My shopping bag is full of..

Treasures, if you ask me! Might have gone a bit overboard lately, but I really don't like my job, so I thought I could at least turn what's bad into something good. Which is, in order of appearance:

back garden, Bruxelles, 26th February 2012

knitwear and chocker: Zara

1)  The fact that here in Belgium we live in a neverending winter limbo gives you that "naturally depressed" air that many find irresistible.
(We are in fact quite depressed, hence the chocolate and beer abuse that, personally, I love).

2) I have a thing for powdery pastels, all of them, even the ones that don't get no love. I still love them. And I must say I really - REALLY - do not like all the neon colors we've been seeing lately. Because if you think about it, nobody looks good with some neon orange on his/her bum. At least me. Please, Fashion God, Make them stop.

top: Zara
leather trench: Amuleti J

3) I have always had a love/hate relationship with the trench. I find it very elegant and classy, but not on me.  There's something about it, just like about Mary: can't explain it, but it's there.
Then I got pregnant, and decided I was only gonna eat spring rolls for breakfast. No wonder I gained 24 kilos. Anyways, back to the trench: I was big as a whale, feeling sorry for myself and looking for something to wear, and I saw IT. So pretty, so sweet, and so small I could not even try it on. I told myself that seeing it in my wardrobe would have been a good reason to get back into some sort of shape, and it might have actually helped.

4) The Gran Finale.
I love bags. I think I got it from my mum, and I can't help it. They always look good on you, they put the outfit together, they can tell a lot about someone, and can be a bit of a show off. Destiny made me stumble on The Outnet homepage, and it was love at first sight.
So much that when the guy that was delivering the bag called me to tell me he was gonna send it back since I was not home I begged him so much that I managed to convince him to come look for me. Still don't know how I did that.
He had actually rang the neighbour's bell and asked her if she could accept my parcel, but she said no - Thank God, she would have never given it back to me!

So, Spring, I made my move. Now it's your turn.

leather nude bag: Zac Posen, from The Outnet (link!)

Seven deadly sins

So, once again I am gonna put into a blog post form a tag that has been going on for a while now on YouTube.
It is not the deepest of posts, but it is Sunday, I have been drinking too much yesterday and thought it could be fun.
Here we go.


 GREED - What is your most inexpensive beauty product? What is your most expensive? 
I guess the most inexpensive is a lipstick by Prestige (link!) of which I might have abused this winter. It is as deep as I had ever gone with a lipstick, and it takes me back in time when I had met in Dublin this goth that for me was the quintessence of perfection. We spent hours getting ready and playing with his make up displayed on his vanity. He then broke up with me over the phone, because he had met the man of this life, who apparently was able to bite and swallow glasses and cans. Couldn't compete, really. As for the most expensive, it is definitely a Sisley foundation - lovely, but ridiculously expensive: Phyto teint eclat in Ivory (link!) I bought it when I had just moved to Bruxelles and could not speak a word of french. I just pointed at a photo of Natalia Vodanova and said "Comme elle", and then I found myself with this foundation (AND a mascara, both from Sisley)  which I had to pay for. It still hurts. I guess I don't need to specify I still don't look nothing like Natalia Vodanova.
WRATH - What beauty products do you have a love/hate relationship with? What has been hardest to find?
Concealer doesn't get much love from me. Not because I don't need it, loin de là, as they say here. I just forget about it, until I see myself in a mirror and I realize it is too late, and I can't pretend I am a young carefree "getawaywithnomakeup" girl. The hardest product to find is the one I haven't found yet: the perfect foundation. Am currently flirting with Illamasqua Skin Base (link!), but I am so paranoid about choosing the wrong shade that I keep procrastinating. 
GLUTTONY - What are your most delicious beauty products? 
Delicious as in products that I love? Definitely the Illusion D' ombre by Chanel (link!), the Crème de Blush by YSL (link!),  a lipstick from Kiko that has no name and no number, and which has the most beautiful shade ever, and the Dior Amber Diamond (link!) that my daughter decided to hide somewhere for the posterity. Future generation will find it somewhere and think we were not joking, when we talked about highlighter.
SLOTH - What beauty product do you neglect due to laziness?
Ops, I am gonna have to say concealer again. But I'll add a proper cleanse, too. Yo know, you come home from work, and then you play with the daughter, make dinner, drink wine, clean everything, chat with boyfriend, maybe start the washing machine, decide what you'll be wearing tomorrow cos 5:45 a.m. is too early to think about matching clothes, and by the time you go to the bathroom to take your make up off Bioderma and a few cotton pads seem the only possible way.
PRIDE - What beauty product gives you more confidence?
Confidence is a big word. And frankly, there's no beauty product that can give me that. Confidence is such a delicate sensible unstable state of mind that I'd lie if I said "just give me a Chanel nail polish and I'll feel like a lion". I'd say it is more when I feel I am taking care of myself, totally, that's when I feel more confident. (Might change my mind when - and if - I find the perfect foundation, though!)
LUST - What attributes do you find most attractive in the opposite sex?
It was all about the grunge and Seattle, when I was a teenager. I guess we basically got stuck there - maybe not all of us, but many - and I still can't resist long (possibly dirty) hair, that "leave me alone, I'll hurt you" vibe. Let's say the first Hank Moody (Californication), because he obviously has to be a writer, or something.
ENVY - What item would you most like to receive as a gift?
Anything from Ren Skincare, well anything skincare in general. Filorga, Pai, Dr Hauschka, you name it I'll take it. Basically, what I'd like to receive is a sleep over with Lisa Eldridge (link!) And Ruth Crilly (link!), and to be able to borrow/steal everything I see in their closets. 


Done! Whoever you are, do yours and feel free to link it on the comments! x

Easy like a Saturday morning

At least, this is what I'd like a Saturday morning to be.
Truth might be slightly different, involving some snow, an adorable iper-energetic daughter and a gastroenteritis. But hey, dreaming costs nothing.

dress: Art's
stockings: Calzedonia
boots: Zara

record player: vintage
candle: Yankee Candle lemon lavender
face: Bourjois healthy mix serum n.52
Benefit Hoola bronzer
Max Factor Miracle touch creamy blush in soft pink
eyes: Chanel Inimitable intense
lips: Sleek Pout Polish in Pink Cadillac

Tell me whatchya wearin' and I'll tell you who you are

A bit pretentious, I know.

But hey, I'll try.

left shoe: Fiorentini+Baker
left sock: Beam+
right shoe: Adidas
right sock: Henrik Vibskov

Half academic, half what every fashion hunter should be. You never know if he looks into the stylists mind, or the other way around.
Girls adore him, guys take him as their guru, everybody wants to smell like him, look like him, walk like him or, at least, have his wardrobe.
Impossible.
Very famous are his legs, which he loves to show the world in the summer heat.
If you see him, ask him to come shopping with you. You won't be sorry.

vintage, definitely.

She grew up with the Mods, her first love was definitely driving a Vespa, and the second one would not leave the house without some talcum powder, in case he heard some norhern soul.
Always capable of meeting the right people at the right moment in the right place with the right attitude, which - together with her perfect blonde hair - helped her becoming everybody's sweetheart.
She might have a bizarre way of staring at you smiling for a period of time which some might find too long, but nobody's perfect.

shoes: Repetto

She is the person everybody would love to live with. Wonderful friend, wonderful cook, wonderful gossip source, wonderful photographer.
Once you enter her world of Jane Austen, meatballs, Missoni stripes and cuddles you'll never leave. Sort of like a Hotel California in the flesh.
Has a thing for Repetto - and who doesn't? - and big leather bags - again: who doesn't?
Won't tell you she likes you if she doesn't, which makes her one of the most honest people I know.

Wasting (?) Time

This post is short, short like a breath, but very dear to me. And not because it appeared in an exhibition dedicated to time during Vogue's Fashion's Night Out in Milan (or not only, 'cos the ego eagerness never sleeps, even after being sedated with a pair of Sam Edelman), but mainly because it goes deep into me. 

I'd love to know your idea of time. Feel free, mi blog es tu blog.

Time is my child learning to kiss, it is my father's perfume fading away with him, it is tibetan flags dissolving in silent prayers, it is a cup of tea that was and now is no more, it is a lover telling you it feels just like the first day, it is a flower tired of blooming. Time is the people who create it, and the charming side of it all is that if there's a before there will be an after, to unwrap like a Christmas present. 

http://www.vogue.it/en/magazine/editor-s-blog/2011/05/may-7-8

Via dei Matti

Boyfriend had already stressed and stretched his muscles with all kind of exercises (an odd way to start the weekend, if you ask me), whilst I was still struggling to get into a pair of jeans I had bought in the last sales, possessed by the typical shopaholic mood. You dye your white hair and you think you have the legs of a teenager. Boyfriend felt the obligation to let me know I have serious problems avec le matériel. Live and learn.

Via dei Matti could not have welcomed us in a better way, with the green grass and the flowers that could not believe how sunny it was, and the cocks and the hens serenading us. Nu babbà.
Via dei Matti is situated in the heart of a très bourgeois neighborhood, cos crazy people love to surprise you and spread everywhere. Just like "when the first baby laughed for the first time, and the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies"( to quote James Matthew Barrie, cos I am an adult like that). That Via dei Matti (which is not really called like that, it is just the name of a silly song), I was saying, is full of tiny little white houses surrounded by big gardens. There are also horses, foxes and apple trees, but I feel I am being a bit cheeky, so pretend I said nothing. There are just a couple of cats, that's it. I promise.
It is not a street packed with crazy people, far from that. It is just that yesterday we spent the day with them. That have been living there for a long time, so long that it becomes difficult to recall when it all started, and that have no intention of living anywhere else.
One of them has the same name of a bee that had her 15 minutes of fame in the '80. She cannot feel any sort of pain, so she goes to the doctor every day to ask if she is feeling any. There's another one who is an heir, and every morning he wakes up, has a shower (less likely) and walks down the hill to the newsagent, and spends 50 euros on magazines. He's no mtv diva, but like his colleague Paris he has a few bff, in his case it's a bunch of ladies who like la bella vita. Who doesn't. Ah, the sad fate of heirs. Then there's the gardener, who hid an apple in the hood of my daughter's coat, and the stable man, who gave her a wooden rabbit, that in her own not yet codified language is better known as Pesh.

Then there are the the ones who have left, cos their families decided that they were too old or too crazy. They live in homes, and are taken care of. And locked up. The others make fun of them, or are a bit jealous of their clean ironed shirts. Yes, but they walk up the hill as much as they can and have lunch with the others, even with those ironed shirts, and then stare at the garden for a while (but I must admit that seeing a clean shirt feels nice).

And then there are the lovers, who are just as crazy as all the other lovers.
I am moving in that street. With the sufi boyfriend and the daughter, in a tiny little white house with a garden built by them for them. In a community of people who live life in their own "normal" way, in a world that is more and more indignado, or sad.
I am moving there, and I am gonna eat with them 4 days a week. And I am gonna bring some glamour. And I am gonna leave the jeans behind.