These earrings by You gNeeK on Etsy solve the age-old problem of form vs. function. Have your cake, eat it too! Two birds, one stone! !!!
The store offers hundreds of delightfully geeky objects, such as a math clock I’m incredibly tempted to get for my boyfriend (PhD student in electrical engineering… ’nuff said) and lots of cool functional tools dressed up as aesthetically pleasing jewelry. I’m infinitely pleased by the spirit level necklace, but the violent pyro in me can’t keep her eyes off the infinitely cool dangerous toys, like the working folding knife earrings. Steampunk enthusiasts should forget their silly faux clockwork jewellery and turn to these instead. Nothing says gentlewoman-adventurer chic quite like working lighter earrings. Love them.
I would like to change into this outfit for the after-party to my coronation as Empress of the Galaxy, please. I think the stars-and-frothiness theme is right on point for the occasion.
I spent a large part of this past week revisiting Italian music from the sixties and seventies. Most of this exercise just made for endless amusement, but there was one standout: Adriano Celentano’s Prisencolinensinainciusol. Celentano is one of Italy’s most enduring and inventive rock stars. He was tremendously inspired by American rock, but wanted to find a way to bring an Italian spin to it. Prisencolinensinainciusol is a song he made with nonsense-words, meant to sound the way English does to a foreigner. He’s making the point that love and music are the universal language. The result of this artistic experiment? An awesome, inventive song with a fresh, catchy beat, set to a truly fun and inspiring video. And… a song that is basically rap, years before rap hit the US airwaves. Not too shabby. I’ve been watching this video and listening to this song practically on repeat since I discovered it. Do yourselves a favour and give it a listen.
I know I just talked about jewelry from Erie Basin. While I was poking around on there, I saw the link to their selection of contemporary rings from Conroy & Wilcox. I fell completely head over heels in love with this rose-cut black diamond ring. I’ve always preferred dark stones (I’m wearing my grandmother’s smokey topaz necklace as I write this) and black diamonds are my favourite of the breed. The rose cut also means that it’s not too blingy. Instead, you get a beautiful, unusual ring that is understated enough to wear every day but still grabs attention. Love love love it.
This photo’s original intent was to showcase the basket, but I really just want that fireplace, the ceiling and these walls in my life. I want them in the living room of my imaginary summer house. Across from the fireplace there will be a window that looks out over a garden and down into the sea. The garden has big bushes of lavender in it, and in the summertime bees fly lazily through them. The house itself is located up on a hillside, but you can pick your way down a rocky path to a little cove, unknown to anyone on the island. The beach there is rocky, but it gives way to sand, and we have a little dinghy anchored a little ways out, that we can take around to the other islands. Some days we put on masks and go diving off the rocks further out to hunt for sea urchins, which we crack open and eat on the beach with the rest of the lunch we brought down with us. When it gets a bit chilly, we wrap big faded striped towels around ourselves and race up the hill back to the house. Everyone collapses laughing onto the couch in a tangle of tanned limbs and we sit there and gab until someone gets up the energy to wander into the kitchen for dinner fixings. At night we drink a bit too much wine and sit out in the garden and wonder at how dark it gets away from city lights.
There’s something satisfyingly retro-Barbie-future-chic about this cover shot of Sasha Pivarova. It looks like a still from a Barbarella spinoff. Our fearless heroine here could be another emissary from Planet Earth sent to explore the universe to see what other exciting discoveries can be brought back from backwards planets. She doesn’t seem to possess the charm and spunkiness of Jane Fonda, though, and she seems like she might be in some sort of distress in this picture, so this imaginary film of mine might be doomed to the cult shelf of an indie video store. Students would check it out to laugh at the cheesy plot and to coo over the awesome outfits. Sorry, Sasha, you’re no Barbarella. But you do clean up awful nice.
Sasha Pivarova by Steven Meisel for the cover of Vogue Italia, March 2007.
My inner Goth loves all the trappings associated with Victorian mourning. It’s the perfect combination of beautiful and macabre. The pieces contain so much romance and history. There’s infinite potential for daydreaming about a young widow, wilting in tragic despair over the death of the man she loves. Or perhaps an abused wife, secretly happy at the demise of her tormentor, but now trapped in widow’s clothes while all she wants to do is wear green and shocking red and rejoice in her new-found freedom. So many stories to wonder about and to invent.
Not to mention that perfect, squeamishly delicious frisson of sacrilege when donned nowadays. It’s so funny to divorce these pieces from all their significance and just look at them as beautiful objects. Which of course they are. Erie Basin has a beautiful selection right now, which I go to look at when I want to daydream and forget I’m poor. The 1780 Georgian Sepia Mourning Ring above would be wending its way to me right now if it didn’t cost more than a month’s rent. Sigh.
A girl can dream, though. And these creepily beautiful pieces are great fodder for dreams and general inspiration.
Musie 