outfitted in chic white sheets and she is ever the gracious hostess. When I stayed with her for a week last fall, she laid out a fresh Ralph Lauren towel on the...
April 2011
5 posts
7 tags
The Grand "Afternoon Tea for One" Catastrophe at...
Dining alone is one of those activities that I’ve become accustomed to over the years and even grown to cherish. On Tuesday night, after doing a little after-work shopping in SoHo, I walked over to a neighborhood sushi spot in Nolita called Mottsu for a quick bite. It’s not exactly a temple to the artform of sushi, by any means. Their simple menu is affordable, with the...
6 tags
The Girl Trapped Inside of the Bell Jar
I received an unexpected call last night. I had just come home from a friend’s gallery opening uptown and relaxed in bed with my laptop—decidedly active on Facebook out of sheer boredom—when my phone rang. Hm. It was a number I didn’t recognize with a Houston area code. Could be family for all I know. I picked it up, “Hello?”
A strangely familiar girlish...
3 tags
The Cool Girlfriend Method
The Cool Girlfriend bakes cookies for her boyfriend and also wraps up a couple of batches for his closest buddies. The Cool Girlfriend is completely laissez-faire when her boyfriend goes out with friends, yet still texts him goodnight. And, above all, the Cool Girlfriend doesn’t flip out everytime a girl friend calls her boyfriend’s phone. Let’s face it, people: The Cool...
16 tags
The Era of Decadent Lunches
I knew I had found a kindred foodie spirit in Mr. X when, during my first week at the private equity firm, I ended up having a four-hour lunch at Le Bernardin and he supported it. (I was assigned to write a restaurant review for Vivid Magazine before I was hired at the firm.) He was the only other person on our small team who appreciated food and fine dining as much as I did. The founding...
4 tags
The Art of Telling Jokes
I tried my hand at stand-up comedy in first grade at the age of six. Every Friday, the teacher would randomly draw a student’s name from a fishbowl, and that student had to read a book to all of the first grade classes at school, Jerry Seinfeld-style: into a microphone while sitting on a tall wooden stool. The catch was that it had to be a book of your own selection, so we were required to...
March 2011
11 posts
9 tags
The Fembot Experiment
In 2006, I went through a phase where I was obsessed with the idea of “the uniform.” No frills, no embellishments—just pure, minimalist pieces: skinny jeans, white tailored shirt, black blazer, cashmere sweaters, classic pumps. I wanted my entire wardrobe to be inspired by the Jil Sander boutique. Sure, it can be described as somewhat predictable, but there are unexpected...
9 tags
Practically Chic
Once upon a time, I was a slave to fashion. I pored through pages and pages of fashion magazines and was willing to travel far and wide to hunt down items that I deemed were “must-haves”—once, the search for a pair of black knitted Miu Miu shorts took me from Paris to Florence and finally to Milan where I snatched up a pair. Did I ever wear them? No! (Sadly, I ended up eBaying...
5 tags
The Power of Kettlebells
I first saw kettlebells when I stayed at my friend Andrew’s apartment this past fall. He had started working out with them two summers ago and sang about their glory. I, however, was intimidated by them. They looked like something a burly Soviet soldier would use, and for a good reason: these pure cast iron weights originated in ancient Russia and have traditionally been an important...
2 tags
Return to Chateau de Massillan
Today was the ultimate spring day in New York City—there was bright sunshine, cool air, and an overall breeziness that reminded me of the beautiful places that I’ve had the fortune to visit. The one place that I’ve thought about returning to the most is Chateau de Massillan, a deluxe boutique hotel situated in the idyllic French countryside of Provence. I was there when I was...
8 tags
The Recruiter and the Underdog
Last fall, when I was aggressively job hunting, I received a call back from a recruiter named Deborah who specialized in placement within the creative industries. I was asked to dress as if I were on a job interview, so I wore a grey silk Prada blouse with an asymmetrical neckline underneath a modern-cut black skirt suit by Jil Sander for Uniqlo, and black Christian Louboutin pumps with...
4 tags
Don't Forget to Say "Thank You"
Writing a thank you card these days is somewhat of a lost art. I used to be a real perfectionist—I’d buy letterpressed cards and spend time drafting the message on scrap paper before writing directly onto the card stock. But then I received a thank you card that forever changed my approach: it was a chic white card monogrammed with my friend Christopher’s initials...
6 tags
Currently Addicted to Being "Whipped!"
I’ve been jabbing my finger into my abs to test how firm the muscles are, and, while they’ve gotten tighter, there’s still a layer of softness (a.k.a. FAT) on top of all the good stuff underneath. This alone has turned me into a woman on a mission, and that mission is to get my body toned-up and leaner ASAP. I recently turned up the dial on my workout regimen—it’s...
8 tags
The Friendship Knot
At the end of last September, I took a sublet in a three-bedroom apartment in Stuyvesant Town where my friend Janis lives. One of her roomies had gotten engaged and moved out, leaving a nice, fully furnished bedroom behind. Janis and her remaining roommate had found someone else to replace her, but there was a one month gap before that other person could officially move in. The timing...
6 tags
The Ebb and Flow in Dad's Kitchen
This picture was taken almost exactly a year ago when I moved back to my dad’s house in Texas. My dad and stepmom always seemed to be preparing something whenever I sauntered down to the kitchen. Dad might be scaling and gutting a fresh red snapper that his fisherman friend had dropped off as a gift, or mincing cloves of garlic to rub on slabs of ribeye steak. Stepmom might be sitting on a...
11 tags
Soho House: The Freelancer's Office Away from Home
I remember back in 2003 when the news broke that Soho House, a contemporary private members’ club based in London, was expanding its brand by opening an outpost in New York’s Meatpacking District. I was at a cocktail party with my friend Alex and we were chatting with a pretty half-Japanese, half-German girl named Hermine who told us that she was being appointed as their marketing...
5 tags
Men Say the Darndest Things
One of my favorite blush colors is the beauty cult favorite Orgasm by NARS, which was named appropriately so because its universally flattering, shimmery, pinky-peach shade gives your cheeks a glowy, post-coittal flush with just a swirl of the brush.
My philosophy with blush application, though, is to keep swirling until you think you’ve put on too much—that’s when it’s...
February 2011
3 posts
6 tags
"The Natalia"
Last September, when I moved back to New York, I desperately needed a haircut and my regular hairstylist Dean at Cutler Salon was away on an African safari, so I did the unthinkable: I let another hairstylist from a different salon (which shall remain unnamed) convince me to lop off my hair and he totally butchered it! As he was chopping off my hair, he told me that he was “inspired...
2 tags
tumblr For Men
Carolyn: OMG. Last night, Derek was looking over my shoulder at my tumblr and goes: “What’s tumblr? Should I start one?” Then, he goes, in this fake wistful voice: “Inspirations: Journal of a 32-Year Old Man.”
5 tags
My OkCupid.com "Eureeka!" Moment
Last summer, when I was newly single and back home in Texas, my friend Janis introduced me to OkCupid.com, the free online dating website. I didn’t think I’d seriously meet anyone on there, but I was certainly curious enough to create an account to browse.
I received a few interesting messages here and there, but overall didn’t feel like building the necessary momentum for...
