trick-or-treat!

For the first time ever I work in an office that dresses up for Halloween. Costume ideas have been buzzing through the office for the last week, and I'll be honest, it's gotten me pretty excited about the holiday. I almost regret not throwing a little Halloween party this year, especially after seeing some of Martha Stewart's decorating ideas. Leave it to Martha to make even Halloween so chic and charming.

And for the curious, I dressed up as Alice in Wonderland. But the best office costumes have to go to Elizabeth and Mike, who went as the Wicked Witch of the West and one of her flying monkeys. They looked great!

"how bored i am!" he said to himself, "how bored i am!"

"My wife doesn't care about it," said Charles; "although she has been advised to take exercise, she prefers always sitting in her room reading."

"Like me," replied Leon. "And indeed, what is better than to sit by one's fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the window and the lamp is burning?"

"What, indeed?" she said, fixing her large black eyes wide open upon him.

"One thinks of nothing," he continued; "the hours slip by. Motionless we traverse countries we fancy we see, and your thought, blending with the fiction, playing with the details, follows the outline of the adventures. It mingles with the characters, and it seems as if it were yourself palpitating beneath their costumes."

"That is true! That is true!" she said.

--- Madame Bovary. Flaubert. p. 81

falling slowly.

"Take this sinking boat and point it home.
We've still got time.
Raise your hopeful voice you have a choice
You'll make it now."

wood & blackboards.

"Masculine vintage" is such an under-appreciated design style. My favorite place for it is in industrial office spaces like these. I have to say, if I ever start my own PR shop, I'll have to seriously consider doing the whole place in exposed brick with black leather couches & wire fans.

Wouldn't it make coming to work in lipstick and silk blouses that much more glamorous?

 

style-list

Five percent American handshake.

Recipe for the perfect man, I think.

jewel tones.

roots vol. I

My grandmother, Anna Healy, graduating from high school. 1942.

Newark, NJ in the 1940s. Grandma, the skinny, silly one in the middle, surrounded by her (very Irish) sisters - Nora, Teresa & Peg.

i hold the dust of these amid changing stars.

O prairie mother, I am one of your boys.  
I have loved the prairie as a man with a heart shot full of pain over love.  
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water.
.    .    .
  
I speak of new cities and new people.  
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.          
I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down,  
  a sun dropped in the west.  
I tell you there is nothing in the world  
  only an ocean of to-morrows,  
  a sky of to-morrows.          

I am a brother of the cornhuskers who say  
  at sundown:  
        To-morrow is a day.

--- from Prairie. Carl Sandburg. 1918.

from your summer cottons to your winter wools.

Fall swept through D.C. this week, announcing itself with wind, rain, and a dour sky. It was a sad end to a warm and sunny September, but I am trying to look on the bright side: bad weather also means good things like scarves, boots, tights, & coats. Time to bring out the staples and add a few new pieces. This year I'm working more blazers, belts, and tousled hair into the mix.

What's in your lookbook this fall?

 

From lookbook.nu.