Mon Nouveau Lunettes!

Je les aime!

Hearts and Hates

These are a few of my favourite ... magazines



Nylon

Oh Nylon, I can hardly resist you, even when you feature Camilla Belle on your cover (I still don't really know who she is). I think the first issue I ever picked up featured Paris Hilton on the cover! and when I flicked through I found the article was insightful and genuine. While it can have a little too much of an over-aware-"it's IRONIC"-hipster vibe, I like the way they interview famous ladies, point me in the direction of bands I now love (The Teenagers!), and have travel snippets.
They can be very self-aggrandising and overly advertisement based but their good parts make up for their bad parts.
Also! I NYLON was my magazine of choice for my carry-on bag when Sir C & I departed New Zealand in May 2007.


(you can see half the O and the N poking out)





Lula, Girl of my Dreams

Oh Lula, el-you-el-ah, Lula,
I read about Lula and searched for Lula and yearned for Lula long long before I met her.
I was in the Borders store on Charing Cross Road on my lunch break when I spotted her. I gasped a little and grabbed her so quickly that the producer (I'm guessing) of the film crew panning over the next shelf down looked over and smiled at me.
Lula, girl of my dreams, comes out only a few times a year but is a weighty tome, printed on high gsm matte paper it feels almost more like a book than a magazine which almost, almost makes the wait between issues bearable.
It has been guest edited by Kirsten Dunst, featured Zooey Deschanel, and has the most amazing photography within it's pages. It reads like your best friend is telling you about all all all the wonders she has discovered, and she has amazing taste.
And oh, the title is apt. The overall aesthetic of the magazine is ethereal and dreamlike, full of girls whose eyelashes reach the sun before their faces. Muted colours, redolent of high summer in a very very hot region, long grass, dandelions & wheat, denim shorts, floating tops, and long long sun bleached hair.
Also! I was drafting this entry, long hand, this morning and I took a break to check on twitter (obsessed!) when I noticed that Darling Amber from Code for Something had reviewed the latest issue! I wasn't even aware it was out yet in Nouvelle Zélande. But $31!!! My goodness.





Grazia (UK)

Only £1.90 and issued weekly! this was my staple in London and I'm finding it hard to cut off now that I'm in New Zealand, it costs $2.50 more than the Australian version, has all the wrong season's fashions from stores that aren't in New Zealand (yet? I hope. I miss H&M) but I cannot help it, I love it so.
The problem with other wholly fashion magazines (magazines in this post excepted of course) was that you would inhale them in one or two sittings an then there would be a month before the next one came out. An absolute age! Until Grazia came along! A weekly magazine that didn't feature gardening, tips to keep your marriage alive and children happy, purely puerile paparazzi phoyos or anything of the ilk.
There are features on celebrities, and some are quite similar to the Katie's Scientology Sex Camp! (for example) but they are tempered with high (and high-street) fashion, and world news articles.
An admission. I do ABHOR that they use the terms "Recessionista" and "Cheap Chic" as often as they do. But no one's perfect!
And why do I like the UK version more that the Australian? I think the fashion is a little more runway-based than beach-based, a little more fashion forward. And GAUS (as I like to think of it) is a little closer to the Cosmopolitan et al formula which is so tiring all those articles about snaring a man with "wild and crazy sex tips", or how "some women" are flirting their way up the company ladder. I find them absolutely exhausting. I just want Giles and Vivienne and Karl and the Mulleavy sisters! and of course, to know how to get the look for less.





frankie
And, at the top of my list, my girls-in-white-dresses, favourite magazine, is frankie.
Apparently aimed at the 20-something demographic, I only came across frankie when I was in New Zealand for Christmas 2007, and I was smitten, kitten!
Combining the best bits of all the others listed on this darling little post, frankie is art-y and alternative without being self-referentially hipster, it is dreamy and ethereal without becoming weak and mired in a vaseline-lensed world, it is full of fashion and fun without being too mainstream or resorting to grating catch-words. And I never ever realised this until right now, write now.
But! in addition to all of that, they are crafty, they include recipes and a poster (usually by an amazing artist like Rob Ryan) they feature quirky collections (like vintage salt and pepper shakers), and people with careers where, either the career is similar but the people are diverse, or the careers are diverse and the people similar but always always always these career features are linked by the absolute passion the people have for their jobs, they do what they do because they adore it, love it, live for it and yet again, BUT! the career is not necessarily alternative, or creative, it's not all musician, photographer, fashion designer. They feature Doctors and Lawyers and Librarians and Tattoo Artists all the same. It's about passion.
I feel like fankie is not simply geared towards single women with a lot of disposable income who go out most nights and definitely every weekend, instead, being predominantly a homebody who occasionally likes to knit, and also likes tattoos, is completely fine by them as long as I love what I'm choosing.
I like a magazine that makes me feel better about myself!




Sigh. Payday is tootoo far away, there are new issues of Lula and Frankie calling to me. I can hear them.



p.s. What I DO NOT HEART? when my beautiful Zelda ring decides all of a sudden to turn my finger dirty dirty black.




(photo taken in terrible terrible light with the flash and everything, so the actual black line is 3 times as dark, I promise.)

Bad ring! Very very bad ring.

Trying to take over the WORLD.

I walked into the lounge, possibly (probably) wearing something pink (probably fuchsia) (okay it was definitely fuchsia) (yes I understand this is becoming worrisome) (yes, I know, both the interminable parentheses AND the fuchsia obsession) (ANYWAY)

Mummy-dearest: Hello Pinky
Sir C: Hee. I guess that makes me The Brain!
Me: Hee. No. You're definitely Pinky. I'm The Brain.
Sir C: Are you calling me stupid?
Mummy-Dearest: What*?
Me: No! nononononono! Just that You are tall while I am short, have a large head, and am infinitely more misanthropic than you my darling-dear
Sir C: ... true**.




* She was a little confused. Cartoons from the late 1990s are not her specialist subject***.
** It is true.
*** It isn't OUR specialist subject either. We were just the right age at the right time and the theme song was damn catchy and and and oh forget it.

January 2008: Wellington to San Francisco


Jayne & Craig at Wellington Airport


Our plane to Auckland


Our plane to San Francisco


First grey grey glimpses of San Francisco


Kat in a Japanese Restaurant, San Francisco.

Over the hills and far away ...

On Saturday morning I had just woken up and was lying in bed catching up on Twitter (lo, the dangers of an iPhone and WiFi) when Kat sent me a message letting me know that there was room in her car to go to the Martinborough Fair if I still wanted to go along.
You see, I've lived in Wellington all my life and yet I'd never managed to make it over the hills on the right weekends in February and March.

I'm always pleased when I can make it from asleep to ready-to-leave-the-house (including makeup but with unstraightened hair!) within half an hour. I think my record is 15 minutes.

Finally, at 10 am, fuelled by caffeine and petrol, worried by the spitting grey skies, we took off over the hills to the Wairarapa.
On the other side of the winding winding Rimutaka Hill Road the skies cleared and as we found our park in the rural town of Martinborough it became clear that the cardigan and knee high boots I was wearing were over eager.
Over there, it is still most definitely summer.


Kat very quickly made an Alpaca friend. He appears wary.


Scenes of Wellington and New Zealand.




Jesus is Lord (HOLY HELL, HOW BIG IS THAT BIRD!)














We stood in the blazing sun and felt terribly sorry for the fireman in all his finery but couldn't resist the flames.




Adding water to an oil fire.



So so impressive.
























The corner of Regent and Oxford Streets. It's not exactly Oxford Circus, there is no TopShop here.
I can't escape memories of London.


Looking back toward Martinborough

&

Looking homeward


The fair was simply lovely.
Admittedly, I was dressed a little inappropriately, it was grey and rainy when we left Wellington and over the hills? the sun was bright. I was just glad I had my sunglasses with me. And that Kat had brought sunscreen with her.

I came home with a necklace made of New Zealand coins, a pair of sunglasses, an adorable pair of spectacles, and a leather deer head.
If Sir C and I are still here at this time next year, I'm going to drag him over the hills with me. He may complain but I think he would actually quite like it.

p.s. On our way home (we were in a teeny tiny bit of a hurry) I saw a sign advertising a taxidermy museum, somewhere between Greytown and Featherston. We turned off a road to see if we could find it, but because of the smidgen of hurry we couldn't spend too long hunting it down. Be assured, I will be hunting it down myself!

Week Ten

Sunday
Sir C took me to the mall as I was craving frozen yoghurt.
Berries and cookies and yoghurt, oh my.


Monday
We're a new office and I get a sad little bit of glee every time I turn over a new month on our date stamp.


Tuesday
The day of crown tattoos & photography in alley ways. Spending all day with Sir C. I loved it.


Wednesday
Sitting in the sun after my lunch with Liz, new boots and old tights ill suited to the weather.


Thursday
A no-good very-bad last minute photo before we went into see Watchmen.


Friday
Sticker against the rain. Louisburgh, County Mayo, home of Granuaile, aka Gráinne Ní Mháille, Gráinne Mhaol, and Grace O'Malley (c. 1530 – c. 1603).
Sticker dating from 1995.


Saturday
Paintings at a stall in the Martinborough Fair.


&



cricket face aka nerves pre-tattoo



p.s. Week TEN! Last year I didn't even make it a third as far posting photos. I am very pleased with myself. Sigh.